A few years later....
I looked at the young girl in front of me carefully. She kept chewing her gum loudly, nearly annoying me, but I kept telling myself that she was hurting a lot and everything she was doing was the way she knew to deal with that pain, even if it was the wrong approach.
"So, bring me down a few lanes, would you?" I said after a long pause. "You destroyed your mother's garden because you know it is precious to her. And you felt the only way you can get back at her for moving on so quickly after her divorce from your dad is by destroying the one thing she loved?"
She threw her hands up in exaggeration, her eyes turning wide. "Finally! someone that actually gets it."
I nodded, shifting softly in my seat. "Yeah, I do get it, don't I?"
"Yeah, you do. You're probably the only sane person I've ever spoken to since the incident."
I nodded. "Honey, can you tell me exactly what you are mad at your mother about?"