Chapter 5 - Grandpa's Pumpkin
After the meeting, Melissa followed Grandma into the parking lot.
Brent shouted after her to get in the car.
She ignored him.
"June. Wait."
Grandma stopped.
Melissa looked smaller without her phone raised in front of her.
"I didn't mean for the wooden thing to break."
I felt my stomach drop.
There it was.
Not a full confession.
Enough.
Grandma didn't move.
"Wooden thing?"
Melissa closed her eyes.
"The pumpkin."
Brent reached us.
"Melissa, stop talking."
She rounded on him.
"You kicked it."
"Get in the car."
"You kicked it because she wouldn't take the lights down."
Two neighbors were still nearby.
Both heard everything.
Brent saw them.
His face hardened.
"Fine. It got knocked over. We'll replace it."
Grandma's expression changed.
"No."
"What?"
"You can't replace it."
"It's a plywood pumpkin."
I actually stepped forward then.
Grandma touched my wrist.
Not hard.
Enough.
She looked at Brent.
"My husband made that with a jigsaw that barely worked and paint he bought on clearance. The left eye is crooked because he measured wrong."
Brent glanced away.
Grandma continued.
"So don't offer me fifty dollars like that fixes it."
Melissa's eyes filled, but she didn't apologize.
That mattered.
She only said, "We didn't know."
Grandma's voice stayed flat.
"You didn't need to know. It wasn't yours."
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Then Brent said the sentence that changed everything.
"You people are acting like we burned her house down."
Grandma stared at him.
"No," she said. "We're acting like you still don't understand what you did."
The next morning, she filed a police report.
And by afternoon, Brent had hired a lawyer.
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