That night, Damon sat alone in his detached garage, the overhead light casting a pool of pale yellow across the metal table. His laptop screen blinked with a paused security feed. Mara’s confrontation with Thalia played back frame by frame. His hands hovered over the spacebar, but he didn’t press it. The sound was off. He didn’t need it anymore. He’d watched it nine times already. The gun, the sketchbook, the blood. He couldn’t unsee it.
He reached for the folder on his desk labeled board motions archived. Inside were printed minutes from the last eighteen months of HOA meetings, only the ones he’d saved in hard copy. Mara had insisted they go paperless after the lawsuit with the Morrises, when the neighborhood questioned how a wheelchair ramp counted as exterior damage. Damon had quietly kept his own record since then, just in case. Just in case never felt like this.
He flipped to a motion from six months ago. Motion 18B, installation of high sensitivity security unit at reflection zone. The language was vague. He remembered that day. Mara had framed it as a response to increased outside traffic. What she didn’t mention was that it followed two consecutive citations issued to Thalia for prolonged unsupervised activity near the fountain.
Damon had hesitated on that one. He’d looked around the room for someone else to object. No one had. And then Mara’s eyes had locked onto his. “Seconded?” she’d asked. He had raised his hand. That hand felt heavy now.
The garage was silent except for the dull hum of the freezer in the corner. Damon leaned back in the old plastic chair, arms crossed, the room too hot for comfort. Outside, the street lights buzzed, and inside his head, something broke open. He pulled open the drawer beneath the desk and took out a black thumb drive. It had no label. He plugged it in.
The files were sorted by date. Internal board meeting recordings, raw Zoom footage, unedited. Mara had a habit of turning off the official record when things got sensitive, but Damon had once shown her how to record local backups. She never realized he hadn’t disabled his own. He scrolled down to one labeled session 48 private re minor presence patterns.
The video began with the grainy view of Mara’s home office. Her voice filled the space. “She’s always there every day. Doesn’t that unsettle anyone else?” Another board member, Franklin maybe, had muttered something about kids being kids. Mara again. “No, this one. She doesn’t even react, just stares at the water or scribbles in that book. It’s eerie.”
Damon remembered the way her tone had changed in that meeting. Less professional, more personal. Then Mara had said it. “She poisons the image. I’ll clear her like a pest if I have to.” He paused the recording. That was the moment. The one he couldn’t unhear. She’d said it months ago, and now she’d done it.
Damon stood up, his knees cracking. The thumb drive stayed plugged in. His hand hovered over it, then slowly pulled back. Not yet. Not tonight. Because the truth wasn’t ready to be seen. Not until he knew what Corwin planned to do. He didn’t doubt the man’s grief. He doubted his restraint.