The first evening I walked past it into my own house, I was more exhausted than angry. My garage was empty and unusable. My driveway belonged to me in every record I could find, but the only thing visible from the street was someone else's recreational vehicle guarding the door. I ate dinner standing over the kitchen sink because the table was still in pieces. There is a special fatigue that comes from spending a day resolving other people's disputes and returning home to one nobody wants to admit exists.
Two days later, Patricia discovered my profession.
I know the hour because the courthouse clock above the front steps read twelve fifteen when I came out for lunch. My clerk, Ellen Price, was walking beside me with a schedule in her hands. She had been asking whether the two o'clock matter could move to two thirty, and I was thinking about a sandwich I had left in the office refrigerator. I still had the black robe over my clothes, because I was expected back in the courtroom shortly and had not thought to take it off.
"Judge Hale," Ellen said, "if counsel agrees to the later time, should I have everyone notified?"
At the foot of the steps, Patricia Voss was standing with an accordion folder beneath her arm. I recognized the sunglasses first, then the blonde bob, then the lanyard with the laminated association identification. She had apparently come to file something in small claims court, or to speak to someone about a filing. I never learned which errand brought her there that day. What mattered was that she looked from Ellen to the robe to my face and understood exactly who her new neighbor was.
I had expected surprise. I would even have understood embarrassment. Instead, she went still for a moment and then smiled, as if a question she had been working on had just supplied its own answer. She said nothing. I nodded once and walked on with Ellen, but I felt that smile following me through the door to the cafe.
That evening, the motor home was still there.
Patricia was three houses down, talking to the Okafors on their front walk. She gestured broadly while the father stood with his hands in his pockets and the mother held a toddler against her hip. When I passed, the conversation stopped for half a beat and began again after I entered my house. The next morning she was at Dale's door. By Friday she had visited every home on the street.
Dale told me afterward what she had said.
"He is a judge," she told them. "Brand-new, and the first thing he does when he moves in is order the community to remove its property. He's threatened the cart, the storage, the Christmas lights, and now my motor home. Next he'll decide who gets to park where. You want a man like that making rules for the street?"