While sorting my sons’ Halloween candy, I found beautiful little cupcakes that turned out to be soap. Our hostile neighbor had given them to the boys, and I was furious, but my husband insisted he’d handle it. The next morning, she was pounding on our door, screaming at us. What had he done?
My husband had barely bitten into the little Halloween cupcake when he spat it into his hand and ran for the bathroom.
“What the hell is that?” he shouted.
I followed him, holding the half-eaten treat.
It had pink frosting, tiny sprinkles, and a paper wrapper. It looked exactly like something from a bakery.
But when I rubbed the broken edge between my wet fingers, it started to lather.
It was soap.
Someone had given my children soap disguised as candy.
And when I asked my eight-year-old where he’d gotten it, his answer made my heart skip a beat.
“From the lady next door.”
Erika.
Of course it was Erika.
My husband, Daniel, was still rinsing his mouth when I marched back into the kitchen.
“That’s it,” I said. “I’m going over there.”
Daniel stepped into my path.
“And what exactly will that accomplish? You’ll scream, she’ll scream back, and she’ll get exactly what she wants.”
“So we’re supposed to do nothing?”
“I didn’t say that.”
He picked up one of the untouched soap pastries and examined its wrapper.
“Just trust me. Go get some sleep. I’ll handle this without either of us having to yell.”
I should have asked what he meant.
Instead, I spent half the night imagining what I’d say to Erika.
By morning, someone was pounding on our front door.
“Open this door right now!”
I hurried downstairs and looked through the peephole.
Erika stood on our porch, her face red with anger.
“How dare you?” she shouted. “What gives you the right to do something like that?”
I turned toward Daniel, who had just appeared at the bottom of the stairs.
He looked remarkably unsurprised.
“What did you do?” I whispered.
“Exactly what I promised.”
Until that Halloween, I’d considered our feud with Erika an unpleasant but manageable part of living next door to her.
My name is Lauren. Daniel and I had lived in our house for seven years with our sons, eight-year-old Noah and six-year-old Ben.
Erika lived alone in the house beside ours.
When we first moved in, she’d seemed friendly enough.
She brought over cookies and told us which day the garbage trucks came.
Then something changed.
She stopped waving.
She complained when our boys played too loudly in the yard. She returned a ball that landed near her flowers with a lecture about respecting property.
Once, she told me our Halloween decorations made the street look cheap.
I wasn’t always gracious in return.
When she criticized our pumpkins, I told her she didn’t own the neighborhood.
When she complained about the boys, I reminded her that children were allowed to play outside.
After years of these exchanges, we mostly avoided each other.
I never liked the tension, but I certainly didn’t expect her to involve my children.
That Halloween, I had stayed home to finish some work while Daniel took the boys trick-or-treating.
They returned with overflowing buckets, talking over one another about costumes and decorations.
As usual, I sat them at the kitchen table to divide their candy equally.
Noah and Ben could turn one extra chocolate bar into a wrestling match, so our annual sorting ritual kept the peace.
I was halfway through when I found several miniature cupcakes, muffins, and pastries.
They were beautifully made.
“Oh my goodness, look at these!” I said. “Someone actually baked treats for the kids! How sweet!”
Daniel leaned over my shoulder.
“Wow, those look good!”
He unwrapped a little cupcake and took a bite.
The sound was an unpleasant crunch.
Then he spat it out.
Once we’d discovered what the treats really were, I checked every wrapper.
There were six altogether.
None had a clear warning that they weren’t edible.
One had a tiny sticker reading “Vanilla Cupcake.” Another read “Strawberry Cream.”
Those labels made them look even more like sweets.
Daniel had bitten hard enough to hurt his tooth, though thankfully it wasn’t chipped. He rinsed his mouth thoroughly, and we made sure the boys hadn’t eaten any.
They hadn’t.
But Ben was upset.
“I wanted the pink one,” he said quietly.
That frightened me more than anything.
I put the soaps in a bag and took the boys’ candy buckets away until we could check everything.
Daniel told me he’d deal with Erika.
I assumed that meant a private conversation.
I was wrong.
“Open the door, Lauren!”
Erika’s shouting brought both boys to the top of the stairs.
