My original contract was twelve pages long. I remembered that. I remembered sitting at my kitchen table with Danielle, back when she was still alive, back when the solar system was just an idea about saving money and doing something sensible for the house, and reading through twelve pages that felt long enough at the time. Twelve pages. The version Travis showed me contained forty-seven pages. Forty-seven. It was not the contract I signed. It could not have been. It had my electronic signature on it, but I had never given that signature for that version. I had never seen those extra thirty-five pages. I had never agreed to whatever they contained.
And what they contained was the worst part. According to that forty-seven-page version, BrightCurrent retained permanent access to my roof, my inverter, my home network, and my electrical panel. Permanent access. Not access for repairs. Not access for maintenance visits I scheduled. Permanent access, as if my house were a branch of their company and I were merely living in it. And there was more. A clause inserted after installation authorized data collection from devices connected to my Wi-Fi, including security cameras, phones, door locks, and motion sensors. My Wi-Fi. My cameras. My phones. My door locks. My motion sensors. All of it, collected, under a clause I had never seen, in a contract I had never signed, attached to a system I had believed I owned.
I stood there trying to understand the scale of it. This was not a dispute about a solar panel. This was not a disagreement about a repair. This was a company claiming the right to walk onto my roof whenever it wanted, to reach into my inverter and my electrical panel, to ride on my home network and collect data from every device my family owned, all under a signature I had never given for a document I had never read. And the man making that claim was standing in my driveway with a replacement panel already labeled with my address, a panel that had arrived too fast to be innocent, in a truck that had arrived too fast to be a coincidence.
June radioed for backup. I heard her voice change when she did it, shifting from the calm of a routine call to the clipped urgency of an officer who understands that a situation has grown larger than one person can hold. She was not just dealing with a vandalism complaint anymore. She was dealing with a technician who had arrived uncalled with pre-labeled equipment, a forged contract, and a claim of permanent access to a private home. She needed more officers. She needed them now.
Travis began closing the truck. He moved as if the conversation were over, as if June's radio call were an inconvenience he could simply drive away from. "You are interfering with licensed energy infrastructure," he said. He said it the way people say a legal phrase when they want it to sound like a wall. Licensed energy infrastructure. As if my roof were a power plant and he were its rightful operator and June were a trespasser.
Helen pointed toward his equipment case. She had been quiet while Travis talked about contracts and ownership, but she had been watching, and Helen missed very little. "Ask him why he carries three cellular transmitters," she said. Three cellular transmitters. In an equipment case belonging to a solar technician. I did not know what a cellular transmitter was supposed to look like, or why a man repairing panels would need one, let alone three, but Helen knew, and June heard the question the way it was meant to be heard, as a question that had only one honest answer and several dishonest ones.
June ordered him to open the case. She said it directly, without any softening. Travis refused again. He refused the way he had refused to step away from the truck, with the same calm certainty, as if refusal were a policy he had been trained to follow. He would not open the case. He would not explain the transmitters. He would not explain the panel, or the contract, or the speed of his arrival, or the claim that I owned only the electricity and not the equipment on my own roof. He stood beside his white truck, in my driveway, on a Saturday morning, with red paint drying on my panels and a police officer ordering him to open a case he would not open, and I understood, finally and completely, that Helen had been right about everything, and that the morning was only beginning.