I’ve read water meters for the town of Ellsworth for twenty-two years. Four hundred and eleven accounts, same route, same houses, same people. I know which homes have dogs before I even turn onto the street, which meters freeze in winter, and which old lids need a good kick to open. So when the Vandergiff place suddenly started using eleven gallons of water a day after four years of reading zero, I noticed immediately.
At first, I assumed it was a leak. Eleven gallons a day is barely anything — more like a slow seep under a slab than normal household use. I checked the yard, the foundation, and the spigots. Everything looked exactly as it should. The winter cap was still on the outside faucet because I was the one who put it there. Then I checked the second bib beside the cellar door and noticed something that made me stop.
There was a brand-new hasp on the cellar door. Bright metal, no rust, and more importantly, it had been installed from the inside. I’d been reading that meter every month for years, and nobody had ever needed to go into that cellar. The house had been empty since the owner moved to Salina, and his two sons had been fighting over the estate since 2019. Yet suddenly, someone was using exactly enough water to equal one careful person’s daily consumption.
I stood there looking at that new hasp and realized there was only one way someone could have installed it from the inside. Someone had been in that cellar. And when I looked closer at the meter, I noticed something else — the eleven gallons hadn’t started randomly in February. They had started on the exact day the county records showed someone had filed a new document concerning the Vandergiff estate…
