“What?”
“Did any employee shove your shopping cart?”
“No.”
“Point in your face?”
“No.”
“Threaten to ban you because you complained?”
Rebecca understood where the questions were going.
Her expression hardened.
Tasha continued.
“We reviewed the interaction with the two customers.”
“They were harassing me.”
“Mrs. Margaret Sloan asked you to control your children after your cart struck her.”
Rebecca said nothing.
“Mr. Paul Garrett spoke after your daughter threw merchandise into his cart.”
“They were aggressive.”
Tasha looked toward Thomas.
He shook his head.
Tasha returned her attention to Rebecca.
“The footage does not support that description.”
Rebecca leaned back.
Crossed her legs.
“What do you want?”
That question changed the conversation.
She had stopped trying to establish that nothing had happened.
Now she was negotiating consequences.
Tasha closed the folder.
“First, Hawthorne requires payment for merchandise your children opened or destroyed.”
Rebecca laughed.
“They’re children.”
“The products still had retail value.”
“You’re charging me because a five-year-old broke one jar?”
Tasha slid the damage list forward.
It was considerably longer than one jar.
Opened snacks.
Broken beverages.
Cereal.
Pasta sauce.
Crushed packages.
A destroyed cosmetic tester.
A container of berries someone had stepped on.
Damage total:
$437.62.
Cleaning labor was not included.
Neither was the display.
Rebecca stared at the number.
“That is insane.”
Thomas said, “We are not charging replacement cost for the display.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
Tasha continued.
“Second, Hawthorne is retaining all seven products carrying the false markdown labels.”
“I did not steal anything.”
“I did not say you did.”
“I hadn’t gone through checkout.”
“Correct.”
“So no theft occurred.”
Tasha remained calm.
“I am not making a criminal-law conclusion.”
Rebecca hated answers she could not attack.
“What concerns us is possession and apparent use of counterfeit Hawthorne labels.”
Rebecca looked toward the desk.
“I found them.”
Tasha picked up her pen.
“Where?”
“Outside.”
“Where outside?”
“The parking lot.”
“When?”
“Today.”
Tasha wrote it down.
Rebecca suddenly realized she had just created a testable statement.
“You found the whole sheet?”
“Yes.”
“In the parking lot?”
“Yes.”
“And then put it inside your handbag?”
“I didn’t know what it was.”
Thomas looked toward the yellow words.
MANAGER SPECIAL — 70% OFF
Rebecca saw him.
“I mean I didn’t know whether they were real.”
Tasha nodded.
“So you found discount stickers you suspected might be fake.”
“Yes.”
“You put them in your purse.”