Neighbors are supposed to be a community’s support system, but sometimes, they blur the line between friend and foe.

When vegetables from one woman’s garden start disappearing, suspicion grows and the bitter confrontation that follows only adds fuel to the fire.

Read on for the full story.

AITA for confronting my neighbor who is obviously stealing produce from my garden?

This spring, a young woman, let’s call her “Kristin,” moved into the house next door to me.

She owns some sort of catering business for weddings and runs an Instagram account about food.

We live in a semi-remote area about 15 minutes outside of a small town.

During the pandemic, I got very into gardening and love my thriving vegetable and herb garden. I tend to it very carefully, and I love that I can feed my husband and kids with food I have grown.

But soon, the gardener noticed something concerning.

This summer, produce has begun disappearing—some of my tomatoes, squash, eggplants, and herbs will disappear overnight.

I see no signs of animals chewing them.

No vegetables disappeared from my garden last summer.

Obviously, someone is taking them.

She thinks she knows exactly what’s going on.

Kristin is the nearest house to mine; the other nearest are a bit of a walk down the road, and she is right next door. I find it very suspicious that the produce began disappearing right after she moved in.

I even checked her Instagram and saw her posting photos of food this very week featuring the exact produce that’s gone missing from my garden—tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant, herbs.

But when she approaches Kristin, things got messy.

I confronted her about this yesterday evening, and she became very, very defensive.

She said I was crazy and that she had no reason to steal from me, as there is a farmer’s market right down the road.

She also grows her own windowsill herbs and has a supplier for her business.

She even had the audacity to brag about how much money she makes, saying that her business brings in good money and that she would have no need to steal.

The gardener walked away from the situation feeling more justified than ever.

From her defensiveness and this level of bragging, it seems obvious to me that she is lying.

Things got ugly, and she slammed her door in my face, which to me seems like further proof of guilt.

AITA? Should I have gone about this differently?

She is clearly stealing from me and clearly lying about it.

Without concrete proof, it’s hard to justify jumping to conclusions.

Reddit is sure to have some thoughts.

It’s pretty safe to say this gardener jumped the gun on this one.

This user offers a potential script for the gardener to say to the new neighbor.

The new neighbor’s argument makes a lot of sense to this user.

Being defensive isn’t always a sign of guilt.

This overstep may be hard to come back from.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.