Victoria found the recusal and turned it into a new accusation: Maria had supposedly removed herself from the matter because she had been caught manipulating it. The claim traveled through a handful of messages before Nadia sent a letter pointing out that recusal was a safeguard, not evidence of wrongdoing.
I was tempted to respond with a long explanation. Maria told me not to spend my life answering every accusation.
"If a person decides to misunderstand a documented safeguard, you can't always educate them out of it," she said. "Let the people responsible for reviewing the facts do their work."
I tried. I went to the hospital that afternoon and spent four hours inside a maintenance room with a faulty cooling circuit. It was the first time in days I felt competent at something that did not involve the HOA. A machine did not care whether I was angry, embarrassed, or anxious. It responded to what I tested and what I repaired.
When the system came back online, the imaging supervisor shook my hand. "We were about to cancel tomorrow morning. You've saved us a lot of trouble."
I almost told her that nobody in my neighborhood seemed to think saving trouble was a virtue. Instead, I thanked her and drove home.
At two the following morning, my security system sent an alert.
I woke to the sound of my phone vibrating on the bedside table. The screen showed a figure moving beside the shed at the back of my property. I didn't recognize the shape immediately because the person's head was covered by a hood. Then the porch floodlight came on and illuminated a flash of white hair beneath it.
Victoria.
She was standing beside the shed door with a small flashlight, testing the handle. She turned quickly when the light came on. Then she crouched near the window as though being low to the ground could make a person invisible to a camera mounted fifteen feet above her.
I stayed inside and called the police. I did not go into the yard or try to confront her. I watched as she walked along the fence, stopped near the gate, and appeared to examine the lock. The motion light beside the patio came on. She hurried toward the side of the house and climbed back into the darkness beyond the camera's view.
When the officers arrived, the shed door had a fresh scrape near the latch. Nothing appeared missing. They took my statement, preserved the video, and documented the attempted entry. I asked whether I could request a protective order. They explained that my attorney could help me consider the available civil remedies and that the evidence would be reviewed with the earlier report.
After they left, I sat in the kitchen for almost an hour with the lights on. I didn't want to admit how much the sound of my own house had changed. Every normal creak seemed capable of becoming footsteps. Every notification on my phone made my shoulders tighten.