The words made me smile when I typed them. It was absurd, offering refreshments to people who had spent weeks refusing to acknowledge me. But it also seemed important. A gathering on my driveway could become a confrontation, or it could become a chance for neighbors to look at the evidence in daylight while holding ordinary paper cups. I had seen enough courthouse hallways to know how much a room changes when nobody feels trapped in it.
On Friday evening, Dale came over.
He had my notice folded in his hand. "You're really going to lay everything out?"
"The things are already here. Somebody needs to take them home."
"Trish is going to call the police."
"Probably."
He lowered his eyes. "She says you're making a spectacle."
"I'm moving other people's belongings out of my yard and giving them a way to identify them. If that becomes a spectacle, perhaps it will be an informative one."
Dale looked toward Patricia's house. "Some folks are frightened of her, you know. Not frightened like she's going to hurt them. Just frightened she'll decide they aren't on her side anymore."
I knew exactly what he meant. "Are you?"
He considered the question for longer than I expected. "I suppose I have been. It's easier to borrow the cart than to ask who owns the garage it lives in."
I nodded. "It was easier for all of you."
"I know." He unfolded the notice and folded it again. "I'll be here tomorrow. I should have come over sooner."
He went back across the street before I could answer. It was not an apology, not yet. But it was the first time someone other than Linda had spoken plainly about the part of the story in which the neighbors had participated. That mattered more than Dale knew.
Saturday arrived with the same flat white sunlight that had greeted me when I first moved in.
I opened the garage at eight, set a folding table near the front walk, and laid out the items in rows. I had borrowed the table legitimately, from a hardware store's event service, because the last thing I wanted was to use one of the association's folding tables while making my point. I placed a sign beside it explaining that the display contained items removed from private property and that owners should identify their belongings before taking them. I made a separate area for anything whose ownership was disputed.
I wanted the driveway to resemble neither a police evidence room nor a yard sale. It was simply an inventory in the open air. I grouped the Christmas lights together, laid the pool equipment in a separate row, and arranged the personal belongings by where they had been found. The expensive lounger sat at the edge nearest Patricia's fence. I draped the monogrammed towel over its back exactly as I had photographed it in the backyard.
The lawn mower was beside it. The letters P. VOSS had been written on its handle in blue permanent marker.
Nearby sat a partly used box of blue-green ceramic tile, the same pattern that lined Patricia's newly renovated swimming pool. I put the cement mixer and the portable heater close enough that anyone standing beside them could see their relation to the pool equipment. The two kayaks rested on their sides near the fence. I had placed the child's bicycle on a stand so that the flat tire did not hide its shape.