My truck was parked behind me, squarely in the center of the concrete, with its nose toward the garage. The garage was empty enough that I could walk around the vehicle without sidestepping anyone else's possessions. The only functioning remote was in my pocket. Across the street, Dale's two ceramic geese faced the road, as they had the first day I arrived. The familiar sprinkler two doors down ticked through its arc.
Patricia came to the fence without a phone.
She wore no lanyard and carried no accordion folder. Her hair was carefully arranged, but the confidence that had once seemed to press outward from her like heat was absent. I did not take pleasure in the change. Losing the authority a person has grown used to exercising can make her look older very quickly, and it was impossible to know how much of that age had been there all along beneath the certainty.
She watched me water the grass for a while. I kept moving the spray, letting her choose whether to speak. At last she rested one hand on the top rail and looked at the truck occupying the spot where her motor home had stood for three years.
"You think this happened because you're a judge?" she asked.
I turned off the hose nozzle. "Which part?"
"All of it. The neighbors, the board, the police. You think they would have listened if you were anybody else?"
The question deserved more thought than I wanted to give it. It was possible that my profession had influenced some people, just as Patricia had tried to use it against me. It was possible that a homeowner without my experience reading documents or my ability to stay calm under questioning would have found the dispute even harder. Linda had endured months of the same conduct and moved away. The Kowalskis had left before her. I could not pretend that every person had the same resources, training, or luck.
"I don't know what would have happened to somebody else," I said. "I know what the records showed. I know what Linda told us. I know who owned this driveway before I bought it. None of those facts depend on my job."
She looked away toward her swimming pool, visible through the side gate. "People used to respect what I did for this street."
"Some of what you did was useful," I said. "That doesn't mean you were entitled to use a home that wasn't yours."
She pressed her fingers against the rail. For a moment I thought she would argue again, perhaps offer another explanation about the association's old arrangements. Instead, she simply watched the water gather along the edge of the lawn. She seemed tired, though tired people can still be certain they are right.
"You took away something that worked," she said.
"It worked for the people using it. Not for the people who owned the house."