she doesn’t have a close connection with them, she knows whatever Matt’s intentions are don’t happen to be on the altruistic side. Cassie needs to be warned.
When she is about to knock on the door it opens. There, Cassie is standing. Holding baby Giovanna in her arms. “The guys are at it again?”
“Yeah.” An out of breath Melody replies. “But this time I think it is about to get worse.”
What is Cassie going to do? She has her infant child in her arms. Is she and Melody to wrestle two grown men to the ground?
Out of the corner of Cassie’s eye, she sees Dominick DiNario walking toward his car a few houses over, as his home is separated from the rest of the street’s inhabitants by the two vacancies.
“Dom...” Cassie nervously trying to get his attention. “Dominick. Matt and Jenkins are fighting in the back of the yard. Can you come help us break it up before something bad happens?”
DiNario turns his head as if he’s heard Cassie’s request, but instead of continuing on to his car he returns back to his house.
Melody turns to Cassie as Dominick makes his way back into his home, “What a real jerk. We better get going to see what is happening.”
The two women, plus baby Giovanna, all briskly walk to the Francis’ backyard. From a distance they can see old man Jenkins on the ground, with Matt standing over him, while the two are still yelling at each other.
“Francis! You pushed me on the ground. You have no idea what you are about to start…”
“What… are you going to call the cops? You have to be kidding me, Jenkins! You’re on my property, and refused to leave when I asked. If anything, you’re getting arrested for trespassing.”
By the time the three females are about reach the bickering party, Jenkins is back on his feet with his hand cocked back as if he is about to toss a haymaker toward the general direction of Matt. As he is about to do so, Matt tackles him and the two men slide a few yard aways from the tree in a tussle.
With Melody, Cassie, and Giovanna still 20 yards from the men, and the two men now 10 yards removed from the tree, lightning strikes it. No thunder follows the lightening.
Everyone stops. Even Matt and Robert, still on the ground, are simply staring at the tree that is now burning from the lightning strike.
Then, boom! Boom! Two more lightning strikes hit quickly in succession.
Back in their home, the Francis family is sitting around the table for dinner only hours from the odd events that took place in their own backyard.
“There wasn’t even a cloud in the sky. Blue as can be. I mean…” Matt while trying to think with words.
“Hun, I have no idea what that was. But it stopped you and Jenkins from going after each other. Probably you a stint in jail.”
“Jail? If anything he was going. I was close to giving him a real hurting, though. Maybe the type that would have justified me going to the pokey.” Matt says under a small giggle.
“Melody asked to come over tonight when she gets out of work. Guess the entire thing really freaked her out. I said yes. Considering she was nice enough to come get me to prevent you from becoming an infamous pokey inmate, figured if she was nervous about it, the least we could do is let her hang for a little bit.”
“Sure. No big deal. It is about time we try to befriend the neighbors that aren’t complete jerks.”
Matt and Cassie continue to discuss the entire ordeal over dinner. Genuinely puzzled about the happening, Cassie brings up the idea of calling the news or someone from the government. “Three lightning strikes like that… in one spot? Doesn’t seem normal.”
As the family is finishing up their dinner and puts the dishes away, a thump can be heard coming from their door.
“Must be Melody, Matt. I’ll get it.”
Cassie opens the door to meet a petrified looking Melody.
“Come in. You look toasted.”
Melody follows Cassie into the family’s living room where the host offers her a glass of wine. She happily accepts the offer and Melody obliges by heading back into the kitchen to get them some glasses.
“Matt, Melody looks a wreck. I think it really freaked her out.”
“I’ll go talk to her. Don’t forget me when pouring those glasses.”
He smiles as his wife, pinches Cassie on her rear, and makes his way to greet Melody.
“Hey, Mel. What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“You all good?”
Melody looking perplexed, “You mean to tell me you’re not a little freaking confused about what happened this morning? I spent my entire day mulling it over in my head. Hell, I looked it up on the Internet. Do you know what the odds are of lightning hitting the same spot twice… nevertheless three times?
