Paul Brooks called me tonight.

Mr. Brooks, you may recall, was the real estate salesman who came into our house on a Tuesday, then tried to show it to a client on a Wednesday, but was refused permission. And then someone called in a false report to the Department of Human Services about us.

I had not had any contact from Paul Brooks from that time until this night. Tonight he called to say it was not him. If he’s telling the truth, then this is a heckuva plot.

In my account of the events, I never once explicitly said that Paul Brooks made the false report. But I certainly left the implication that he did, because, logically, he was the only one who could have! The allegations themselves (false though they were) could only have come from someone who had been in our house and spoken with us. The dishes in our sink, the fact that we homeschool, these were not the sorts of things one can see through the windows. Except for Phoebe’s family and a couple dear friends who are above suspicion, nobody has been in our house except Paul Brooks, in months! The timing, and the specific allegations, combined with his motive of retribution, clearly pointed to him.

They still do. And he admits that he did make a report, of sorts. But it turns out there was a flaw in our logic. The report did have to come from Paul Brooks, but not necessarily directly from Paul Brooks.

He says that he called the owners of our house, not DHS. He told the owners that he could not show the house with us in it, because of “the condition of the property.” He theorizes that they made the false report to the state, embellishing his frankly negative assessment with many false details.

We have never met the owners of our house. We do not know their names, and they’ve never come to see us. We lease the home through a property management company. Whether or not Paul Brooks told me the truth tonight, he has pointed out a plausible scenario which absolves him of guilt, which had not occurred to me previously.

In light of this, I am making some edits to my previous posts. I am not changing the chronology or the facts of the events described, which are all the plain truth. But I am changing the tone of those parts which describe Paul Brooks.