Somebody behind me actually snorted.
Monica spun in the driveway, pointing a shaking pink finger at the gnome.
“AND YOU STOLE MY GNOME!”
I kept recording.
“Your gnome? The one you took from my yard six months ago?”
“The paint?”
Monica went silent. Her face changed.
For the first time all night, she seemed to realize how many phones were pointed at her.
“Turn those off,” she snapped at the neighbors. Then she looked back at me. “Eleanor, tell them. Tell them this was an accident.”
“Which part?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
Someone else answered for her.
“The paint?” I asked. “Or you plugging your car into my house after I specifically told you not to?”
Her mouth tightened.
“I wasn’t stealing anything.”
“Then why were you doing it after midnight?”
Monica opened her mouth, but someone else answered for her.
“We’re finally saying something.”
My Ex Left Me and Our Son for a Rich Man – 10 Years Later, She Invited Me to Her Wedding, So I Hired an Actress to Pretend to Be My Wife
My Neighbor Returned My Late Mother’s Garden Gnome After 3 Years – It Shattered on My Porch, and a Small Box Fell Out from Inside
My MIL Repainted Our House While We Were on Vacation – I Discovered What She Was Trying to Hide Under the Paint and Broke Down in Tears
“Same reason she borrowed my ladder while I was at work, probably.”
Frank stood across the driveway in plaid pajama pants, arms folded.
Monica spun toward him.
“I gave that back.”
“Three months later.”
Someone laughed again.
The paint was the least of her problems.
Monica looked from Frank to me, suddenly less furious than trapped.
“This is ridiculous. You’re all ganging up on me over nothing.”
“No,” I said. “We’re finally saying something.”
The laughter that broke out was the sweetest sound I’d heard in years.
I thought Monica’s humiliation ended there, dripping pink in my driveway. As it turned out, the paint was the least of her problems.
“I saw the video.”
After everyone finally went home, I stood alone in the driveway looking at the pink streaks on the concrete.
My hands had started shaking.
Not from fear.
From the strange realization that Monica had yelled, threatened, embarrassed me — and the world had not ended because I’d refused to back down.
“Because of the video?”
****
Two weeks later, Mr. Alvarez, Monica’s landlord, knocked on my door. I’d known him for years — he’d been a good friend of my late husband before moving out of state.
