Instead, I mostly felt tired.

A few days later, Denise knocked on my door again.

This time, she was fully dressed.

And calm.

“I brought you something.”

She handed me an envelope.

Inside was a check covering the first repair estimate for my car.

“I’ll cover whatever insurance doesn’t,” she said.

I studied her face.

“Why?”

“Because I owe you.”

I nodded.

“Yes, you do.”

She winced slightly but didn’t argue.

Before leaving, she stopped on the front steps.

“For whatever it’s worth… I’m sorry.”

I believed her.

That didn’t erase what she had done.

It didn’t suddenly make us friends.

But it was probably the first completely honest thing she had said to me in almost a year.

Since then, her dog hasn’t stepped into my yard once.

My trash cans stay upright.

Nothing disappears from my porch.

Both of us now have security cameras.

Sometimes I see Denise outside while I’m working in my flower beds.

We don’t wave anymore.

We don’t smile.

We simply leave each other alone.

After everything that happened, I consider that an improvement.

And whenever I remember Denise standing on my porch in her bathrobe, screaming that she was going to destroy me because somebody had painted her car, I still have to fight the urge to smile.

Because for almost a year, I believed Denise could keep tormenting me as long as she was careful enough to leave no evidence behind.

In the end, I wasn’t the one who caught her.

Her own sister was.