Chapter 3

The cops showed up fast.

I explained what had happened and pointed straight at Thelma James.

The second I named her, Thelma dropped to the floor and started wailing like the world was ending.

“How can you bully a single mom like me? I only came down to see what was going on, and now suddenly I'm the one who did it?”

“You just think that because I've got no man to stand up for me, you can drag my name through the mud right here.”

“Apologize to me today, or I'll throw myself off this building and prove I'm innocent with my own death!”

As she said it, Thelma made a big show of trying to jump.

The neighbors rushed to hold her back, and every one of them turned on me, pointing in my face, calling me a troublemaker who stirred up nothing but garbage.

I knew there was no reasoning with a woman like her, so I just pulled out my phone and brought up the footage from the smart doorbell camera.

“Still trying to flip it back on me. Look for yourself. Who's that in the footage if not your son, Boyd?”

The moment Thelma saw the video, she stopped screaming about jumping off the roof.

Instead she shoved Boyd, still clutching his toy doll, toward us.

“I've been done with this retard son of mine for ages. Go on, take him, and stop dropping him back at my door.”

“The footage shows him doing it anyway, so it's got nothing to do with me!”

“Even if they sentence him to death I won't say a word about it. Honestly, I'd feel relieved.”

But the way Thelma was playing it put the cops in a bind.

They pulled me aside and explained in a low voice.

“You've seen how it is. We know all about this Thelma. We've been out here plenty over her, but she's clever. Whatever she wants done, she makes her son do it.”

“And her son is disabled, the kind with a disability certificate. She uses that like a get-out-of-jail-free card.”

“And every time she judges it perfectly. She makes sure it gets to you without ever really hurting you. It makes this genuinely hard for us to deal with.”

“So if you want compensation for the door and the doorbell, your only option is to go through the courts.”

The cops mediated and talked things over, and Thelma immediately agreed to pay for all the damage. She was cooperative, admitted fault, and since no one had actually been hurt, the cops had no choice but to leave.

Once they were gone, Thelma just gave a cold little laugh.

“I paid five thousand for your door and lock. But it's fine. The neighbors all chipped in to cover that five thousand for me.”

“Can't help it. People just like me that much.”

“My son's a good boy, too. You're the one who wouldn't buy my meal boxes, that's the only reason he got so upset and came smashing your door.”

“You'd better watch yourself. That knife landed on your door today. Tomorrow, who knows where it lands.”

I was half dead with rage.

Even more pleased with herself, Thelma dragged over the older woman who lived across the hall from me.

The woman shot me a glare and shuffled over, stammering.

“From now on you're not allowed to put up any of that smart doorbell camera business.”

“That doorbell films me, it violates my priv... no, my privacy rights. You put it up, and I'll call the cops and have you arrested!”

I couldn't hold back anymore.

I wanted to have it out with Thelma once and for all, but my husband and daughter clamped onto me and hauled me back inside, dragging me the whole way, and shut our battered front door.

Thelma didn't press it any further.

She just stood in the doorway, pulled out her payment code, split the five thousand in repair money among the neighbors, and then walked off humming a tune.

After that.

I replaced the door and swapped the smart doorbell camera for an ordinary lock.

Thelma went quiet too, no more scenes, no more coming to my door to cause trouble. My husband said it meant she was scared of me, but something felt off to me the whole time, like she was holding back for something bigger.

I still hadn't figured it out.

Then my daughter came home crying.

“Mom, that Boyd from upstairs blocked me at the entrance to the complex and grabbed my backpack.”

“And he called me... he called me his wifey!”