The moving truck pulled away just after 2 p.m.
I stood in the driveway with a cardboard box balanced on my hip, staring up at the little lake house that was suddenly mine.
The paint was peeling in soft curls along the siding. The porch sagged slightly on the left side, almost as if it were leaning in to hear a secret.
It wasn’t much.
But it was ours.
My eight-year-old daughter, Olivia, had already kicked off her sneakers and was running barefoot through the tall grass behind the house.
Her arms stretched wide as though she were greeting the lake itself.
“Mom! There’s a frog!” she shouted. “A real one! I named him Kevin!”
“Kevin the frog stays outside,” I called back, laughing. “He’s a wild animal.”
“He’s my best friend now!”
I set the box down on the porch step and finally let myself breathe.
My dad had left the lake house to me when he passed away six months earlier.
For the first time in years as a single mother, I wasn’t writing a rent check to someone else.
Olivia and I had lived in a cramped one-bedroom apartment for so long that she thought having a hallway was a luxury.
Now she had a yard.
She had trees outside her bedroom window.
She had a lake.
And, apparently, she had a frog named Kevin.
I had a home.
At least, that’s what I thought.
The gravel driveway crunched beneath my sneakers as I walked back toward my car.
It ran narrowly along the side of the house, just wide enough for my old blue Chevrolet.
There was no garage.
No side lot.
No second parking space.
Just that strip of gravel.
I had barely reached the car when a voice came from the fence.
“Well, look who finally got here.”
I turned.
An older man in a faded cap was leaning against the fence between our yards.
He had a kind, weathered face and an easy stance.
“Hello,” he said. “I’m Harold. Your dad and I used to fish off that dock back there. He talked about you all the time. He mentioned you’d get the house.”
“Samantha,” I said, walking over to shake his hand. “And that barefoot tornado is Olivia.”
“She’s a keeper,” Harold said with a smile.
He nodded toward the porch.
“That railing’s about ready to give up on life. I’ve got tools. You just say the word.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Retired contractor, ma’am. If I don’t fix things, I go stir-crazy.”
I laughed.
For a moment, the tension I’d been carrying since the move eased.
Then I felt it.
That unmistakable prickle on the back of your neck when someone is watching you.
I looked up the slope.
The house next to mine sat higher than the rest of the street.
It was large and beautiful, with a second-floor balcony overlooking the lake.
And standing on that balcony was a woman in a silk wrap, holding a cup as though it were a scepter.
She didn’t smile.
She didn’t wave.
She simply stared at my Chevrolet in the driveway as if it had personally offended her.
“Morning,” I called, trying to be polite.
She took her time answering.
“Could you park it somewhere else?”
I blinked.
“I’m sorry?”
She gestured toward my car with two fingers.
“It’s ruining my view of the lake.”
I looked at my driveway.
Then at the lake.
Then back at her.
“This is my driveway,” I said. “I have nowhere else to park.”
“That’s Valerie,” Harold muttered beside me.
“Good luck with that one.”
Valerie tilted her head.
“It’s ruining my view.”
“Well,” she said, rolling her eyes, “I don’t care. Park that piece of junk somewhere else. I don’t want to see that eyesore from my balcony.”
Then she turned and walked inside.
The balcony door slid shut with a soft, deliberate click.
I stood there holding my car keys.
It was clear my new neighbor had decided she hated me before we’d even exchanged names.
And something in my stomach told me that complaint wasn’t going to be the end of it.
I was right.
Three days later, I was checking the mailbox at the end of my driveway when I heard heels crunching over the gravel behind me.
I already knew who it was before I turned around.
Valerie had traded the cup for a designer handbag, but the expression on her face was exactly the same.
“We need to talk about your vehicle,” she said.
“We really don’t,” I replied, pulling a stack of envelopes from the mailbox. “It’s parked on my property.”
