She looked at me.
“I hope you’re satisfied.”
“With what?”
“All of this.”
I waited.
She continued.
“The development is dead. The board is a disaster. Residents act like I stole something from them. Every decision I made is being reexamined.”
“You moved registered fish onto private property without permission and lied about why.”
“I was trying to solve a problem.”
“You were trying to clear land.”
“For a project that would have benefited the community.”
“Then why hide the fish?”
Her eyes moved toward the pond.
I asked again.
“Why not come to me?”
“You would have said no.”
“Maybe.”
“You would have demanded lawyers, studies, compensation, agreements. Months of delays.”
“Yes.”
Karen looked at me as if that proved her point.
I almost felt sorry for her.
Not because she had lost the project.
Because even after everything, she still believed other people’s rights were bureaucratic obstacles.
“You could have asked.”
She said nothing.
“You could have explained what the fish were.”
Silence.
“You could have negotiated.”
Still nothing.
“You could have respected that the pond belonged to someone who wasn’t you.”
Karen looked at the water.
A group of fish rolled near an aeration line.
“You turned them into a business.”
“No.”
She looked back at me.
“No?”
“You did.”
Her brow tightened.
“You dumped the starting inventory into my pond.”
For the first time, I smiled.
“I just figured out what it was worth.”
She stared at me.
Then, despite herself, something almost like a laugh escaped her.
Not because it was funny.
Because it was absurd.
The entire thing.
A $4,800 invoice.
A quarter-million-dollar breeding population.
A $24.6 million development plan.
An old aquatic corridor nobody wanted to remember.
A sixty-eight-year-old man who had been perfectly happy fishing for bass until an HOA president decided his pond looked convenient.
Karen looked at the water one final time.
“I never thought it would become this.”
“I know.”
That was the problem.
She left without another word.
I watched her walk back to the road.
That was the last private conversation we ever had.
Today, the pond is still there.
The same seven acres.
Same spring feeding the northern end.
Same trees around the bank.
The old wooden fence is still standing, though Ethan and I replaced several posts last winter.
The business continues to grow.
Not explosively.
I prefer it that way.
We sell certified stock.
Juveniles.
Select breeding animals.
Private lake packages.
We maintain records good enough that Tom sometimes jokes the fish have better documentation than most people.
Ethan is no longer seventeen.
He went on to study fisheries and business.
He still comes home and changes my spreadsheets because apparently age has given him the authority to reorganize everything I understand.
He claims his formats are better.
He is occasionally right.
The $4,800 invoice is framed in the office near the barn.
Ethan did that.
I objected.