Sam stood beside me. "Lake staying where it is this year?"
"That's their problem now."
He smiled. It was not a smile of triumph over the people who lived next door. It was the relief of someone who had spent too many nights trying to solve a water shortage caused by a decision he had no part in making.
Luis looked from us to the row. "What happened with the lake?"
Sam and I exchanged a glance. We had told him the basic story, but he had not been there for the night of the cut lock or the days of emergency watering. Sam pointed toward the northern boundary.
"Somebody once connected the neighbor's lake to our irrigation line without permission," he said. "We found it, stopped it, and documented what happened."
"That sounds crazy."
"It was certainly expensive," I said.
Luis looked at the young trees. "Did those die because of it?"
"Twenty-three needed replacing. Most of the others survived."
He was quiet for a moment. "So the new trees are here because somebody wanted the lake full?"
"Yes."
"That's a terrible reason to have to plant trees."
I could not argue with him. I handed him the meter and asked him to record the reading. After he wrote it down, I showed him how to check it against the flow at the turnout and the expected demand of the zone. I told him that if the numbers disagreed, he should say so, even if I was the one who had written the schedule.
"Especially if I'm the one who wrote it," I added.
He nodded. It was a lesson I had learned long before Denise Calder entered my life, but it had acquired a different weight that morning.
Later, when the sun cleared the eastern ridge, I walked along the west block and found Elena inspecting the new trees. She had come to check their establishment and the performance of the drip emitters. We looked at the soil beneath several replacements, then at the mature peaches farther uphill.
"They're waking up well," she said.
"The replacements?"
"Those too. The mature block looks good. We should have a fair chance at a normal season if the weather behaves."
"You know better than to ask the weather for promises."
"I do. It's one of the few things I've learned from working with farmers."
We walked back toward the orchard store. On the other side of the cottonwoods, a few residents were strolling along the lake path. Children were feeding ducks from a distance while their parents looked on, and two men were measuring a section of shoreline where new vegetation would be planted. Nobody was standing on the dock directing water into the lake from my line.
For the first time in months, I looked at the subdivision and felt almost nothing beyond the mild interest I usually felt toward a neighbor's property. The lake was lower. The houses were still there. Families were still walking beside the water. No one appeared to be living through a catastrophe because the fountain had fewer operating hours and the shoreline no longer matched its brightest promotional photograph.