Then a second call came, this one from Officer Grant. Delilah had again reported that I was lurking near her house and carrying equipment she described as threatening. I was at Jerome's home when the reported event supposedly occurred, and two neighbors could confirm it.
Grant asked me to remain available to speak and said the department was comparing the new report against prior calls and dispatch records. She did not announce that every earlier call had been criminal or promise that an arrest was imminent. Her concern was that repeated emergency reports were drawing officers away from genuine calls and increasing the chance that an innocent encounter would go badly.
I felt the familiar urge to shout that somebody should have stopped Delilah weeks ago. Then I remembered the first officer who had told me to keep the record straight. I gave Grant my exact location, provided the relevant footage, and asked for an incident number.
By nine thirty, thirty-two households were preparing to enter the clubhouse. A Channel 7 crew waited outside with permission to film the portion of the meeting open to guests, and the management company's representative held a folder containing the attendance and voting rules. Patricia stood beside me on the walkway, reading the agenda one final time.
"No speeches about prison sentences," she said. "No declarations that someone is guilty. Let Ethel present the finance report, let the board make its motions, and let the owners ask questions."
"What about Delilah?"
"She can answer or decline. That's her choice. Your job is not to make a scene."
I looked at the clubhouse, the pool beyond it, and the garden beds visible through the fence. For a moment I wished I could take Sarah's hand the way I used to before entering a room full of strangers. Then I put my folder under one arm and opened the door.
I had spent months believing the hardest part would be proving Delilah wrong. I was about to discover that proving something was only the beginning. The harder part was deciding what kind of people we would become once everybody could see the truth.
The clubhouse was too small for the number of people who arrived. Folding chairs filled the space between the windows and the pool entrance, and several owners stood along the back wall beneath framed photographs of past neighborhood picnics. The air-conditioning hummed but could not quite overcome the warmth of so many bodies packed together.
The management company had placed a sign-in sheet beside the entrance. Each household had a voting record and a copy of the agenda, and two volunteers checked names rather than taking anyone's word for membership. It was a minor detail, but Ethel insisted on it. If Delilah challenged the meeting later, she would not be able to claim the room had been filled with imaginary voters.
I sat near the front with Patricia on one side and Mrs. Denver on the other. Jerome stood beside the projector, checking that the financial tables were readable from the back row. Jennifer Walsh and her camera operator waited near the door, filming only after the board representative announced the portion of the meeting open to media.