“Yes.”
“Cut locks?”
“Yes.”
“You have video?”
“Yes.”
“Then keep everything.”
“What about this claim?”
“She can claim the moon has mineral rights to your porch if she wants to pay someone to put it on letterhead.”
“So I ignore it?”
“For now. Don’t call her lawyer. Don’t threaten anybody. Don’t give them a dramatic reaction they can use.”
“That was already my plan.”
Henry sighed.
“Jake?”
“Yeah?”
“A person who hires a lawyer to justify behavior like this probably doesn’t intend to stop voluntarily.”
“I know.”
“Document. Stay calm.”
I added the letter to the folder.
By then, it was thick enough that I stopped using a folder and moved everything into a file box.
Then Lisa Dominguez called me.
“I need to tell you something.”
“What?”
“Denise held a special board meeting.”
“About?”
“You.”
I leaned back in my chair.
“That seems ambitious considering I don’t live in Silver Creek.”
“She made a presentation.”
“A presentation?”
“Twenty-five minutes.”
I closed my eyes.
“PowerPoint?”
“Professionally designed.”
“Of course.”
“She called it Environmental Threat Assessment: Adjacent Unregulated Property.”
I stared at the kitchen wall.
“Is my property the environmental threat?”
“Yes.”
“My property that existed before the development.”
“Yes.”
“The property her pool is currently stealing water from.”
“Yes.”
“Did anybody mention that?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“She said it was an unrelated dispute.”
I started laughing.
Lisa did too.
Not because it was funny.
Because sometimes reality exceeds parody.
“What else?” I asked.
“She had aerial photos.”
“From where?”
“Drone.”
“Of my land?”
“Yes.”
“She called your well an ‘unregulated extraction point.’”
“That’s impressive.”
“She called the septic system a potential biological hazard.”
I looked out the kitchen window toward the buried tank.
“Anything else?”
“She proposed a resolution requesting reasonable resource access.”
“Resource access.”
“Water.”
“She means my water.”
“Yes.”
“How’d the vote go?”
“Three to two.”
“You voted no.”
“I did.”
“Who else?”
“David Chen.”
“I don’t know him.”