One: take only what you can document, and document the taking. She said it twice. “If you cannot produce a receipt with your name on it, leave it in the house. Leave it even if you know you bought it. The moment you take one thing you can’t prove, this becomes a story about you stealing from your son.”
I left four things off that list for exactly that reason. A rug I was almost certain I paid for and couldn’t find the receipt for. A set of barstools. Two pictures. A toaster.
They are still in that house. I’d rather be able to say the sentence I’m about to say than have the rug.
Two: have a witness who isn’t family, and have paper. Theo was there but Theo is blood. So the lead mover, Mbeki, walked through that house with me at eight in the morning with my notebook, and we built an inventory sheet together, and every single item that went on a truck was written down and initialed by him.
