Silver Ridge expanded around us in stages. First came thirty homes, then another forty, then a development company bought land along the ridge and built rows of large houses with stone driveways and decorative lighting that stayed on all night. By the time Karen became HOA president, more than two hundred households had moved into what the brochures called a private mountain community. The brochure photos often included my pond in the distance, although nobody had ever asked whether I wanted my water used to sell their houses.
I had argued about that once, years earlier. A sales representative told prospective buyers the neighborhood enjoyed "views of protected recreational water," which sounded suspiciously like a promise of access. I made the developer correct the wording before people started wandering through my gate with coolers and fishing rods. That should have settled the question of ownership, and for a while it did.
Karen changed the atmosphere after her election. At first she sent friendly newsletters about preserving property values and creating a consistent neighborhood appearance. Within months, the letters had turned into directives about what people could park in their driveways, how high hedges could grow, and which colors of porch furniture were considered suitable for an upscale mountain development. She seemed genuinely puzzled whenever somebody asked whether the HOA actually possessed the authority she claimed.
My property was older than the development, outside its recorded covenants, and separated from it by both forest and a survey boundary. Karen knew this, because my attorney had already sent her copies of the deed and recorded plat during a dispute over road maintenance the previous year. Yet she continued to refer to my pond as a regional amenity, as though repeated use of the phrase might eventually make it true. I kept a folder of her letters, answered the ones that needed answering, and ignored the rest.
I wasn't looking for a fight when the fish arrived. At my age, a good day was one in which the pump started, the fences stayed up, and Ethan came over with enough time to eat supper after fishing. My biggest concern that week had been a stubborn bearing on the mower. Then Karen's contractors delivered an unknown population of fish into water I had cared for over twenty years, and suddenly the problem was too large to ignore.
After her SUV disappeared, I walked the perimeter carefully. Near the gate I found marks where a heavy vehicle had turned off the main track. A section of chain had been removed and reconnected with a newer padlock, and somebody had crushed the grass beside the fence by parking a trailer on it. Down at the shore, flattened reeds showed where hoses or transfer chutes had been positioned.