A citation for a moving truck that was temporarily parked while unloading my entire life. I’ll keep that in mind, I’d said, keeping my tone neutral. Years in my profession had taught me to read people, and I was reading Karen loud and clear. Control freak, power-hungry, the type who needed to establish dominance immediately.

What I didn’t mention to her, what I didn’t mention to anyone was my actual job. I’d learned early in my career that telling people what I did for a living changed how they acted around me. I wanted to be just another neighbor, not someone people felt they had to perform for, so I kept it vague. Public service, I’d say if anyone asked, county work. Technically, true. That decision would turn out to be both my biggest mistake and my greatest advantage.

Karen’s son, Brandon, I met about a week later. He was 17, drove a BMW. His parents had gifted him for getting a C+ average and had apparently been raised to believe that rules were suggestions for other people. I first encountered him when his music was rattling my windows at 2 in the morning on a Tuesday.

I’d gone over knocked politely and asked if he could turn it down. Brandon had looked me up and down like I was something he’d scraped off his shoe. Dude, it’s not even that late, he’d said, not moving to lower the volume. Besides, my mom’s the HOA president. We can do whatever we want. That phrase, we can do whatever we want. I’d hear it a lot over the next few months.

The thing about the Mitchell family was that they’d weaponized the HOA into their personal enforcement agency. Karen had been president for 3 years, and in that time, she’d stacked the board with people who either owed her favors or were too intimidated to challenge her. Every meeting was a performance where Karen decided who was in compliance and who wasn’t based entirely on whether she liked you.

Mrs. Patterson, the elderly woman three doors down had been fined $200 because her garden gnomes violated the aesthetic standards outlined in section 14.3 of the HOA bylaws. Never mind that those gnomes had been there for 15 years before Karen took power. When Mrs. Patterson tried to protest, Karen threatened daily inspections of her property until she found more violations.

The Johnson’s, a young couple with a newborn, got cited because their car, a 10-year-old Honda, was deemed unsightly and lowering property values. Karen had actually measured the car’s parking position and found it was 3 in over the designated spot line. The fine was $500.

And Brandon Brandon was learning from the master. He parked his BMW across two spaces regularly. He threw parties that went until dawn. He’d borrowed Mr. Chen’s lawn mower without asking and returned it broken, then denied ever touching it. When confronted, Karen would appear like a designerclad dragon, breathing fire about harassment of her family and threatening legal action.