Most important, was the policy actually consistent with the rules already recorded against the property? Maria wouldn't give me a definitive legal conclusion, but she encouraged me to ask for the adopted minutes and the exact authority the board claimed.
That request started a habit. I began keeping a notebook in the kitchen drawer and a folder on my computer labeled WILLOWBROOK. Each time a notice arrived, I scanned it, wrote down the date, and saved the envelope. At work, nobody complained if I spent my lunch break sorting documents instead of scrolling through my phone. Some of my coworkers became amused by the precision of my recordkeeping.
"You're running a laboratory on your HOA," said my supervisor, Nolan Price, when he saw a spreadsheet on my tablet.
"A laboratory usually starts with a hypothesis," I answered. "I started with a mailbox."
For two weeks I walked the neighborhood before work and after dinner. I wasn't peering into windows or following anyone. I took photographs of vehicles plainly visible from the street and noted whether they appeared to violate the rule Victoria was applying to me. The evenings were warm and the sidewalks smelled faintly of irrigated grass and hot asphalt.
I found plenty of vehicles that fit the description. Victoria's son's friends had left five cars along Maple Street during a party that ran nearly a week. Her book club regularly took up a row of curb spaces. Her brother-in-law's white work truck sat across a sidewalk approach so often that the neighbors had begun walking around it without thinking.
I wasn't angry at the people who parked there. Most of them had no idea a new policy existed. What bothered me was the difference in what happened afterward.
Mrs. Chen's daughter visited for three days and her mother received a notice within hours. The Johnsons' oldest boy came home from college, parked outside the house for the weekend, and triggered two citations. An elderly widower named Mr. Rodriguez was fined because his home health aide left a van beside the curb one afternoon.
Victoria's guests received nothing. Neither did the families who reliably voted with her at association meetings. I could not prove every reason for that pattern, but the pattern itself was plain enough to deserve an explanation.
I wrote a formal letter requesting the board minutes authorizing the new restriction, the fine schedule, the enforcement criteria, and the records underlying my own citation. I sent it by certified mail and by email. I kept both receipts.
A week later, a padded envelope arrived from the association secretary. Her name was Evelyn Patterson. She was in her seventies, had held the position long before Victoria became president, and still believed that if a document mattered, somebody ought to be able to put it in a folder and find it again without asking a password-reset question.
The envelope was heavier than I expected. It contained meeting minutes, policy drafts, notices, and a series of printed email chains that clearly had not been intended for residents. I sat at my kitchen table, pulled the first page from the stack, and felt the room change around me.