For the next five days, I waited. I waited for police to come and arrest me, but they didn’t. I waited for Gift to return from the hospital, but he didn’t. I waited for someone to say something about what happened, but they didn’t. What happened was completely ignored. And I wouldn’t even know what to say to anyone about it.

On the sixth day, Pumpkin walked into my room while I was sitting on my bed trying to read a book. She looked like she was about to cry.

“Hi uncle,” she said.

“Hey Pumpkin, what’s wrong?” I asked.

“Grandma said… grandma said… she said I should tell you that I stole your money,” Pumpkin confessed.

I froze. “No, God, please don’t let this be true, please,” I silently prayed. “No way, it can’t be you, you can’t reach that high, Pumpkin,” I said, hoping I was right.

Without saying a word, she went to Lars’s study desk, dragged the chair to the side of the wardrobe, climbed on top of it, and took the box off of the closet shelf.

“I can,” she said, crying. “I’m sorry, please don’t hit me, I’ll never do it again.”

I just sat there, speechless. She put the box back, climbed down the chair with amazing ease, put the chair back in its place, and ran out. I replayed everything in my mind, realising how much I had let my first impression of Gift blind me to what was actually happening. Only a seven-year-old would repeatedly steal from the same place down to the last ten cents. Gift would have probably figured out a way to steal without me realising my money was disappearing, and he would have stopped before I caught on. But I had an impression, I concluded first and only sought evidence that supported my conclusion. If I had done even the smallest amount of detective work, I would’ve easily caught Pumpkin.

Feeling like the dumbest human in the world, I went to the living room, sat next to mom and said nothing. I didn’t know where to start.

“The morning after you hurt Gift, while you were asleep, I sent Pumpkin to fetch your box for me and she said she was afraid you’d beat her,” mom said. “I told her to make sure you didn’t see her. I told her I wouldn’t tell you what we were doing, and she went and came back with it.”

I kept quiet.

“After some questions and threats, she confessed that she stole the money,” mom continued.

“But why didn’t anybody see her? And what did she do with all that money?” I asked, still shocked.

“She said she would do it at night or in the morning while everyone was asleep,” explained mom.

I remembered the time I woke up to find Pumpkin staring at me.

“She said she’d look at your eyes to see if you were asleep and then she’d take the box, go to the toilet with it, take the money, and then return it. She said she bought snacks for herself and her friends at school with it,” mom said.

I didn’t want to believe it, the evidence was there but I didn’t want it to be. I didn’t want to accept that I had hurt an innocent person so much. I wanted to protect my belief that I was a good guy but I couldn’t, I was as bad as all the people who hurt innocent people just because they look a certain way. Pumpkin was way too young for the punishment she deserved, and I would never think of punishing her, I blamed myself for being so stupid.

Tell us: What do you think the narrator is going to do now that he knows it was Pumpkin who stole from him?