Part 2
Here’s what I actually did, because it wasn’t concrete, and it wasn’t destruction — I’m not interested in becoming Katherine.
I hired a video production company. Specifically, a small local crew that does viral neighborhood documentary content for social media pages — the kind of channel with a few hundred thousand followers that covers “neighbor disputes” and HOA horror stories, complete with drone footage, interviews, and dramatic narration. I’d seen their videos before. They don’t fabricate anything. They just film exactly what’s there and let people speak for themselves, on camera, on the record.
I told them everything — the gnomes, the roses, the trespassing, and now a fully concreted swimming pool that my late husband had built with his own hands, destroyed because my children splashed too enthusiastically on a Tuesday afternoon. I showed them photos of the pool before, and video I’d taken that morning of the concrete truck still parked in my driveway, Katherine standing triumphantly beside it.
They came out the next day with a full crew — camera, drone, a producer with a clipboard, the whole production. They filmed my ruined pool from every angle. They interviewed me on my back porch, my kids’ bewildered little faces visible in the background as they tried to understand why they couldn’t swim anymore. Then, because good journalism means getting both sides, the producer walked next door and knocked on Katherine’s door, camera rolling, and asked her directly, on record, why she’d trespassed onto private property and poured concrete into a widow’s pool because her four children were “too loud.”
Katherine, it turned out, does not do well on camera. She stammered. She contradicted herself twice about whether she’d asked permission first. She admitted, on tape, that she hadn’t personally heard the children screaming that day, only that she “assumed” they would be loud because “kids always are.” Her husband, standing just behind her, visibly winced when she confirmed on camera that his construction company had donated the concrete and labor for the job — which, as it turned out, meant his business was now also directly implicated in an act of criminal property damage, not just Katherine’s personal grievance.
The video went up two days later. It was picked up by several larger accounts within twenty-four hours, and by the end of the week, Katherine’s face — mid-sentence, contradicting her own story about whether the kids were even audible — had been viewed several million times. Local news picked it up shortly after. Her husband’s construction company started fielding angry calls and one-star reviews within days, unrelated clients pulling contracts over what they called “an unhinged use of company resources.”
That was when Katherine came running across the yard screaming that anything would have been better than this.
I didn’t argue with her. I let the video speak for itself, the same way I’d let her actions speak for themselves when she poured concrete into a dead man’s last gift to his family over some splashing she never actually heard.
Katherine and her husband were both charged — criminal mischief and trespassing for her, since it was proven she never had permission to enter my property, let alone destroy it. My homeowner’s insurance and a small civil settlement covered a full pool restoration, done by a different contractor entirely. My kids were swimming again by the following summer, splashing exactly as loudly as four young kids naturally do, and this time, nobody complained.
Katherine moved out about eight months later. I heard she didn’t want to be known, forever, in that neighborhood, as “concrete pool lady.” Some legacies you really can’t outrun, no matter how many gnomes you complain about on your way out.
