I had bought a little house across town, my first house, and I gave Mr. Vance sixty days written notice, well more than the lease required, because I am the kind of person who does everything by the book. He wrote back a short email acknowledging it and reminding me about the move-out inspection and the condition the unit needed to be left in. Broom clean. Nail holes filled. Carpets vacuumed. The usual.
I did more than that.
The weekend before I handed back the keys, I cleaned that duplex like my life depended on it. Steph actually drove back up to help me, for old times, and the two of us spent an entire Saturday scrubbing. We cleaned the oven until it looked new. We wiped down every baseboard. We filled the two tiny nail holes where I had hung a mirror and touched them up with the paint Mr. Vance had left in the basement for exactly that purpose. We shampooed the carpets with a machine I rented from the grocery store. We cleaned the inside of the windows. We wiped out the inside of the refrigerator and left the door propped so it would not smell.
When we were done, that duplex was cleaner than it had been the day I moved in. I am not exaggerating. It was spotless.
And I did the thing again. Before I locked up for the last time, I walked through every single room with my phone and I photographed everything, exactly the way I had two years before. Same rooms. Same corners. Same floors. Same oven, now gleaming. Same bathroom tile, scrubbed white. The date and time stamped on every one.
I did not do it because I suspected him. I did it because that is just how I am. I like a record.
Thank God for how I am.
Mr. Vance was supposed to meet me for a walk-through when I handed back the keys, but he did not show. He sent a text saying he was tied up and to just leave the keys in the mailbox and he would do the inspection himself. I did not love that, but I did not think much of it. I left the keys, I took one last look at the clean empty rooms, and I drove across town to my new little house and started my new life.
Eleven days later, the white envelope came.
The letter was on a sheet of paper with a header that made it look official, and it listed the damages he was withholding my sixteen hundred dollar deposit for. I have the list memorized to this day.
