Page 91 of The Cul-de-Sac War

“Hey!” Bree yelled after her, just as her eyes glimpsed a man raising his fist and knocking heavily three times on the door.

Oh no.

No, no, no.

Bree felt herself slipping toward her own porch, but Evie just stood there, arms crossed with her keys dangling from her clenched fist.

Bree moved backward toward the bagel woman.

“Ma’am!” she called, but the woman either didn’t hear her as she pushed her way to the front of the crowd or—and Bree would’ve wagered her own house on this—was ignoring her with the deftness of a toddler wielding a cleaver.

Bree slipped past two men holding chickens.

Maybe she could just yell to everyone that this was a mistake. All a terrible, terrible mistake and they needed to go on home. There was nothing to see here. Just a typical, neighborly spat gone wrong.

Hi, everyone. Let me take a moment to explain. I’m Bree Leake, totally out of my mind and accidentally terribly clever, a person who will manipulate the lot of you to get back at my neighbor with my seditionist needs. Now, please, if you could just pack up your cattle . . .

Or maybe she just needed to go back inside and feign ignorance.

Yes, that was it. She had no idea what this was all about.

Nobody had seen her do the Craigslist post.

Nobody knew it was her.

This was all just a mistake. A bizarre little mistake. Just one of those funny things.

They could laugh over it during breakfast.

She’d stay inside until the last car was leaving, walk out onto the porch, and pretend she’d slept through the whole thing. Listen with dismay and pent-up amusement while he reenacted the bizarre morning. Eventually coax him to calm his nerves over breakfast. Because . . . perhaps she would ask him to breakfast.

She could.

He’d fed her dinner after all.

Just a few hours before.

Bree started inching her way toward the front door. She avoided Evie’s furious gaze as she started to cross the driveway, tiptoeing on gravel.

But then his door opened.

People started shouting.

“I have a 2010 John Deere 3520 tractor, only 480 hours on it!”

“I can make you a custom board-and-batten, seven-by-sixteen chicken coop. You pick the color. And I’ll throw in twenty-five beautiful Rhode Island reds like the one here for you.”

“Care for a bagel, sir? We have plenty!” the shrill woman who had parked in Bree’s driveway said, holding up her basket.

The crowd surged and Chip—holding a coffee mug and looking clearly undercaffeinated—sloshed coffee all over his hand as he stepped backward.

“I have a variety of animals to get your hobby farm started!” A man holding a leashed goat and pot-bellied pig called from beside a tree. “And a twenty-four-page PDF book to get you going.”

“I’m sorry, I just—” Chip raked a hand through his hair, bug-eyed.

His attire was different, more polished. He wore a suit that looked as though it couldn’t possibly have come out of that residence so dust-free. The five-o’clock shadow that typically accompanied his face was shaved clean.

“What is it you all are here for?” Chip’s eyes grazed the crowd.