I put the survey in front of her. She traced the line with one finger, then checked the parcel number against her records. She shook her head slightly and turned the monitor toward me, showing the empty search result for any earthwork permit covering that section. "I can take the complaint," she said, "but we'll need an inspector to confirm what happened."
"That's what I'm asking for. I want the actual site inspected. Not an argument by telephone."
"We'll schedule it as soon as we can."
I thanked her and took the stamped copy of my complaint. Ten days seemed like an eternity when I could see water backing up behind the fill, but I knew the office had more work than staff. I left another copy with the county's drainage division and called the state water quality office to ask which notices would be appropriate without claiming more certainty than I had. The person on the phone advised me to preserve the scene, document any immediate flood risk, and avoid disturbing the fill until a qualified inspector could evaluate the site.
Back home, I found Clare on the porch trimming a plant in a little terracotta pot. It was a lavender cutting she had taken weeks before we left for Asheville, forgotten in the warm window of the laundry room. She held it carefully between two fingers as though it were an injured animal. When I told her the county had accepted my complaint, she nodded and asked whether we'd eaten lunch.
"Clare, are you listening?"
"Yes," she said. "But I can't spend every minute thinking about her. I still have to live here, and so do you. Sit down and eat something."
She was right, and I hated that she had to be the one to remind me. I had expected to be the calm one, the retired engineer methodically gathering evidence while my wife dealt with grief over her garden. Instead she was feeding me tomato sandwiches and making sure I slept while I filled every available space with photographs, measurements, and printed statutes. We had never divided our roles as neatly as outsiders imagined; even our arguments were usually two people doing different parts of the same work.
Two days after the complaint was filed, five certified letters arrived. They were addressed to Thomas and Clare Callaway, though the sender was an association of which we had never been members. Each envelope displayed the new watercolor logo and the phrase WHERE ELEVATED LIVING BEGINS. Inside were violation notices, printed on thick paper and signed by Brenda Whitfield beneath her self-appointed title.
The first alleged our boundary fence exceeded the association's maximum height by two inches. The second claimed our garden shed lacked an aesthetic compatibility certificate, a form that had not existed when the shed was built and, to my knowledge, did not exist anywhere outside Brenda's filing cabinet. The third accused me of leaving my pickup in the driveway for more than seventy-two consecutive hours, something I hadn't managed to do in years because I used it almost daily. The fourth listed the garden hose attached to the exterior faucet as an unapproved permanent fixture.