My Neighbor Charged Her Electric Car From My House Every Night Without My Permission – I Didn’t Call the Authorities, but I Did Something Better to Teach Her a Lesson

Editoron

The number was nearly double.

That morning, I poured my coffee, opened the mail, and found out I was wrong.

Except this time, I couldn’t.

I blinked. Then I blinked again.

“That can’t be right,” I said aloud, to nobody but the cat.

The number was nearly double. Not a few dollars off. Double.

I checked the account number. I checked the meter reading. I even walked out to the little box on the side of my garage and squinted at it, as if the digits might apologize and correct themselves.

“Old fridges eat power.”

They didn’t.

I came back inside and called my daughter Diane — because that’s what widows do when something doesn’t add up. We call our daughters and pretend we just wanted to chat.

“Mom, did you leave the AC running with a window open again?”

“I did not,” I said. “I haven’t touched the thermostat since April.”

“Maybe it’s the fridge. Old fridges eat power.”

Monica had trouble.

“The fridge is younger than you are, honey.”

She laughed. I did not.

After we hung up, I stood at the kitchen window and stared across the low fence at my neighbor Monica’s yard. Monica, thirty-something, three kids, a husband who traveled, and a shiny white Tesla always parked crooked in her driveway, nosed up close to the fence we shared, as if the mulch beds and the solar lights were only for show.

Her habits, however, were not.

I already knew Monica had trouble understanding where her property ended and everyone else’s began. I just didn’t know yet how far she’d taken it.

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