u/FallBirdFarmer

This is an old one from over 20+ years ago, but I (37 now, 15 at the time) stayed over at my friend's house with other friends that were also his relatives. When everyone else was outside, I remembered I left a drink in the friend's bedroom. I caught his step-dad pocketing money from the friend's dresser. I felt like he got caught and he told me to not tell my friend so as to "teach him a lesson." I knew the step-dad enough to feel like he was trying to steal the money and blame it on a friend while stealing it himself instead. I agreed I wouldn't tell my friend, but I didn't promise to not tell his wife. When the step-dad left, I pretended I didn't have any suspicions and directed the convo with my friend's mom until I could mention something like, "oh, and don't get too mad because (step-dad) took the money because he said he wanted to teach him a lesson," while saying she should just pretend to be mad.

Later on, my friend couldn't find his money. This prompted the step-dad to go into a tirade about responsibility. The conversation dropped and I could tell closer to the end of the night that the mom was no longer pretending to be mad, but her anger was instead directed at her husband. She became increasingly frustrated until she eventually flat out stated in front of everyone to her husband, "oh, you should give (friend) his money back since you were the one that took it." I don't know if he thought she'd seen it or heard our convo, but he looked almost panicked as he gave it back while reiterating his rant about responsibility.

I told my friend my suspicions later that night and he didn't seem very surprised at the time. It wasn't until later that he got mad at me when he seemingly got punished by the step-dad with more chores and less privileges than usual because his step-dad seemed to just be in a really bad mood about getting caught and his pregnant wife questioning the step-dad about why he was stealing her son's allowance. It took some years until his mom and step-dad eventually split up when he went to prison for other reasons, but there was a time for a few years when my friend regularly blamed me for making his life harder by not minding my own business even though I feel like I put his mother back on his side to cancel some of the harsher punishments he'd have otherwise been subjected to from his step-dad that the she felt were unfair had I not clued her in to his dishonesty.

I eventually reconnected with that friend over 10 years ago and he would regularly stay over for days, sometimes even weeks at a time before he got married, and we're still even close to this day, but that specific event was always somewhat of a sour spot because there was a time when he still had to endure his step-father's retribution before his step-dad was out of the picture, so at least for that specific moment in time and in the way I put the seed of distrust into his mother's marriage to cause it I've always wondered, AITA