My neighbor let her dog use my lawn as a toilet every morning for six months and never cleaned up once — I stayed polite until she made one comment I couldn’t forget, and by the next morning I’d taught her a lesson without raising my voice once.

she said.

“It works.”

Then she went home.

I returned to the flower bed.

Oliver eventually came outside and crouched beside me.

“Can Winston ever come into our yard again?”

I thought about it.

“Yes.”

“As long as Marguerite cleans up after him.”

“Will she?”

“I think so.”

“How do you know?”

I looked across the lawn.

At the hydrangeas.

At the flower beds I had spent years getting right.

At the yard I had built slowly and carefully.

“Because now she knows I notice.”

Oliver considered that.

“Good.”

Then