Every month I sent the same invoice through certified mail and email. Every month the meter showed the gallons delivered, the charge accrued, and the balance growing. Every time I phoned Diane, she referred me to management. Every time I called management, they said the board had not approved payment. We paid for treatment chemicals, pump electricity, repairs, laboratory services, and insurance from our operating account while the association collected water-related fees from its residents. I covered the difference because I couldn't imagine shutting off drinking water over a disputed bill.
Twenty-six months later, Cedar Hollow owed $55,900 for water it had already used.
I kept that figure separate from my anger. A number isn't a weapon if it's true and documented. But by then the unpaid balance had become more than a bookkeeping problem. It had become a way for Diane to test how much pressure I would accept before I did something she could use against me.
Last spring she invited me to her house.
It was an odd invitation, not because we'd never spoken privately, but because Diane had spent the previous year treating every practical question I asked as a request to see classified information. Her email described it as a "constructive conversation concerning future water capacity." Elaine read it over my shoulder and suggested I take the old agreement with me. I told her I wasn't going to a courthouse. I was going to a neighbor's kitchen.
"That's what I'm worried about," she said.
Diane's kitchen was large enough to park one of my tractors in. There were marble counters, three copper pendant lights, and a window looking down the fairway of a private golf club. She'd set out coffee and a plate of cookies nobody touched. Two other people were waiting: Robert Keene, the HOA treasurer, and a man named Victor Hale, whose polished shoes and expensive watch told me he didn't spend much time walking construction sites. Hale introduced himself as a development consultant, though the business card he handed me carried the logo of Ridgeway Communities.
A rolled set of site drawings occupied most of the breakfast table. Diane waited until I sat down to pull away the rubber band. She spread out a colored plan for the ridge west of Cedar Hollow, where old timberland had recently changed hands. Tiny blue rectangles represented proposed homes, arranged around curving streets and two new cul-de-sacs. A landscaped entrance joined the existing subdivision road.
"Phase Two," she announced. "Two hundred and forty additional homes. A natural extension of what has already been so successful here."
"That ridge doesn't have municipal water," I said.
"Which is why we're talking."
Hale leaned forward. He had practiced being persuasive. He explained the developer's projections, the future assessments, the improved amenities, and the potential rise in property values. He made it sound like every existing resident would get richer simply by standing still while bulldozers carved streets through the trees. I let him finish, then asked to see their aquifer test.
There was a pause.
"We anticipated that you could share your existing hydrological studies," he said.