By then I had documented hundreds of trips over several weeks, though I would later set aside duplicates and poor-quality clips rather than inflate the totals. The image files were backed up to a separate drive and organized by date. The spreadsheets showed patterns: morning commuter traffic, school pickups, delivery vans, and residents returning late from shifts in town. It was proof of use, not automatically proof of unlawful intent by each driver.
One afternoon I carried a cup of coffee to the porch and found myself thinking about the people behind those windshields. Were they told their HOA president owned the road? Had they ever read their deeds? If somebody told them tomorrow that the clubhouse was built on another man's land, would they search the records or sign whatever petition Amber put in front of them?
The answer came sooner than I expected. On the thirty-second day after Amber received Roberts's letter, an email appeared in my inbox from a woman I had never met. Its subject line was THOUGHT YOU SHOULD SEE THIS, and it contained a screenshot from the Pine Ridge community message board.
The message was posted by Amber Ward. She called me an outside agitator who had purchased the cabin for the purpose of creating problems for long-standing residents. She accused me of threatening to cut off their primary access and warned homeowners not to communicate with me. She announced an emergency meeting to discuss what she called community protection measures.
At the bottom of the email, the sender had written, I looked up the public records after reading this. I think there is another side to the story. Please be careful. Amber is telling people you want to drive families out of their homes.
The name beneath the note was Susan Garcia. She said she lived three houses from Amber and had been in Pine Ridge for twelve years. I replied thanking her for the information and asking whether she would mind if I forwarded the screenshot to my attorney. She wrote back almost immediately: Please do. Somebody needs to see it outside this message board.
I forwarded it to Roberts and called him. "What do I do about this?"
"Nothing in public," he said. "Keep the original, including the date and page address. Ask Ms. Garcia whether she's willing to authenticate how she obtained it if needed. We'll distinguish opinions, exaggerations, and specific factual claims instead of calling everything defamation."
"She says I bought the property just to cause trouble."
"Then we can document when you bought it and the conversations you had before the first demand. The strongest response to a false narrative is an accurate record, not another narrative shouted louder."
Susan wrote again that evening, this time without an attachment. She explained that she worked remotely for a health insurance administrator and had moved to the neighborhood with her husband after their second child was born. Her husband had since died unexpectedly, and she had remained because the children's friends and routines were there. She did not think Amber was honest about the road, but she was afraid of turning the neighborhood against her family.
I understood that fear more than I wanted to. In Charlotte I had learned how difficult it could be to challenge a manager's unsupported assumption when everybody else preferred not to rock the boat. But I could go back to my cabin and shut the door. Susan would still have to pass Amber's house on the way to school pickup the next morning.