Others less.
I stayed through one summer.
Then winter.
Then another year.
The house stopped being known as "that empty place beside Trish."
It became Thomas's house.
Then eventually just number fourteen again.
That was progress.
My first year on the bench was harder than the neighborhood dispute in ways that mattered more.
I made mistakes.
Not catastrophic ones.
But real.
A ruling I reconsidered.
An attorney I interrupted too sharply.
A morning when fatigue made me less patient with a frightened litigant than I should have been.
The robe did not turn me wise.
It only made my mistakes more consequential.
Sometimes, before taking the bench, I thought about Patricia's fake map.
A green highlighter could not change ownership.
But people behaved as if it had.
A black robe could not make me inherently more correct.
But people would behave as if it did.
The connection stayed with me.
Authority is dangerous partly because other people cooperate with it before examining its limits.
One afternoon, a new lawyer appeared before me.
Young.
Nervous.
He misquoted a case.
Realized it halfway through.
Turned pale.
I could have embarrassed him.
Instead I said:
"Counsel, take a moment and check your citation."
He did.
Corrected himself.
We continued.
Afterward my clerk asked why I had been unusually patient.
I said:
"I've become suspicious of confidence."
She laughed.
I did not explain.
On another day, a litigant insisted that a trailer parked on his brother's property belonged to him because he had used it for eleven years.
He had repaired it.
Stored it.
Moved it.
Paid registration fees once.
He seemed genuinely shocked when I explained that those facts did not automatically create title.
Standing near something for a long time with sufficient confidence does not necessarily make it yours.
I thought of Patricia.
I did not mention her.
The law does not become better because a judge turns his private grievances into metaphors from the bench.
Linda and I exchanged Christmas cards for several years.
Her cards were always inexplicably nautical.
Lighthouses.
Boats.
Once a lighthouse during a snowstorm.
I never asked why.
She eventually wrote:
I drove past Larks Lane last month.
I didn't stop.
House looks good.
I answered:
It finally feels like mine.
She sent back:
That's what I wanted for it.
That sentence made me sad.
She had sold the house forty thousand dollars below what she paid because peace became worth more than equity.
The Kowalskis had lost money too.
Not as much.
Still enough.
The hidden cost of Patricia's behavior had never been the storage fees she avoided.
It was turnover.
Moving expenses.
Legal consultations.
Lost equity.
Stress.
Police encounters.
The repeated message to each owner that their deed mattered less than a neighborhood habit.
Those things never appeared on an HOA budget.
They were paid privately.
That is another way abuse survives.
The person exercising it does not see the invoice.
Dale and I became friends.
Not dramatic friends.
Suburban friends.
The kind who borrow sockets and discuss weather.
He occasionally helped me move furniture.
I occasionally fed his dog when he traveled.