Chapter 1 - The ComplaintOur hot tub had been sitting covered and almost untouched for nearly four months when our neighbor, Priya, appeared at the front door and asked us to keep the noise down.
My Neighbors Secretly Used My Hot Tub for a Year, So I Taught Them a Lesson
At first, I thought I had misunderstood her.
My husband, Desmond, and I hadn't even been home the previous Sunday. We had driven three hours away to visit his parents for the weekend. So there had been no music coming from our backyard. No people laughing. No late-night gathering. Nothing.
"Are you sure it was coming from our house?" I asked.
Priya hesitated. "I mean, it sounded like it was coming from this direction. Loud music, people talking… Honestly, Whitney, it's been happening for months. Maybe close to a year. I didn't want to complain, but it's getting frustrating."
Nearly a year?
I thanked her for letting me know and slowly closed the door. Then I stood alone in the hallway trying to understand how our backyard could have been noisy while we weren't even home.
Desmond and I had bought the house four years earlier after months of searching. The backyard was what convinced us — spacious, lined with mature trees, with a beautiful hot tub the previous owners had installed. The first two years, we used it constantly. Friday nights. Quiet evenings after stressful days. Sometimes we sat outside after dinner with a bottle of wine between us.
Then life got busier. I took a job that required travel roughly two weekends a month. One of Desmond's coworkers went on extended medical leave, leaving him with an enormous workload. By the time he got home each evening, even relaxing felt like something else on the schedule. We kept telling ourselves we'd start using the hot tub again once things calmed down.
They never did. So it stayed covered.
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At least, that's what we thought.
After Priya's visit, one question wouldn't leave my mind. If we hadn't been using it… who had?
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