Jennifer's neighbors, a young unmarried couple, were shitheads. They'd let their blackberry bushes grow over and under Jennifer's fence and drop pounds of berries onto her lawn. There the berries rotted and drew bees and wasps.

"I'm allergic to stings," she'd said to the couple, and they'd promised to take care of the blackberries, and kept making those promises for a year. Finally, after dozens of broken promises, Jennifer drunkenly and furiously gathered five buckets of rotting berries and dumped them on her neighbors' porch.

That vandalism led to a driveway confrontation.

"I get stung and I could fucking die!" Jennifer screamed at them. "Do you want me to fucking die?"

"You weren't fucking worried about stings when you picked up those goddamn berries, were you?"

The next week, Jennifer opened her mailbox to find a padded envelope addressed to the neighbors. She hesitated for a moment but then opened the misdelivered package to find a new wedding ring. Jesus, she thought, who buys their wedding ring through the mail?

Late that night, she took a ladder, leaned it against her fence, climbed up, and slid the wedding ring onto the tallest blackberry branch.

There, Jennifer thought. If you cut the branches, then you'll find your ring. Back in her house, she stepped into the shower and scrubbed her skin. She worried that she'd still be sticky with blackberry juice and pulp and rot, but when she emerged from the water, she was clean. recommended