Chapter 7 - Tour Day
On the morning of the neighborhood tour, Emma asked to eat breakfast in her room. I wanted to tell her this would pass. Instead I carried in toast and let her decide whether she wanted company.
Outside, real estate agents and prospective buyers wandered past our six green stripes with paper cups of iced coffee. Some smiled. One photographed the yard while explaining something to a woman holding a clipboard.
Denise crossed the street just before ten. "You had every opportunity to remove this," she said.
"And you had every opportunity to cite an actual rule."
She looked toward a couple standing nearby. "We're discussing a pending compliance matter. Please move along."
The man shrugged and continued to the next house. The woman lingered long enough to ask whether the color would fade.
"Yes," I said. "It's a temporary turf colorant. I used it to comply while a permanent low-water design is under review."
"That sounds sensible," she said.
Denise's jaw moved. "It's not an approved design."
"Neither is requiring every homeowner to water through a heat wave," I answered.
At noon I found a small envelope on my porch. Inside were two printed photographs of the common greenbelt by the neighborhood entrance, one taken in May, the other yesterday. In the recent image, the green had a distinctly painted sheen. A handwritten note said: Ask what the association paid to make this look healthy last summer.
Otis had not left it. Carla hadn't, either. I resisted the urge to treat an unsigned note as proof of anything. It was a question, not an answer.
When I called the management company, Rachel told me to request common-area maintenance invoices through the established records process.
"Is that going to make you more popular?" she asked.
"I've given up on popular. I'm trying for accurate."
In the afternoon Denise left a voicemail: "The tour is over, Nora. You didn't embarrass me. You embarrassed yourself."
I almost deleted it. Then I saved the message beside her first three notices. An unpleasant voice recording wasn't evidence of a rule violation, but it reminded me why I wanted every decision written down.
Emma came downstairs as the last visitors departed. She stared at the bright bands in our lawn.
"Did everybody laugh?"
"Some did. Some asked good questions."
"Are you still glad we did it?"
May you like
I considered the question before answering. "I think we exposed a bad rule. I'm not glad it landed on you."
She took my hand. "Both can be true."
