I stood very still.
“That house is not a thing,” I said.
She rolled her eyes. “It is walls and wood.”
“No,” I said. “It is thirty-eight years of my wife’s laughter. It is pencil marks on the pantry door showing my son’s height each birthday. It is the porch I rebuilt after the storm of 2001. It is the bedroom where Helen took her last breath while I held her hand. It is the garden where I still grow tomatoes because she told me never to let the soil die.”
My voice stayed calm.
But Melissa looked away.
Not from guilt.
From defeat.
People like her hate when objects become sacred. Sacred things are harder to steal.
The officers took statements. Samuel filed emergency paperwork. Rachel packed Melissa’s things into trash bags because, as she said, “Suitcases are for guests, not parasites.”
Melissa screamed when she saw them.
