That night Hadley sent me a message. Bryson was obsessed with the Mustang, she wrote, and his birthday was coming up. She and her husband Whit would love to discuss a fair purchase. I replied that the car was not for sale and thanked her again for the cake.
Nine seconds later, she wrote back: "Sterling, every car is for sale. Let's just have a conversation."
I set the phone facedown and went back to the carburetor book. A person who does not understand the first no rarely understands the second any better. I had no idea then that Hadley had spent years turning other people's exhaustion into business opportunities. I only knew she wanted something that was not hers and seemed convinced that wanting it hard enough would make a difference.
She brought Whit to the house on Saturday. He was a commercial real estate developer in his mid-fifties, neatly tanned, with a golf shirt tucked into expensive khakis. He shook my hand as if we were already agreeing to something. His first offer was twenty-five thousand dollars, spoken while he studied the Mustang through the garage doorway.
"Not for sale," I said.
"Thirty-five," he replied, smiling as though this was a game between reasonable men.
I explained that I was not haggling. I told him the car had been restored with my wife and son, and that selling it was not a possibility. Whit glanced at Hadley, who stood with her arms loosely folded, listening without looking surprised. He finally nodded and said he respected sentiment.
"But sentiment has a price too," he added. "Most people simply don't know their number yet."
I walked them to the end of the driveway. As Whit's Range Rover pulled away, I watched Hadley looking back at the garage in her passenger-side mirror. The next week, I received my first HOA fine.
It was two hundred dollars for a dusty vehicle supposedly visible from the street. The Mustang had been inside the garage with the door closed when the photograph was taken, and what the camera had captured was a faint outline through the garage window. There was no oil dripping beneath it, no dismantled bodywork outside, no obstruction of the sidewalk. The accompanying citation called it an appearance concern.
I read the notice, took photographs, and opened the governing documents. They contained language about inoperable vehicles and vehicles parked outdoors for extended periods, but nothing saying a restored classic inside a private garage could be fined for collecting ordinary dust. I submitted an objection through the portal. Two days later a new message said the review committee had upheld the fine without a hearing.
I paid under written protest to prevent late fees while I sought the association's appeal process. Then I saved the receipt, the notice, and a copy of the photograph in a folder on my home computer. If somebody intended to make a record of me, I intended to make a better record of what actually happened. The folder was named simply Briarwood.
At that point, I still thought this was a petty neighborhood feud. I could not have been more wrong.