"Yes, Sandra?"
She looked down at the tool in her hand. "I've wanted to say something for a while. I wasn't sure you'd want to hear it."
I did not immediately reassure her. That was deliberate. I had spent too long rushing to make the space between us comfortable whenever she appeared uneasy. I waited for her to decide what she actually wanted to say.
"I'm sorry," she said. "About the pool. About the fence. About bringing the police. All of it."
Her voice was quieter than I remembered. She did not sound defeated, and she did not sound as though she were reading a prepared statement. She sounded embarrassed. That mattered, because embarrassment is often the emotion people try hardest to hide behind indignation.
She told me she had consulted an attorney after Diana's letter arrived. The consultation had not gone the way she expected. She had brought her notes about the first summer, described how frequently the children swam, and explained the supplies she had contributed. The attorney had asked where the pool was built, who paid for it, and whether any agreement transferred ownership or created a lasting right of access. She had no answers that changed the fundamental facts.
"He was very clear," she said. "I was using your pool because you'd been kind enough to let us. I didn't own any of it. When you told me to stop, I should have stopped."
I rested one hand on the top rail of the fence and let her continue. She said she had become used to the convenience and had begun arranging her days around it. Every time I limited access, she felt as though something was being taken away. Instead of recognizing that the original arrangement was a favor, she began treating its end as a personal injustice. She had told friends the pool was shared because that made her resentment sound reasonable, and eventually she had begun believing her own description.
"The worst part," she said, "is that I brought the children through that fence after I knew you didn't want us there. I made them think it was normal. It wasn't."
That admission reached me more than the rest. I had spent so much time worrying about Olivia and Henry, and here was Sandra acknowledging that she had put them in an uncomfortable and potentially unsafe position to avoid accepting a boundary. I needed her to understand that the children had never been the problem.
"I appreciated their visits when they were invited," I said. "I didn't stop caring about them. I stopped trusting the arrangement. Those aren't the same thing."
Sandra nodded. "I know that now. And I know I made you spend money and time you shouldn't have had to spend. I can't undo any of it. I just wanted to say I was wrong."