After James found the list, he did something I had not expected. He asked the court for permission to contact other customers whose names appeared on it. He said we needed to know whether my afternoon had been unusual, or whether it had been part of a pattern. The judge agreed, with limits. James could send a short letter, explaining that a case had been filed and asking whether the person had experienced anything similar at Harlow & Grey. He could not share my name. He could not share details of my case.
Three women replied.
The first was a teacher named Angela Morris. She had gone to Harlow & Grey two years earlier to buy a coat for a job interview. She said a sales associate had followed her from rack to rack, and that when she went into a fitting room, another associate had stood outside the door. She said she had felt uncomfortable, but she had told herself she was overreacting. She had bought the coat, left the store, and never gone back. She had not called the police. No one had called the police on her. But she had left feeling as if she had been watched the entire time.
The second was a nurse named Priya Raman. She had gone to the store with her sister to look for a dress for a wedding. She said a man at the door had asked to check her bag when she entered, something she had never seen happen to other customers. She said she had asked why, and the man had said it was store policy. She had shown him her bag, which contained only her wallet and her phone. She said she had felt embarrassed, but she had not complained. She had told her sister she did not want to make a scene.
The third was a college student named Maya Thompson. She had gone to the store to return a gift. She said the associate at the register had examined her receipt for a long time, then called a manager, who had examined it again. She said the manager had asked her for identification, even though the return was for store credit, not cash. She said she had provided it, but she had left feeling as if she had been accused of something without anyone saying the words.
None of these stories, on their own, proved that Harlow & Grey had a policy of singling out certain customers. James was careful about that. He said each story could have an innocent explanation. A busy associate might follow a customer to offer help. A door check might be random. A return might require extra verification. But when the three stories were placed beside the list, and beside my afternoon, a pattern began to take shape.
Grace Kim, the former employee James had located, helped fill in the rest. She had worked at Harlow & Grey for three years before leaving for another job. She agreed to speak to James, and then to me, on the condition that her name not be shared publicly until she gave permission. She said the list had been real. She said staff had been told to watch customers on the list more closely, and to report anything unusual to Rachel. She said the list had not been based on thefts. She said it had been based on impressions.
Grace said the impressions were not written down in detail. She said a manager might say a customer seemed nervous, or seemed to be taking too long, or seemed to be looking around too much. She said those impressions were then turned into notes on the list, and the notes were then treated as if they were facts. She said she had once asked Rachel what would happen if a customer on the list complained. Rachel had said the customer would have to prove the store had done something wrong, which was hard to do if the store never told the customer the list existed.
I asked Grace why she had left. She said she had grown uncomfortable. She said she had watched a customer be followed through the store, and she had thought the customer had done nothing to deserve it. She said she had raised the concern once, and she had been told to focus on her work. She said she had decided to leave rather than keep watching.
James said Grace's account mattered because it came from inside the store. It was not a customer's memory. It was an employee's description of how the list had been used. He said it would be tested in deposition, and that Grace would have to answer questions under oath. He said she understood that, and she was willing to do it.
David asked me what the pattern meant for the case. I said it meant my afternoon had not been an isolated misunderstanding. It meant I had walked into a store that already had a way of watching certain people, and that Susan Pierce's call had landed in a place that was already primed to treat me as suspicious. It meant the store's letter, which had said it followed protocol, had left out the protocol that mattered most.
I thought about the three women who had replied. None of them had filed a lawsuit. None of them had called a lawyer. They had simply left the store and not returned. They had carried their afternoons quietly, the way I had almost carried mine. I wondered how many other names were on that list, and how many other afternoons had ended the same way, without a receipt in a folder, without a lawyer, without a record.
James said the pattern did not yet prove the store had hidden anything else. He said the list was one piece. He said the inventory records, which we had also requested, might show more. I did not yet know what those records would reveal. I only knew that the list had changed the shape of the case. It was no longer just about one phone call. It was about a store that had been keeping a quiet record of its customers, and about what else it might have been keeping quiet.