PART 4
They tried to fight it.
Of course they did. Blake and Tiffany were, at their core, people who could not stand to lose, which is why they’d spent two years losing so publicly.
They hired a lawyer.
Their lawyer, I’m told, read the file — the work order with their signatures, the two years of closed police reports, the dismissed lawsuit, the photos, my thirty-year paralegal background sitting behind a well-prepared plaintiff’s case — and advised them to settle immediately.
They didn’t listen. People like Blake and Tiffany never listen; it’s the whole reason they were in this position.
So we went to a hearing.
And this is the part I allowed myself to enjoy, just a little, because I’d earned it.
The neighborhood came.
Walter came, with his time-stamped photos of the painting crew. The neighbor who’d also called the police came. Three other neighbors came — not because they had to, but because two years of watching Blake and Tiffany harass a kind old widow over the color of her house had made the whole cul-de-sac protective of me, and they wanted to see it end.
The small hearing room was full of my neighbors.
Blake and Tiffany sat at their table watching a courtroom fill up with people who’d known them for two years and had, to a person, come to support the yellow house.
The judge reviewed the evidence.
The work order, signed by Blake, authorizing work on my address.
The deed, in my name only.
The two years of documented harassment — the police reports, the dismissed suit, the failed HOA.
And then the judge, a no-nonsense woman who clearly grasped the situation within about ninety seconds, looked over her glasses at Blake and Tiffany and said something I will treasure for the rest of my life.
“Let me make sure I understand. You disliked the color of your neighbor’s house. So over two years, you called the police on her repeatedly — unfounded. You sued her — dismissed. You tried to force an HOA on an entire neighborhood — failed. And then, when none of that worked, you hired a company to paint her house a color you preferred, while she was out of town, without her permission.
Is that an accurate summary?”
Blake started to say “we improved—”
“Yes or no, Mr. Vance.”
“…Yes.”
The judge ruled from the bench.
Blake and Tiffany were ordered to pay for the complete professional restoration of my house to its original yellow, the repair of my damaged landscaping, all of my legal costs, and a punitive amount on top — because, as the judge put it, “the court wishes to discourage the belief that one may simply repaint a neighbor’s home to suit one’s taste.”
The neighborhood, packed into that little hearing room, did not applaud, because you’re not supposed to.
But Walter caught my eye, and he winked, and that was enough.
