By the time I returned, I had another message from the property manager about the pickup schedule. Jade had requested access to several remaining boxes, and the manager had offered a supervised appointment. I replied that the boxes were safe and would be available. I had placed them neatly in the spare bedroom without opening any sealed containers. I did not want a dispute over belongings, and I especially did not want her later claiming that I had damaged or withheld something. It was one more small task in a separation that involved far more administration than either of us had apparently imagined when we agreed to move in together.
A few hours later, the doorbell camera sent another alert. Brenda was standing in the hallway with Jade half a step behind her. Brenda knocked twice, loud enough that I could see Jade flinch. When nobody answered, Brenda turned toward the camera and began speaking directly into it.
She said I was behaving cruelly by changing the locks on a pregnant woman and preventing her from recovering her property. She accused me of emotional immaturity and said she had expected better from somebody who was supposed to serve his community. Jade remained mostly silent, looking toward the stairs as though she wished they were somewhere else.
I was not home, and the manager had not scheduled that visit. They had been told when Jade could collect her things and had ignored the arrangement. I watched the clip later rather than live, pausing it when Brenda said something about me hiding inside. She did not know where I was.
I was at the station, checking equipment before an evening assignment, and the thought of her performing a confrontation for a camera while I was counting medical supplies would almost have been funny if the circumstances were different. Mostly, it was exhausting. I had no interest in becoming an audience for her argument.
Then the door across the hall opened. Mrs. White, who lived in apartment 4B, stepped into the corridor wearing slippers and a knitted cardigan. She was sixty-eight, a retired school secretary who had lived in the building for more than a decade and knew the difference between an actual emergency and people making noise outside somebody else's home.
I had helped carry groceries for her on several occasions and once changed a smoke-alarm battery she could not reach safely. In return, she occasionally left a plate of cookies by my door with a note telling me to share them with the crew. She was friendly, but not sentimental.
She looked at Brenda, then at Jade, then at the closed apartment door. "He's not home," she said in a voice that carried clearly through the hallway. "And this is a disturbance. Go be dramatic somewhere else.