robert

My neighbor is suing me because her son cut his hand on my car window. He’d just thrown a rock through it. The car was parked in my driveway, and nobody was inside. I was in the kitchen when I heard the glass break. By the time I got outside, he was standing beside the passenger door, gripping his wrist. There was blood running down his fingers. “Can you come over here?” I said. He took one step, then stopped. I grabbed a clean dish towel from inside, came back out, and knelt beside him. He kept trying to lift the towel to see how bad it was. I told him to leave it where it was and called his mom. She came over in slippers and took him to get stitches. A few days later, I got a quote for the window and walked next door. Her son answered, a strip of white gauze sticking out of his sweatshirt cuff. His mom came to the door and glanced at the quote. “I was actually going to ask you to cover his stitches,” she said. I thought she had a different version of what happened, so I pulled up the driveway camera. We watched him walk over to the flower bed, pick up a rock, and stand less than three feet from the car. He drew his arm back and threw it straight at the passenger window. When the glass broke, he jerked his hand back and grabbed his wrist. I started to put my phone away. She asked me to play the last few seconds again. “Right there,” she said, pointing at his hand. “See? Your glass cut him.”