The stolen log disappeared into Denise Hartwell’s fire pit.
For three seconds, nothing happened.
I stood behind my porch window with a coffee mug locked between both hands, watching smoke curl above the cedars separating my property from Cedar Ridge.
Then a hard crack split the morning.
Not the deep boom my anger had imagined the night before.
Not some triumphant movie explosion.
Just a sudden, violent report followed by the metallic clatter of something striking the stone patio.
Denise screamed.
My stomach dropped.
That was the first moment I understood how stupid I had been.
The night before, sitting alone in the garage, the whole thing had seemed controlled.
Loud.
Embarrassing.
A lesson.
From my porch, hearing that sound travel through the trees, it suddenly seemed like what it actually was: a reckless decision involving fire, another person’s property, and consequences I could no longer choose.
I set the coffee down and ran.
By the time I reached the edge of Denise’s backyard, Gary had already come through their sliding door in sweatpants and a coat thrown over his T-shirt.
Denise stood several feet from the fire pit holding the poker.
The metal lid had jumped sideways onto the patio.
Ash and bits of bark were scattered across the stones.
She was shaken, but she was standing.
Gary looked from her to the fire, then to me.
“What happened?”
Denise saw me.
Her fear changed instantly.
It became fury.
“You.”
I stopped at the boundary between the properties.
“Are you hurt?”
“You did this.”
“Denise, are you hurt?”
“He tried to kill me!”
Gary stared at me.
That sentence hit harder than the noise had.
“Nobody was supposed to get hurt,” I said.
The second the words left my mouth, I knew how terrible they sounded.
Gary’s expression changed.
Denise pointed the poker at me.
“You admit it.”
“I said nobody was supposed to get hurt.”
“You put something in those logs.”
I looked at the wheelbarrow beside her patio.
Three of my logs were still sitting inside it.
My stolen logs.
My dangerous decoys.
Evidence of what she had done and evidence of what I had done, sitting together in one cart.
For years Denise and I had argued about boundaries as though only one of us was capable of crossing them.
Standing there that morning, I realized we had both crossed one.
Gary pulled out his phone.
“I’m calling the sheriff.”
Denise snapped, “Good.”
I surprised both of them.
“You should.”
She stared at me.
I walked back to my property and waited.
I did not touch the woodpile.
