“No,” I said.

“I’m going to insist that everybody follows the same rules.”

Leah nodded and went with Sophie to bring food to Evelyn and Tess.

I sat on the porch steps with a thermos of coffee someone had left at my door.

A police cruiser remained nearby while utility workers checked the neighboring connections.

Across the street, Cynthia’s husband, Paul, watched from his front window and did not come outside.

I knew Paul only as the man who watered her roses before dawn and carried folding chairs into HOA meetings.

He had once apologized to me for a violation letter without explaining why he was apologizing.

Sophie came back and sat beside me.

“Why does she hate you?” she asked.

I looked across the street at Cynthia’s expensive white SUV.

“I don’t know whether she hates me,” I answered.

“I think she hates not being obeyed.”

Sophie considered that and said the distinction probably mattered less to a fallen power line.

She was right, and I hated how readily she understood it.

Chapter 7: The Camera File

At the station the following morning, Officer Ruiz asked me to describe every event in order.

He wanted the timeline, not my opinion about Cynthia’s character.

I gave him the violation notices, relevant correspondence, photographs of the meter area, and a secure copy of the video.

The original recording remained on the camera system with its metadata intact.

Ruiz showed me a form documenting the transfer and explained that investigators might request additional material.

He did not promise an arrest or speculate about charges.

The power had been restored after an overnight repair, but the incident report would still need to distinguish damage to my equipment from damage to the utility’s property.

I knew the utility’s maintenance records would help.

I also knew company records had to be provided properly, through the people responsible for them, rather than pulled from a private system at my whim.

Later I met Lena Ortiz at Ridgeline’s operations center.

She greeted me with the look she reserved for executives who created extra work.

“You don’t get to investigate your own outage,” she said before I sat down.

“I came to ask how we protect the evidence and avoid conflicts,” I replied.

“That’s a better question.”

She told me the legal team had appointed an independent liaison to manage the company’s response.

Any decision about repairs, claims, or public statements would follow the same documented process used for other customers.

Lena also said something more troubling.