When the second officer came out holding a half empty paint can, I said there was my proof, and neither of them smiled. The older one said it was not about my car.

The paint had eaten through a sprayed white coating on the rear quarter panel and exposed a partial vehicle identification number that did not match my registration. I had bought that SUV four years earlier from a private seller with what I believed were clean papers. It had been stolen in another state in 2019 from a woman named Delphine Arroyo, and the ring that resprayed and resold it had been under investigation for two years, and Roberta’s paint had done in one night what the file had not managed in twenty four months.

I lost the car. The insurer settled eventually, at a fraction of what it was worth, and it took eleven months.

Delphine and I met the following spring. Her husband had been driving it the night it was taken and he did not survive the carjacking. She did not want the vehicle back. She wanted to know where it had been, and I told her everything I knew, and we sat in a diner for three hours.

Roberta was charged with criminal mischief and moved out that autumn.

I spent eight months fighting a woman over concrete, and the worst thing she ever did to me turned out to be the only reason a family got an answer. I have stopped assuming I know what any given morning is actually about.