"I should've had that policy before you ever met me," he said.
"Yes. You should have."
He accepted the answer. I respected that more than if he had asked me to tell him we were even.
Canyon Lake Estates held another contentious meeting in January. By then Denise was serving the sentence imposed under her plea, and the association's independent counsel was negotiating a separate resolution concerning expenditures and legal costs attributable to decisions she had made outside her authorization. Linda did not share privileged settlement details with me, nor did I ask her to. She did tell me later that the board had reached an agreement under which Denise would repay certain association costs through a separate process. None of those payments belonged in my orchard's ledger.
The financial consequences for the HOA were not painless. Its insurer's settlement affected deductibles and future underwriting discussions. The unauthorized bypass had cost money to install and more money to remove and repair. The association had spent heavily on legal advice, record preservation, and outside water planning. Residents who had been promised an inexpensive lake solution learned that the attempt to save the lawful purchase cost had generated bills far beyond any one month's dues.
Some homeowners demanded that Linda cut other expenses to keep the lake full anyway. At the consultant's presentation, a resident asked whether a lower lake would cause house prices to fall immediately. The consultant answered that a real estate market involved more than the waterline beside a fountain and that no reliable analysis supported a claim that one dry season would erase the subdivision's value. He did not promise there would be no effect at all. He explained the uncertainty and the operating costs instead of offering a comforting number.
A woman from the lakefront homes asked about the mud exposed by falling water. The consultant described native shoreline plants and a gradual redesign of the lowest walking path. A homeowner who enjoyed fishing asked whether the permitted well could supply enough replacement water during the hottest months. It could supply some, the consultant said, but not the volume required to hold the lake at an artificially high level through an extended drought without additional lawful purchases.
Nora told me about those conversations over coffee at the farm store. She said people were beginning to ask how much water the lake actually needed for its intended functions rather than how much would make the photographs look the best.
"We should have asked those questions years ago," she said.
"You know them now."
"Not everyone wants to learn them."
"An HOA doesn't become perfect because a board changes."
"I'm discovering that."
Linda invited me to attend a later open session on water-use planning, not to speak about Denise or the court case, but to explain how the irrigation district delivery schedule worked and why farmers could not casually trade portions of a scheduled turnout. I initially declined. I had spent enough hours talking about the association to last a lifetime. Then Sam pointed out that most residents had learned what an irrigation lateral was only when somebody installed a pipe into ours.