That distinction mattered. A document can establish a fact. It cannot make people want to acknowledge it. Patricia had spent years supplying a social story powerful enough to make legal ownership seem secondary. The scene in my driveway had exposed the distance between the two stories, and now each household would have to decide which one to live inside.
The association meeting was scheduled for Sunday afternoon at four in the clubhouse by the pool.
I received the same notice as every other homeowner. Its agenda included review of common storage procedures, officer conduct, and an item concerning possible removal of the association president under the governing bylaws. Somebody had taken the trouble to check the meeting requirements and gather the signatures needed to put the issue properly before the members. I knew because Dale knocked on my door Saturday evening to ask whether I would attend.
"No," I said.
He looked surprised. "You're the reason everybody's talking about it."
"The issue is no longer whether I own my driveway. The issue is how you want your association to operate. That's a decision for the members to make without a judge standing in the room."
"You're a member too."
"I know. I have the same vote as anyone else. I'm choosing not to use it on this question."
Dale stood on the porch thinking. "Trish is going to tell them you're hiding because you know she's right."
"She can tell them whatever she likes. You have the documents. So do they."
He looked over his shoulder toward the colonial. "I suppose we do."
I did not attend the meeting. I was not afraid of facing Patricia, and I was not trying to create an air of impartial superiority by staying home. I simply believed the neighbors needed to reach a conclusion in a room where they could argue freely about their own conduct. If I sat there in silence, every sentence might become a response to my presence. If I spoke, Patricia would say a judge was intimidating the association. The cleanest thing I could do was remove myself from the center.
So I mowed the lawn.
The mower crossed the grass in regular stripes while voices rose and fell from the direction of the clubhouse. The afternoon smelled of cut grass and warm concrete. Once, when I stopped to empty the bag, I could hear applause from somewhere near the pool. I could not tell what it meant and did not try. It was their meeting, and they had a right to conduct it without an audience standing in the doorway.
Dale came over after supper.
The sunlight had begun to turn orange, laying a long shadow across the driveway where Patricia's motor home used to stand. I was cleaning the mower blade when he approached the fence and rested his hands on the rail. His face was flushed, and he had the expression of someone who had spent more emotional energy in an hour than he usually spent in a month.