“You want us to pay for all this?”
“I want my property returned and the damage repaired.”
“I thought we were collecting Derek’s belongings!” she cried. “He told me you were keeping things the divorce gave him.”
“His personal belongings, yes. Not a television I bought, not the children’s console, and certainly not permission to break into my house.”
Linda turned toward her son.
“He told me you’d locked him out.”
“You said she’d changed the locks.”
“She did!” Derek snapped.
“They were changed this afternoon,” I said. “You broke in yesterday.”
Linda looked at the newly repaired doorframe.
“He told me you’d locked him out,” she said. “When I saw the broken wood, I knew something was wrong. But he kept insisting he was only taking what belonged to him.”
“Oh, come on. We didn’t take anything she couldn’t replace.”
“And you believed him?”
She swallowed.
“I wanted to. Even when I knew I should have stopped.”
