Chapter 7 - Whose PermissionFour weeks later, Byron and Priya put their house on the market. Within days, there was a pending-sale sign outside. They moved out in late November — a moving truck arriving early Saturday morning, boxes disappearing into it, cars packed fast, clearly wanting the whole process over with as quickly as possible.
As Nadia climbed into the car, she looked toward me. Seventeen years old, whatever mistakes her parents had made, still just a teenager who'd followed the adults around her.
I raised my hand. She raised hers. Then they drove away.
That evening, Desmond and I used the hot tub. The November air was cold enough that thick clouds of steam rose off the water. Our other neighbors, Farrah and Grant, had their lights on next door. Everything sounded wonderfully ordinary.
Desmond poured two glasses of wine. After a few quiet minutes, I said, "Farrah and Grant never used our hot tub."
He 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 — Priya at our door pretending to complain, the camera footage, the green dye, the confrontation, Odalys's message, the rental listing, Detective Hartley, Byron coming back and offering 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. Byron had looked at something that belonged to someone else and decided it was being wasted. Because we weren't using it often, he'd 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 just being clever. Resourceful. Nobody was using it, people enjoyed it, nobody was getting hurt.
But none of that 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 come out, instead of just the portion Byron was willing to admit.
Desmond 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'd imagined when we bought the house. Friday night. Wine. The hot tub. Nowhere else we needed to be.
Three months later, new neighbors moved into Byron and Priya's old house. Weston and Callie were around our age, with a small dog, and spent most Sunday mornings gardening. The first weekend, they introduced themselves over the fence.
Callie 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 went back to her garden. Desmond walked over and stood beside me. "They seem nice."
"They seem straightforward."
"Probably the same thing."
May you like
"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.
