I drove straight to the county administration building in Millbrook. The place had the same beige walls and humming fluorescent lights it had possessed when I was a young man applying for my first operator certification. A woman behind the counter asked which records I needed, and I requested certified copies of the Parcel A deed, the 1962 conveyance, survey, easements, permit history, and any filings referencing the Cedar Hollow water system. The copying machine rattled behind her as page after page came out warm and smelled of toner.
For the first time since Tuesday, I felt I was standing on something solid. There was the original parcel description. There was the map showing the tower, pump house, and well inside the retained acreage. There were the old customer service terms and the permit renewals showing that the state continued to recognize the Wilson system. I stacked the copies in order and thought about bringing them to Diane, then remembered how little she had cared about the previous surveys.
The clerk paused with her hand on the scanner. "There's an amendment cross-indexed to this parcel," she said. "Do you want that one too?" I asked what kind of amendment could have been filed against land our family never conveyed.
She turned the screen so I could see it. COMMON AREA CLARIFICATION AMENDMENT. Recorded in 2019, with a book and page number that matched an entry in the county index.
The filing was two pages long. Most of it concerned ordinary descriptions of shared landscaping and facilities, the sort of dry language an owner could read twice without noticing anything unusual. Near the middle of the second page, however, a single sentence purported to classify "the community water system and appurtenances thereto" as common area belonging to the association. The document bore Diane Caldwell's signature followed by the title President, and it had a notary acknowledgment and recording stamp.
I looked at the signature for a long time. Diane had become the elected HOA president three years earlier, after a contentious board election. In 2019 she had been on the board, but not yet president. I knew because I had attended the annual meeting the year before she took the position and watched her challenge the incumbent over landscaping assessments. Seeing the title beside her name made the filing stranger, not more convincing.
"Did the county verify that she owned this land before recording it?" I asked. The clerk's expression turned careful. "We check the recording requirements," she said.
"We don't decide every underlying ownership claim." I asked whether recording the document meant it had legally transferred our water system. She told me she could not offer legal advice. "Sir, all I can tell you is that it's recorded."