I went into the garage after they left and found Tate's last note on the workbench, written before he moved into his dorm. It said, in crooked block letters, "Don't let them take Mom's car. Don't forget to eat lunch." I taped it inside the cabinet door where I kept the wrenches, then made a sandwich.
That afternoon, Hadley called. She did not ask how I was doing. She told me the board was concerned about my increasingly uncooperative attitude and offered one final opportunity to resolve the vehicle issue privately. If I agreed to sell the Mustang to Bryson for thirty-five thousand dollars, she said, the outstanding fines could be "handled."
"Are you offering to waive association penalties in exchange for a private sale to your son?" I asked.
There was a pause. "I am offering a neighborly solution."
"Then please send it in writing."
The call ended without another word. I sat at the kitchen island and listened to the refrigerator hum. Until then, I had thought Hadley wanted a car and was abusing the HOA to get it. Now I had the first clear suggestion that she was treating association enforcement as something her family could trade for personal benefit.
It was time to learn whether I was the only one.
The first person who answered my question lived three streets away. Her name was Adelaide Crisp, and I knew her only as the woman who drove an older silver Camry very slowly through the neighborhood and waved at everybody, including the people who never waved back. She was sixty-four, retired from Delta Air Lines after more than thirty years as a flight attendant, and renting a small townhouse beyond Briarwood Glen's south gate. She had once owned a house inside the subdivision, but I did not know that until Ruth gave me her name.
Ruth had represented Adelaide in a civil dispute over association charges the previous year. She could not reveal confidential information about a former client, but she offered to forward a message asking whether Adelaide wished to speak with me. Two days later, Adelaide called on her own. She said we ought to meet somewhere that did not belong to the Lockwoods.
We chose a breakfast place near the hospital. Adelaide arrived ten minutes early and sat with her back to the wall, a habit she said she had learned from working overnight flights. She wore a pale blue cardigan and carried an accordion file that had been repaired with clear packing tape. Her first question was not about my Mustang.
"Have they told you you're hurting the neighborhood yet?"
I admitted that they had. She nodded as if I had confirmed something on a checklist. She ordered coffee and began pulling papers from the file, placing each one on the table in date order. I recognized the process. She had become a careful record keeper because she had once trusted the wrong people to keep records for her.