I called a local carpenter, Peter Vaughn, whose company had repaired my porch steps a few years earlier. He examined the fence the next morning and told me the wood was old but serviceable, and that the recent damage had the appearance of mechanical force rather than normal weathering. He could not tell me who had caused it. He made that distinction carefully, and I appreciated him for it. He replaced the most damaged screws, added additional support, and suggested a more permanent repair if the section came loose again.
"You could replace the entire run," he said, looking down the property line. "But if this is one point of repeated stress, I would start here. No sense spending money on eighty feet of fence because somebody's pushing two boards."
"I haven't established that somebody is pushing them," I said.
He gave me a look. "Then your fence has developed a very specific bad habit."
I paid his invoice and filed it. The invoice was not large, but it was the first expense I incurred because the boundary between Sandra's yard and mine was becoming unreliable. I retained photographs of the damage and repair because they documented the condition of my property before and after the work. I did not yet call the police. I hoped there would be nothing left to report.
In early June, my firm sent me out of town for a week. We were assisting a regional manufacturer with an accounting-system transition, and the trip involved six days of conference rooms, plant tours, and evening calls with people who kept discovering accounts nobody had included in the original plan. I made sure the pool equipment was running correctly before I left, confirmed Rosa's normal service appointment, and asked Elise to collect packages if they appeared at my door. I locked the house, the gate, and the shed.
I returned on a Sunday afternoon with sore shoulders and the peculiar exhaustion of spending six nights in a hotel where the pillows looked expensive but were designed without regard for the human neck. The yard looked normal from the driveway. I carried my suitcase inside, put groceries away, and walked out to look at the pool. A single blue flip-flop sat beside the deep end, turned on its side with sand caught in the sole.
It was a child's sandal, and it did not belong to any child I had invited.
I stood with it in my hand for a long moment. Then I noticed a plastic snack wrapper tucked behind one patio chair. A pool noodle had been moved from the storage rack to the grass. My skimmer pole was lying near the steps instead of hanging on its hooks. Each item was minor. Together they described a visit that had occurred while I was in another state.
The fence supplied the rest of the picture. Two boards near the deep end had been forced apart again, the screws pulling through the old wood. The opening was wide enough for a person to move sideways through it. It was also situated behind the hedge on Sandra's side of the property, where somebody approaching from the street would not see the gap. I photographed it carefully and called Peter the next morning to request an estimate for a proper reconstruction of that section.