I wanted accountability.
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I started by making a list. Everything Marlene had borrowed over the past year, as close to accurate as I could reconstruct from memory and a few photos I'd taken at the time, mostly for insurance purposes, never once imagining I'd need them for this.
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The ladder, returned three weeks late with a bent rung. The pressure washer, returned with the hose cracked. The crock pot lid, never returned at all. The steamer, returned with a burned-out heating element. The cooler, returned smelling strongly enough of spoiled fish that I'd had to leave it outside for a week. My good roasting pan, warped from being left empty on a burner, according to Marlene's own offhand comment months earlier that I'd apparently filed away without fully processing at the time.
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And now the mixer.
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I called two other neighbors that same afternoon, starting with Carol, three houses down, who I remembered mentioning once, at a block party, that Marlene had borrowed her good folding tables for a graduation party and never returned two of them.
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"She still has them," Carol confirmed, sounding almost relieved someone had finally asked. "I stopped bringing it up after the third time she said she'd get them back to me next week."
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I spoke to Devon, across the street, who mentioned a leaf blower Marlene had borrowed the previous fall, still sitting, according to him, visibly in her open garage every time he walked past.
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By the end of that first day, I had a considerably clearer picture of exactly the kind of pattern I'd apparently been quietly enabling for a year, right alongside at least two other neighbors on the same street.
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I picked the mixer up from Mr. Delgado's shop five days later, fully restored, running smoother, according to him, than it probably had in the last decade before it burned out completely.
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Then I wrote Marlene a letter. Not an email. Not a text. An actual letter, printed carefully, itemizing every single thing on my list, along with the repair receipt for the mixer stapled neatly to the bottom.
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Marlene,
I've attached a complete accounting of items you've borrowed from me over the past year, along with the associated costs where damage occurred. The mixer repair alone came to $240. Combined with the pressure washer hose, the steamer's heating element, and the roasting pan, the total comes to $412.
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I'm not asking for an apology. I'm asking for reimbursement, within two weeks, or the return of equivalent replacement items in good working condition.
I've also spoken with Carol and Devon, both of whom have similar items still in your possession. I've encouraged them to reach out to you directly as well.
Josephine
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I slid it through her mail slot myself that evening, considerably calmer than I expected to feel doing it.
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Marlene showed up at my door two days later, the letter in her hand, her expression somewhere between annoyed and genuinely confused.
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"Is this a joke?" she asked. "Four hundred dollars? Over a mixer and a pan?"
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"It's an itemized invoice," I said. "Every number on it is documented. I have the repair receipt. I have photos of the pressure washer hose. I have the date the roasting pan came back warped, texted to my sister the same afternoon, if you'd like me to forward that too."
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"I don't have four hundred dollars sitting around," Marlene said.
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"Then return the items you still have," I said. "Carol's folding tables. Devon's leaf blower. That would go a long way toward closing this out considerably faster than four hundred dollars would."
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