The text from Donna, my best friend of thirty years, said Deb, I need to tell you something before you see it on Facebook, and I sat on my mothers porch in Memphis and read it three times, because the clean remote in my purse was not mine, which meant Donna had swapped hers for mine and given mine to Rob.
Metro Nashville police were at my townhouse within the hour. They confirmed from the deed on my phone that I am the sole owner, that Kendra is my ex-husbands fiancee with no claim to my home, and that she got in with a garage remote I never gave her.
Donna, thirty years my friend, let Rob talk her into swapping the remote I gave her for an identical clean one, so she could hand mine to Kendra, because Rob told her some story about the house really being half his, which it is not, and never was, my name being the only name on the deed.
For thirty-four years, whenever Rob did something shady, I called him and he explained until I believed him. He almost did it again, through Donna, using thirty years of my trust as the key to my own garage.
The police walked Kendra and her two teenagers and their suitcases back out to the white Tahoe. Kendra had laughed into my fridge. She was not laughing when an officer asked her whose name was on the deed and she could not answer.
I re-keyed the garage and the doors the next morning, and I registered new remotes, mine marked again with pink nail polish, and I gave a spare to no one. Not this time.
Donnas text tried to get ahead of the story. I called her, once. I asked her how much Rob paid her, or promised her, or whether thirty years just meant that little. She did not have an answer that was an answer. I told her goodbye. Losing her hurt more than Kendra in my kitchen did, but a friend who hands your key to your ex is not a friend, she is just a lock you did not know was open.
My mother sat next to me on the porch and held my hand. She said, Deb, you found out who you can trust. I said I found out who I cant, which is the same thing, only lonelier and truer.
Where is the second remote, the officer asked. In the wrong hands, for thirty years, it turned out. Now it is in mine, pink polish and all, in a townhouse that is only ever going to be opened by me.