Brantley said the operation had been authorized. Savannah asked him to identify the authorization. He referred to counsel's advice, and Preston produced the county's response stating that the permit number belonged to a different project. For a moment Brantley looked toward the door as if a better answer might walk in from the parking lot.
"We are not debating technicalities while residents face flooding," he said.
"That wasn't a technicality," Savannah replied. "It was the question."
Marlo later described the meeting as the beginning of Cordelia's political collapse. It did not mean the criminal allegations had been proved, and some residents still believed the dam ought to have been removed even if the paperwork was defective. But the assumption that Cordelia alone knew what was best for the neighborhood had begun to lose its hold. People were willing to say, in public and on the record, that they did not trust the answers they were receiving.
A family on Willowbrook's lower road invited me to see the water damage in their yard. Their little boy had built a cardboard bridge for his toy cars over a shallow ditch, and the rising water had washed it away. The father was not interested in my dispute with Cordelia; he wanted to know how soon his children could safely play outside again. I walked the property with him, explained what the independent engineers were evaluating, and told him not to confuse my lawsuit with a guarantee that the next storm would be harmless.
"I voted for her," he admitted. "She said she could fix the neighborhood."
"Lots of people promise to fix things," I said. "The useful ones first tell you what they are."
By the second week after the demolition, the emergency cleanup bills were arriving. Volunteers could do a great deal of good with shovels, hot meals, and neighborly determination, but they could not replace professional drainage stabilization or restore damaged infrastructure by goodwill alone. Willowbrook needed competent contractors, adequate insurance, and a financial board able to decide where its money was going. It appeared to have none of those in sufficient supply.
The situation weighed on Savannah more heavily than she admitted. She had lived on a fixed income since her husband died and had already paid the special assessment that helped fund Cordelia's campaign. Now a second levy was being discussed for flood repairs. She showed me her handwritten budget and asked whether the law required her to pay charges that seemed to have resulted from the association's own misconduct.
"I can't give you legal advice," I said. "But Marlo can help you understand your options before you ignore any bill. We don't want you losing your home because someone told you to make a point."
She nodded and closed the ledger carefully. "I don't want to win an argument if the price is everybody else's house," she said. "I want someone to tell us where our money went."
Her words changed the way I thought about the investigation. Until then, part of me had measured each discovery by how much trouble it might cause Cordelia. Savannah measured it by whether residents would be able to heat their homes, pay their taxes, and stop being frightened of the next envelope. She had a better standard. I began arranging our efforts around it.