Chapter 6 : On Wednesday, Dana worked. She had forty-one claims in the queue and a payer that had changed its modifier rules on the fifteenth, and she sat at her kitchen table with headphones on and did all forty-one of them, correctly, which is the

On Wednesday afternoon her phone rang four times. All four were numbers she didn't know and all four were people she had lived near for a decade. She let all four go to voicemail and then listened to all four voicemails while standing at the kitchen sink.

The first one was from the man who lived two doors down and it was six seconds long and it said, "Hey, we're with you," and hung up.

The second one was from the woman in the fourth row and it was a minute and eleven seconds long and it apologized about the phone. "I was filming for the group chat," she said. "I don't know what I was thinking. I've got the whole meeting. Do you want it? I'll send it to you. I already sent it to my sister, I'm sorry."

The third one was a hang-up.

The fourth one was from a man who did not leave his name and said the word "liar" three times and then hung up.

On Thursday morning, at 9:38, Dana got an email from the community's neighborhood platform with the subject line RE: Tuesday's meeting. It was a post from a woman on Pacific Court that said: "Does anyone else find it interesting that a certain homeowner waited until the week before the election to pull out out-of-state paperwork that conveniently proves she wasn't here?" It had twenty-nine likes and forty-one comments by noon.

Dana read all forty-one comments.

That was the thing nobody ever tells you about standing up in a clubhouse. You win the room at 7:04 on a Tuesday and then you spend the rest of the week in a room that is the entire neighborhood, and the room has no gavel, and the room has no binder, and the room has no clerk.

She didn't post. She didn't reply. She made a cup of coffee and she went back to her forty-one claims.

On Thursday at 3:12 p.m., her phone rang and it said KAYLA ORTIZ, and Dana picked it up on the first ring.

"Ms. Whitmore?"

"Yes."

"Hi. I'm — I don't know if I should be calling you. I don't know if this is allowed."

"It's fine," Dana said. "What's going on."

There was a moment of silence on the other end and Dana could hear a car running — the fan, the engine — and a keyboard somewhere.

"I made the printout," Kayla said. "Monday night like Mr. Bell asked. The full six-month ledger." She took a breath. "It's more than twelve."

"More than twelve of what."