“Um, not good?”
Cassie joins the group in the living room. She took a little longer than it would normally take a person to pour three glasses of wine, but she decided it was best to put Giovanna up to bed. Not that she thought Melody was unstable, but it was getting late and she figured the three of them could use some winding down time after everything that happened early.
“Here you go, Mel. And for you, too, Hubby”
“Listen,” Melody begins to speak cautiously to a couple she barely knows. “I think we should maybe call someone about this.”
“Matt and I actually talked about that during dinner. Weren’t sure if it should be the news or someone from the government. Whoever from the government you’re meant to call after one of these things is lost on me, but you know what I mean.”
The group begin discussing what they think happened in the backyard today. The incredible odds of it all, and how had Matt not put Jenkins to the ground and jumped on him that the two of them could have been scorched to the ground alongside the tree.
Then Cassie makes a surprising suggestion.
“You think that maybe we should ask Jenkins and DiNario over? You know, since they all kind of live here and we could end up getting all sorts of government officials on our properties taking tests or something.”
“Did DiNario even know it happened?” Matt asks his wife.
“Right before Melody and I came running towards you and Jenkins, we saw him walking to his car. I asked him to go help. I think he heard me, too… but he went back into his house.”
“When he was talking to his car?”
“Yeah.”
Melody interrupts the husband and wife, “Isn’t that odd?”
“It really is. He heard me. And, I mean, if you’re going to your car and you’re going to ignore me, at least have the decency to keep going to your car instead of retreating back into your house!”
“I meant about how hot he is, but how he never even bothers to leave his house that often or say a word to any of us.”
The three of them all share a good laugh at Melody’s halfhearted joke. It even felt good for Melody to say it, as she was previously still in awe over the morning’s strange circumstances.
After a few moments of levity, the three agree to at least call Jenkins. With Matt refusing to do it and Cassie having a sense of obligation to her husband, it is up to Melody to get the old man to the Francis home via a phone call.
“Mr. Jenkins? It is Melody from a house over… We were wondering if you would…”
“Who is we?” Robert interrupts in his usual intentionally jerky tone.
“I’m at the Francis’ house. About what happened this morning. About the tree. Not about you and Matt.”
Jenkins hangs up on her.
“What an honest to god as…”
Before Melody could even articulate her frustration through vulgar language, a knock came from the Francis family door.
“Old man is here already.” Matt laughs. “Let me get it. This can be a good chuckle.”
When Matt goes to the door with a sense of glee building inside him, as he has spent a decent portion of his day composing snarky rema
rks to throw at Jenkins, he has to stop himself from laughing when he opens the door.
“Oh, Dominick. Wasn’t expecting you. We just called Jenkins and was trying to figure out what happened today in our backyard. Did you see anything.”
Dominick DiNario standing on the Francis’ porch, basically staring a hole through Matt’s eyes, asks, “May I come in? I’m actually here to talk about that.”
As Dominick is led into the living room area where Cassie and Melody are already waiting, he looks over the inside of the Francis’ house as if he were a surveillance operative.
“Hi.”
It is all Melody could muster when the quite neighbor entered the room.
“I would prefer you not to call anyone regarding the tree.”
Dominick speaks. It is one of the few times anyone on Maple Street has heard his voice. It isn’t lost on Matt, though, that the man who refused to help his wife somehow knew about an event that happened after DiNario went inside his home.
“How did you know about that? There wasn’t any thunder after the lightning…”
It dawns on the three collective neighbors at once – this is weird.
“It is complicated,” DiNario says casually. “If you guys wouldn’t mind I will try to explain.”
The group sits there, still drinking their wine, as Dominick begins to weave a story that makes no sense. Not to anyone other than a person with a wild imagination or someone fond of conspiracy theories.
“I made the lightning strike the tree,” Dominick says. “Had I not, Matt and Robert would have fought until Robert died.”
DiNario pauses for a moment. He is looking over the three other
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