DREAD BOLT

Dreadbolt
by Beth Murphy 
Massachusetts

I used to live in a condo in Methuen, and my husband at the time traveled for work and was gone most nights. We were close to a neighboring town with a high crime rate, and I was a little wary of the shady characters roaming the streets at night. I wanted to put a deadbolt on the door, so I picked one up at a hardware store but couldn’t find any tools once I got back to the condo to install it. 

I searched the drawers in the kitchen to no avail, and decided to check the basement.

I found nothing there, either, and was pretty unsettled by the noises I was hearing outside so at that point was feeling pretty desperate to find something to get the bolt on the door. I don’t know why, but I opened the same kitchen drawers again, and they were there--a screwdriver and a hammer.

At the time, I knew there was no logical explanation, so I thought maybe it was my husband’s late father lending a helping hand.

But years later, in a startling coincidence, I learned that my *current* husband’s late father had actually lived there in that very same condo some time before me...and I knew that while I had been wrong about who put those tools in that drawer, I was right about something else.