When the developer assembled Cedar Glenn decades later, he bought two of those old holdings outright and platted them into cul-de-sacs and the north half of the lake. He did not buy the third. The third was my uncle’s and my uncle would not sell because my uncle was exactly that kind of man. And the developer built around him and printed a brochure that showed the water in one smooth color and let everybody assume the rest.
Vanessa recovered faster than I expected, which told me something about how much practice she had. She said that even if a title question existed on the southern portion, the association held an easement over that ground recorded and had held it for decades. She said the word easement with a lot of weight on it. And she said it to Mason, not to me, because she understood that at that moment he was the only person on the dock whose opinion changed anything.
He said he could check that, too. He asked her which instrument. She said the board’s counsel had it. He asked if she knew what it granted. She said it grants us the lake. He found it in the county index in about four minutes. And he read the operative paragraph out loud in that same flat voice. And I have never heard a document do so much damage while sounding so boring.
The easement granted the association and its maintenance contractors the right to enter and cross a described strip of parcel C for the purpose of accessing, inspecting, and maintaining the drainage line and the spillway structure along with an obligation to restore any ground they disturbed. That was the whole of it.
It did not convey title to any part of the lake bed. It did not grant recreational rights, exclusive or otherwise. It did not authorize the association to permit, license, price, restrict, or police the use of water above ground it did not own, and it certainly did not authorize the board to order a man off the cove attached to his own parcel.
Mason handed the tablet back to nobody and let it hang at his side. He said mildly that if anyone on this dock needed to demonstrate a right to be here this morning, at the moment it was not Mr. Reic. Nobody laughed. Bitsy Vance, who had brought a dog down for the show, picked the dog up.
Grant Halloway asked Vanessa quietly whether the board had ever actually pulled title on the lake, and she said the association had operated on the developer plan since incorporation, which is a sentence that sounds like an answer for about two seconds. That is when I understood that these people had never lied to me exactly. They had inherited a story and repeated it until repetition felt like proof.