I offered to make a copy and return the original, but Carol already had one for her records. She asked how the investigation was going, and I told her what we knew without asking her to supply information she wasn't authorized to share. Nina had been clear that Carol's position as a board member carried duties to the association, and I didn't want my case to depend on persuading an ethical person to become careless with confidential material. Carol listened and said she'd continue doing what her position required: insisting on accurate minutes, recorded votes, and honest disclosure to members.
Two days later Brenda's lawyer circulated the retroactive resolution as though it settled every question. It carried two board signatures and an attached memorandum declaring the project properly approved. Nina pointed out that such a document could not manufacture my consent to enter my land, grant an environmental permit, or erase the history of a project performed before the supposed authorization. Still, the paper had value to Brenda as a public-relations object. She could hold it up and say the board had approved everything, counting on most homeowners not to inspect the dates.
Carol paid for her refusal almost immediately. A violation notice cited the orange and brown wreath on her front door as an unauthorized seasonal color combination. The fine was $75 per day until she replaced it with a wreath in muted sage or harvest gold. Carol photocopied the notice, taped the copy inside her front window beside a cheerful paper pumpkin, and left the original wreath hanging where it had hung for seven autumns.
Hank found that deeply satisfying. He came by on Friday to tell us he'd driven past Carol's house and seen three neighbors taking pictures with their phones. "Brenda's got herself a wreath rebellion," he said. Clare laughed so unexpectedly that she nearly spilled her tea, and Hank looked pleased to have caused a sound we hadn't heard often since the creek vanished.
The amusement didn't change the stakes. Brenda pushed the $4,800 assessment through a mail-in proxy campaign accompanied by a thirty-page packet titled CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT. The packet described severe drainage risk, included flood-damage photographs, and repeatedly assured residents that the project had been approved after professional consultation. It did not explain that Dale's company had filled the original channel, and it omitted the fact that the drainage plan relied on Willow Branch remaining open.
Seventy-one proxies were returned, sixty-three marked in favor. Brenda announced that the assessment had passed under the association's voting rules. Nina immediately asked to examine the quorum requirement, the proxy wording, the assessment authority, and the exemption of lots one and seven. A vote conducted on incomplete or misleading information might raise serious questions even if the arithmetic on the ballots was correct, she said, and the governing documents would decide whether the procedure itself had complied with the association's rules.
The invoices began arriving anyway. Gloria Fenwick called when she opened hers, because it ordered her to pay the first installment of an assessment to repair drainage while she was still paying a contractor to remove wet drywall. "I don't have four thousand eight hundred dollars," she said. "I don't have eight hundred. I'm borrowing money from my sister to fix the furnace."