Cordelia's public campaign grew stranger as the private inquiries deepened. Printed flyers appeared in Willowbrook mailboxes warning residents about radical veterans and property seizure plots, accusations so detached from our meetings that Dalton called them campaign literature from an election on another planet. Our gatherings consisted of budget questions, drainage information, and potluck suppers. If that was a militia, Savannah was its most feared quartermaster, armed with a calculator and a lemon cake.
The humor kept people from feeling as frightened as Cordelia intended, but the underlying harassment had consequences. Savannah stopped opening her mail in the evening because she dreaded another levy. Eric Baines worried that the pending lawsuits would make his house difficult to sell. Melanie admitted she had stopped speaking to neighbors over the dam because Cordelia had told her the people questioning her were trying to destroy everyone's property values.
One Saturday, we organized a volunteer cleanup along the damaged walking trail with guidance from the engineers handling the temporary measures. People who had argued loudly at association meetings carried equipment together and hauled debris out of safe public areas. We did not pretend the labor solved the permanent drainage problem. It did something else: it gave residents a way to cooperate without first deciding who had won the argument.
That afternoon Savannah asked me if I hated Cordelia. The question surprised me because I had been trying so hard to sound professionally detached. I thought about the stones Jeremiah had shaped, Autumn's muddy wedding dress, the false complaints, and the way Cordelia watched the water from her deck. I told Savannah I hated what Cordelia had done, and that there were moments when I hated the thought of her getting away with it.
"That's not quite what I asked," Savannah said.
"I know. It's the answer I can give without becoming someone I don't like."
She patted my arm. "Then keep giving that one."
The bribery attempt came on a Thursday afternoon at Murphy's Coffee Shop on Main Street. Cordelia sent me an email proposing a confidential settlement discussion without lawyers present. I forwarded it to Marlo, who advised me not to negotiate away evidence or legal rights and helped arrange a response that did not misrepresent the purpose of the meeting. I attended only after confirming that a record of my own conversation could lawfully be preserved, and I made clear that any settlement would have to go through counsel.
Cordelia arrived fifteen minutes late wearing a tan coat and carrying a handbag that probably cost more than the coffee shop's espresso machine. She ordered tea she never drank and sat across from me at a scarred wooden table near the window. For a few moments she looked less formidable than she had on my porch. Her eyes were tired, and she kept checking the street whenever a car slowed outside.
"Ezekiel," she said, using my first name as though we had reached a sudden understanding, "this situation has escalated unnecessarily."
"You destroyed my family's dam."