2: 2
Then Supervisor Brandon Lawrence called too.
The second I picked up, he laid into me before I could say a word.
"Sandra Harrington! What the hell is going on in the resident group chat?"
"Katherine tells you to be at her door at eight, and that's how you answer her?"
I sat up, grinding my back teeth so hard I nearly cracked them.
"Do you not understand the spot we're in right now?"
"The health department just left. The formal reprimand hasn't even been lifted."
"You push her too far, she files one more complaint with the district office, and the whole project team goes under!"
"So what if you go over there? So what if you smooth things over with a couple of nice words?"
"She lost the baby. She's not stable right now. Why are you picking a fight with her?"
I couldn't help pushing back.
"We didn't cause her miscarriage."
Brandon wasn't hearing a word of it.
"That's for you to decide, is it?"
"Until the test results come back, keeping her calm matters more than anything!"
"Tomorrow, eight a.m. sharp. Take Ivy and Clive James with you."
"Soften up. Apologize where you have to. Get her settled down."
"You can't handle it, forget about your pay this month."
The line went dead.
Ivy was right. This property job wasn't worth the grief.
The next morning at seven thirty, Ivy and Clive were already waiting in the duty room.
Clive had to be past fifty, seven or eight years on the job, half his hair gone gray.
The two of them stood there gripping mop handles, faces dark as thunder.
Ivy's eyes were already red.
"Sandra, why should the three of us be the ones taking this?"
Clive slammed the mop against the floor.
"That woman is an ungrateful piece of work."
"Last year she was napping at home, left the burner on with water boiling, and by midday the whole building was full of smoke."
"There was no time to wait for the fire trucks. We broke her door down and got her out."
"Back then she said, 'The property team is like family to me.'"
Ivy said, hurt in her voice,
"And now she treats us like this?"
I felt exactly what they felt.
How could a person be like this.
But I never forgot: evil comes back around.
When we knocked on 503, Katherine answered in her pajamas, a face mask on.
Her phone was set up on a tripod, livestreaming.
The living room reeked of insect repellent mixed with the sweet smell of laundry detergent.
The mop bucket was still parked by the balcony, the water not even dumped out.
"Oh. You're here?"
She actually looked put out.
"I said eight o'clock. Why are you banging on my door at seven fifty?"
"You disturbed my rest."
We carried the mops inside, the repellent fumes off the floor pounding at my temples.
Clive and Ivy wore the same disgusted look.
She trailed behind us with the camera.
"Everyone, look, the property people are here."
"It's them. They caused my miscarriage and still won't admit it."
The lens shoved in close, comments pouring down the screen.
Some cursed the property team as subhuman, some asked which complex this was.
I bent over and mopped the floor.
That summer when the few of us had hauled the repellent around, our backs had been soaked through with sweat.
The lady who swept the grounds wiped our faces with her towel and said what kind-hearted young people we were.
A little kid crouched there spraying the bug bites on his arms, tipped his face up, and grinned at us, saying thank you.
And now here we were, mopping the floor of the woman who'd stolen that repellent and framed us for it.
Katherine kept answering questions on the livestream.
"Why are the property people here cleaning for me?"
"Guilty conscience! Why else would they show up?"
"And they still owe me an apology."
"This was an IVF pregnancy. It took everything to get pregnant, and I was only two months along..."
I crouched to wipe the legs of the coffee table, looked up, and caught her phone screen.
She was editing a video, and the title read:
"An IVF Mom's Fight for Justice:"
"Toxic property repellent took my unborn child. How one helpless woman stood up to a heartless property company."
The background music was one of those tragic piano pieces.
On the way back, Ivy and Clive couldn't hold it in anymore.
"Sandra, did you see her phone just now?"
"Over two thousand people in that livestream. Two thousand people watching her play us for fools."
"And that tenant rights course of hers goes for nine ninety-nine."
Ivy pulled out her phone to show me.
Katherine's video account had one post pinned to the top:
"How to Fight Back Against Heartless Property Companies and Protect Your Rights."
"Four hundred copies sold."
"Never backing down, fighting bravely, demanding justice for my lost baby."
Clive was shaking with rage.
"The nerve of her!"
This couldn't just go however she wanted. We weren't dough for her to roll and pinch into any shape she pleased.
She was the one who filed the false accusation first. She had no right to complain when we hit back.
Back at the property office, I had Clive take down the sign that read "Free Community Insect Repellent, Help Yourself."
Then I posted a notice in the resident group chat.
"Effective today, free community insect repellent is suspended."
"Further notice will follow once the matter has been fully investigated."
The chat blew up.
"Why is it being cut off?"
"My elderly parent walks downstairs every single day. Without repellent the mosquitoes eat them alive!"
"How about whoever reported it takes responsibility for it?"
"503, you don't use it, but the rest of us still do."
The messages kept piling up, one after another.
Katherine said nothing.
But I knew she was watching.
I opened my phone and pulled up a backup of security footage from three months earlier.
It came from the camera in Building B's fire stairwell, time stamp two in the morning.
A man slipped sideways into 503.
That man was not Katherine's husband.
Ivy leaned in to look and stared, stunned, for a long moment.
"Is this..."
"Maybe it's the truth about her miscarriage."
Ivy's and Clive's eyes lit right up.
"Sandra, what are you planning to do?"
I watched Katherine's livestream, still running her mouth, still pushing that course.
Sell away.
Let's see how long you can keep selling.
