My Neighbor Filled My Pool With Concrete Because My Kids Were ‘Too Loud’ – She Never Expected What Happened Next
She was standing at her window, watching.
Not glancing.
Watching, with that pinched, calculating expression I had come to know too well.
Katherine was the kind of woman who found something wrong with everything.
Last Christmas, she had marched over to complain about my porch.
“Those gnome decorations are tacky,” she had told me flatly. “They lower the tone of the entire street.”
She was standing at her window, watching.
I had only smiled and thanked her for the feedback.
Then, just last month, it was my roses.
“You planted them on the wrong side,” she insisted, pointing at my flowerbed. “Roses belong on the left, not the right. Everyone knows that.”
“They seem happy where they are,” I had replied gently.
“Happy is not the point,” she snapped. “Order is the point.”
“You planted them on the wrong side,”
I never argued.
Since losing my husband, I had learned that keeping the peace cost less.
So I smoothed things over.
I told myself it was easier that way, for me and for the children.
But standing at that window, watching Katherine watch us, something cold settled in my chest.
“Mommy, is that lady mad again?” my daughter asked, climbing out of the pool.
I had learned that keeping the peace cost less.
I turned quickly and grabbed a towel.
“Don’t you worry about her, baby. Just have fun.”
“She always looks mad,” she said, shivering.
“Some people carry a lot of frowns,” I told her, wrapping the towel around her shoulders. “That doesn’t have to be our problem.”
She giggled and ran back to her brothers.
