“Lana, that was not okay.” I kept my voice calm. “It doesn’t matter how justified the anger felt. What you did crossed a line. Vandalism is not protest. What you did to that car was personal and destructive and it didn’t help a single person in this town.”
She nodded. Her eyes were wet and she wasn’t fighting the tears anymore.
“You could have been arrested,” I said. “You could still be. That’s a real possibility, Lana. Criminal damage to property is not a small thing.”
“I know,” she whispered.
“Do you?”
She looked at me then. “He said he was grateful,” she said. “He said it kept him accountable.”
“He’s being generous,” I said. “That’s who he is. But his generosity doesn’t absolve you of the responsibility.”
She nodded and wiped her face. I was pissed, but I understood her. The helplessness of watching something you love being threatened by forces that felt too large. Helplessness could make a person desperate.
My mother had thrown herself in front of a bulldozer once. She had not keyed anyone’s car, but she had put her body between a machine and the land she loved and dared it to move her. There was a version of Lana in that story. I rubbed the back of my neck and thought about my mother.
“You’re going to have to make this right, Lana. Not with me. With him.”
Her eyes went wide. “You’re going to tell him it was me.”
“I thinkyouneed to.”
She looked like she might be sick. But she nodded.
“He’s not going to destroy you,” I said. “That’s not who he is. But you have to give him the chance to respond. And honestly, I think it might do you some good too.”
She wiped her eyes again, pulling herself up a little straighter. “Are you going to tell him first?”
I shook my head. “That’s your secret to tell. Not mine.”
She breathed out slowly. The tears had stopped. “Okay,” she said.
I steered her back out of the alley and toward the coffee shop entrance. “Come on,” I said. “Come sit with us for a minute.”
She hesitated. “I don’t want to interrupt.”
“You’re not interrupting anything.”
Capri looked up when we came back in. She took one look at Lana and immediately read the situation.
“Sit,” Capri said to Lana.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Capri asked.
Lana looked at me.
“It’s your story,” I said. “Your call.”
“I keyed Colt Anderson’s car,” she said. “And I did the seawall.”
Capri blinked. She looked at me, then back to Lana. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” Capri picked her iced coffee. “Okay. I mean, I’m not going to pretend I don’t understand the impulse.”
“It was wrong,” Lana said immediately.