The security camera had been Katie’s suggestion. But the fear I felt while watching the footage belonged entirely to me.

At four in the morning, I sat alone at my kitchen table, gripping my phone with both hands while a grainy black-and-white video played across the screen.

A man was walking slowly up my driveway.

He moved carefully.

Paused.

Looked over his shoulder.

Then crouched beside my old pickup truck.

From inside his jacket, he pulled a hose.

He slipped it into my gas tank as naturally as if he had done it dozens of times before.

Which, as I would soon realize, he probably had.

I watched him siphon the fuel into a red plastic container.

Four minutes later, he replaced the gas cap, wiped his hands, stood up, and walked across the lawn toward the house next door.

I knew that walk.

I had watched it for six years.

Clark.

My neighbor.

I lowered the phone onto the kitchen table.

My coffee was cold.

My hands were trembling.

I told myself it was because the house was chilly.

It wasn’t.

I’m seventy years old.

I’ve buried my parents.

Most of my closest friends.

And three years ago, I buried my wife.

After that much loss, you start believing there are very few things left in the world capable of surprising you.

I was wrong.

My name is Frank.

I live at the end of Maple Court in a quiet suburban neighborhood where people wave while collecting their mail and complain when someone leaves a trash bin out too long.

My wife Ellen and I bought this house forty-one years ago.

We raised our son here.

We argued here.

Made up here.

Celebrated birthdays.

Hosted Christmas dinners.

Grew older.

Ellen died three springs ago.

Since then, the house has always felt one room too large.

I still keep the thermostat at the temperature she preferred.

I still sleep on the left side of the bed.

Some habits survive the people who created them.

Then there’s my truck.

A faded blue 1994 Ford pickup.

Dent in the tailgate.

Small crack near the corner of the windshield.

Nothing impressive.

Anyone driving past would probably assume I still owned it because I couldn’t afford something newer.

They’d be wrong.

That truck was practically part of my marriage.

Ellen and I bought it when our son was still in high school.

We took it to the lake every summer.

Carried lumber in it when we built our deck.

Drove it to the hospital when Ellen’s mother had a stroke.

Then drove home from the funeral three days later without saying a word.

When Ellen became ill near the end, I sometimes took her out in that truck simply because driving made her smile.

She would roll down the window and hold her hand outside in the wind like she was seventeen again.

“This old thing is going to outlive both of us,” she once joked, patting the dashboard.

She was half right.

So when fuel began disappearing from that truck, it bothered me far more than losing twenty dollars’ worth of gasoline should have.

It started on a Tuesday.

Tuesday was always fill-up day.

Old men become creatures of habit.

I filled the tank at the Shell station on Hollis.

Forty-one dollars and some change.

The next afternoon, I drove ten minutes to help my friend Walt repair a section of fence.

Ten minutes there.

Ten minutes home.

Then I barely drove anywhere for the rest of the week.

Thursday.

Friday.

Saturday.

I stayed home.

Read.

Mowed the yard.

Watched baseball.

Sunday morning, I climbed into the truck for church and glanced at the fuel gauge.

Just under half.

I stared.

That made no sense.

I tapped the gauge.

Nothing changed.

My first thought wasn’t theft.

It was memory.

My father became forgetful toward the end of his life.

Ever since turning seventy, I had quietly watched myself for signs.

Missing appointments.

Repeating questions.

Forgetting where I put things.

That morning, sitting behind the wheel, I wondered whether this was the beginning.

Maybe I had driven somewhere and forgotten.

So I let it go.

The following Tuesday, I filled the tank again.

This time, I wrote down every trip.

Pharmacy.

Grocery store.

Home.

That was it.

By Saturday, the tank was almost empty again.

I sat in the driveway with my little notebook and calculated the mileage three times.

Impossible.

I didn’t sleep much that week.

Not because I was afraid of a thief.

Because I was afraid the problem was me.

Finally, I drove the truck to Dave’s Auto.

Dave had repaired our family cars for nearly twenty years.

Big fellow.

Quiet.

Grease permanently embedded in his hands.

“What’s happening, Frank?”

“My gas keeps disappearing.”

He looked at me.

“Disappearing?”

“I fill the tank. Barely drive anywhere. Three or four days later, half of it’s gone. I think I’ve got a leak.”

Dave frowned.

“That much fuel leaking, you’d smell it from your porch.”

“I don’t smell anything.”

“Leave it with me.”

Walt drove me home.

All afternoon, I waited for Dave’s call.

Part of me hoped he’d say the tank was rusted through.

Replacing a fuel tank would cost money.

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