Chapter 5 - Someone Else's View
Ruth Calder lived across the road, in a white farmhouse with a porch that sagged toward a lilac hedge. I had waved to her a dozen times. We had never had coffee together until she appeared at the lot with a thermos and two chipped cups.
“I saw the circus on Saturday,” she said.
I almost laughed. “Which part?”
“The measuring pole. The audience. All of it.”
She pointed toward a gap between two maples. “When the leaves come down, I'll see a piece of your porch from my breakfast window.”
“Does that bother you?”
“A little.”
I waited for the lecture.
“My husband planted those maples. I watched the field behind them for forty years. I won't pretend another roof is exactly what I wanted.”
“Then I guess you're against us.”
“Is that the only choice?”
Her question embarrassed me because I had been sorting everyone into supporters and enemies for days.
Ruth took a sip of coffee. “I also know what it's like to want to live where you've put your savings. Our house looked new once. People complained about that too.”
When Owen arrived with a load of scrap timber, she asked to see the drawings. He sat on the tailgate and explained the porch and the stone chimney. Ruth asked about the septic field, the driveway slope, and snow plowing. She wasn't performing interest; she was trying to imagine living next to us.
“Would you walk the other possible sites with me?” she asked.
Owen said yes before I could check the calendar.
Later, I told him we were too busy to give personal tours.
“She lives with the view,” he said. “We can afford her a walk.”
That night an email arrived from a neighbor we had never met. He attached a screenshot of an association discussion claiming our proposed home was almost five thousand square feet.
It included a photograph of our orange ribbon, taken from the road so that it appeared to stretch across the whole hillside.
The sender wrote only: Is this true?
May you like
For once, I didn't reply immediately. I printed the screenshot, placed it beside Nia's actual elevations, and waited for Owen to come home.
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