The Unsolved Diaries: People Talk About Their Life’s Lingering Mysteries
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Thief with a Twist
The thief.
It was about a month after my mom had a hysterectomy, and she was still in some pain and wasn’t sleeping well. Like normal, I drove home from school with my brother and took my shoes off next to the door. My brother took his wallet out of his pocket and put it on the desk that the house phone was on, as he did every day. That night, my mom took off her gold cross necklace (a gift from her grandmother) and placed it on her bathroom counter, as she did every night.
That night, I woke up to go to the bathroom and heard the screen door open and slide shut. I figured my mom must’ve been having trouble sleeping again and went out for a cigarette. I thought nothing of it and went to bed. I heard footsteps up the stairs, and then I fell back asleep.
The next day, we slowly realized that some of our things were missing- nothing major, our TV, my laptop, various iPods, dad’s jar of quarters for slots, etc. were still there. What was missing? All of the full rolls of toilet paper from the upstairs bathroom. The shoes I’d worn the day before. Half of the contents of my brother’s wallet ($30, a condom, his middle school ID card, and a few business/membership cards were missing). My mom’s gold cross necklace. A box of Apple Cinnamon Cheerios.
I had a really nice laptop, my brother had an Xbox 360 and a PS2, my dad’s wallet had a decent amount of cash in it, my mom had other precious metal jewelry lying around… and they chose to steal about $50 worth of junk and an heirloom necklace. Why?
