Broken twigs and crushed leaves covered the grass.
Daniel’s old wooden ladder lay on its side near the fence.
I walked slowly toward the nearest apple tree and touched one of the empty branches.
The previous afternoon, it had been heavy with fruit.
Now there was nothing left.
Something inside me hardened.
I didn’t need anyone to tell me who had done it.
When I looked toward Monica’s house, the light in her kitchen was already on even though the sun had barely risen.
She had come back during the night.
After I had told her to stay off my property.
After she had seen my grieving children.
After she had been told exactly what those trees meant to us.
And she had taken every last piece of fruit Daniel had spent months caring for.
That was the moment I stopped thinking another conversation would fix anything.
I wasn’t going to pound on Monica’s door.
I wasn’t going to scream across the fence.
And I wasn’t going to give her another chance to dismiss what she had done.
Instead, I spent the next few hours preparing something else.
Later, some people said I went too far.
Maybe they were right.
But when Monica finally walked outside and saw what I had arranged across her front yard, she screamed so loudly that doors started opening all along the street.
Within minutes, neighbors were stepping onto porches and sidewalks.
Everyone was staring.
And for the first time since she climbed over my fence, Monica didn’t look smug.
She looked terrified.
Because stealing Daniel’s final harvest was no longer something she could pretend had happened quietly.
It had just become the one thing the entire neighborhood was talking about.
The first person to step out onto the sidewalk was Mrs.
Henderson from three houses down.
She was still wearing her robe.
Behind her came the Petersons, then Mr.
Alvarez, then two teenagers from across the street who had apparently heard Monica screaming and decided they needed to know what was happening.
Monica stood frozen in the middle of her driveway.
Her face had gone pale.
She looked at me.
Then at the front of her house.
Then at the people gathering around her.
“What did you do?” she shouted.
I stood across the street with my arms folded.
“I didn’t do anything to your house.”
Her eyes darted toward the signs I had placed along the edge of her lawn.
There were six of them.
Not insulting.
Not threatening.
Just factual.
Each one had a photograph attached.
The first showed Monica climbing over my fence the previous afternoon.
The second showed the two large bags beside her.
