One evening Denise came to visit on her way home from a conference. She stood in the backyard looking at the tank as though she expected something more remarkable than nine feet of painted steel. I showed her the connection, the pad, and the small maintenance log, and she laughed when I explained the whole story again. Then we sat on the back step with a pot of coffee between us and watched the sun settle over the ridge.
"Dad would have loved this thing," she said.
"He would've asked why I didn't install a second one."
She laughed harder because we both knew it was true. Then she looked toward the charred patch beyond the lane and became quiet. She told me she was glad I had kept the tank but even more glad I had followed the evacuation precautions and let the firefighters do their work. She said I had a habit of believing I could fix a problem if I found the right wrench, and that sometimes the bravest decision was to trust other people with the work.
I told her she sounded like Rachel. She said Rachel sounded sensible, and I should listen to her more often. We sat together until the porch light came on, talking about our father and the places we had lived before Cedar Hollow. For the first time since the fire, I realized the dispute had stopped occupying every corner of my mind.
By early spring, the hillside began to change. The burned half acre behind the service lane turned green in scattered patches, and the live oaks I had planted were sending out new leaves at their unscorched tips. The county had finished the first phase of vegetation management, and the association was comparing two possible tank sizes for a community reserve. Nobody had settled on a final design, but the debate was now about cost, placement, water supply, and maintenance rather than whether tanks looked respectable.
One afternoon Elliot walked down the lane with his mail under his arm and found me watering the two damaged oaks. He stopped in front of the gray-green tank, looked up, and pointed with the corner of an envelope. There was mischief in his expression, which I had not seen much of during the months when the fire and the board dispute dominated our conversations.
"Still embarrassing?" he asked.
I looked at the tank, the repaired connection, and the new green growth behind the fence. "Apparently only when there isn't a fire."
Elliot laughed, and the sound carried down the lane farther than either of us expected. He went home to his dinner, and I turned the hose back toward the roots of the oak nearest the driveway. The afternoon light struck the tank and turned the paint almost silver at the edges.