Whatever mistakes her parents had made, she was still a teenager who had followed the adults around her.
I raised my hand.
She raised hers.
Then they drove away.
That evening, Tom and I used the hot tub.
The November air was cold enough that thick clouds of steam rose from the water.
Our other neighbors, Frank and Helen, had their lights on next door.
Everything sounded wonderfully ordinary.
Tom poured two glasses of wine.
After several quiet minutes, I said:
“Frank and Helen never used our hot tub.”
Tom laughed.
“Not that we know of.”
I smiled.
“Good thing the camera faces the right direction.”
For a while, we said nothing.
I thought about everything that had happened.
Lisa standing at our door pretending to complain.
The camera footage.
The green dye.
The confrontation.
Diane’s message.
The rental listing.
Detective Hartley.
Jim returning to our house and offering me the smallest possible version of the truth.
Eventually, I realized the hot tub itself had never really been the center of the story.
The real issue was entitlement.
Jim had looked at something that belonged to someone else and decided it was being wasted.
Because we weren’t using it often, he convinced himself there was nothing wrong with using it himself.
Then he discovered he could profit from it.
And each time nothing happened, the line moved a little further.
At no point did he seem to think of himself as someone doing something seriously wrong.
He probably thought he was simply being clever.
Resourceful.
Nobody was using it.
People enjoyed it.
Nobody was getting hurt.
But none of those things made it his.
That was the part every excuse ignored.
I didn’t feel triumphant about his arrest.
I didn’t sit there celebrating that his family had moved away.
What I felt was relief.
Relief that the entire truth had been uncovered instead of only the portion Jim was willing to admit.
Tom put an arm around me.
“We should use this more often.”
“We should.”
“No scheduling.”
“Just us.”
“Just us.”
Steam drifted into the cold night.
The backyard was quiet.
And for the first time in a long time, we were living exactly the way we had imagined when we bought the house.
Friday night.
Wine.
The hot tub.
And nowhere else we needed to be.
Three months later, new neighbors moved into Jim and Lisa’s old house.
Marcus and Joy were around our age and had a small dog.
They spent most Sunday mornings gardening.
The first weekend, they introduced themselves over the fence.
Joy glanced toward our hot tub.
“That looks amazing.”
“It is.”
“Maybe we’ll get one someday.”
I smiled.
“When you’re settled, you’re welcome to join us sometime.”
Her face brightened.
“That would be lovely.”
She returned to her garden.
Tom walked over and stood beside me.
“They seem nice.”
“They seem straightforward.”
“Probably the same thing.”
“Usually.”
Then we went inside.
And this time, when I looked back at the hot tub through the window, I knew exactly who had permission to use it.
