Not physically, but she would raise her voice and remind my grandparents that the land was legally hers to scare them. That is when they called me over to help them because they were tired of Karen bothering them and didn’t want to get bullied into signing something they would regret later on.
So of course I stepped in as an intermediary. When I got there, they explained the whole situation to me and I got some extra context by asking around the neighborhood. Like I said, the neighbors are usually helpful. My grandparents don’t like drama and they don’t like gossip, but that doesn’t mean that their neighbors don’t. They got to keep themselves entertained somehow, right?
Anyway, I asked them about Karen and they told me about how Karen acting like this was not anything out of the ordinary, actually, and that she often caused a lot of trouble in the neighborhood. She would apparently make all sorts of complaints and try to bully people into her way of things. Hence why I called her Karen.
So I decided to hang around with my grandparents and wait until Karen approached them again about the garden. I didn’t want to confront her outright because I feel like she would have made it even harder on me and my grandparents, and I also feel like it would have looked more bad on me if I approached her and immediately began accusing her of something, even if I know she did it.
It didn’t take long for Karen to approach them again, which was no surprise at all. We had just gone out grocery shopping and I was helping them move the bags from the car into the house. Karen approached us and said to my grandparents, “So, have you thought about my offer?”
My grandparents looked at me nervously, but my grandpa decided before I could say anything. He said, “No, Karen, sorry, but we are not interested.” He began to walk away. After that, Karen looked a little annoyed. “You know,” she said, “what you are doing is against the law. I legally own that land. You got to give it to me.”
That is when I decided to step in. I put the bags I was holding down on the porch and walked over to her, acting as friendly as I could, even though I was pretty pissed considering she was harassing my grandparents about their property. I told her that I was my grandparents’ grandchild and asked her what she was asking them about.
She said that it was a private matter and I countered that I wanted to help them since they were elderly and maybe I would understand better than she did, trying to come off as neutral. Karen then took a moment before she finally relented and told me. She said that she had gotten a property survey completed and it stated that a part of my grandparents’ land, specifically the one that encroached on part of the garden, belonged to her.
I asked her if she had the property survey on her so we could both look at it together, but she got flustered and said that it was on her computer, so she couldn’t get it right at that moment, but that she was absolutely telling the truth. Trust me. I said I was sorry, but that neither I nor my grandparents believed her, and I explained that if she didn’t provide some proper evidence, we wouldn’t accept the offer or make any changes to the property.