The board sat at a folding table at the front. Ermengarde Quarrington, in the treasurer's chair, had a binder in front of her an inch thick. Radhika had a notepad. There were two other members, a retired pharmacist from Bellflower named Evander Vellacott and a young father from Yarrow whose name I could never remember, and they both looked like they would rather be having root canals.
Ottoline sat in the center, in the president's chair. She wore the navy blazer. She had the leather folio in front of her, closed. She did not look at anyone in particular.
Ermengarde Quarrington called the meeting to order at 7:02 and read the agenda item aloud, and then she said, "Before we get into discussion, I'd like to read into the record the email the President sent to the board at 11:58 p.m. on Wednesday, September 23rd," and she put on her reading glasses with enormous satisfaction and opened her binder.
"That won't be necessary, Ermengarde," Ottoline said.
"I think the residents deserve to hear—"
"They do," said Ottoline. "So I'll tell them. You can check my work against your binder."
And she stood up.
I'd known Ottoline Vandersloot for twelve years, and I had watched her stand up at the front of that clubhouse dozens of times, to present budgets and announce fines and explain, in excruciating detail, why the mailbox posts had to be replaced with matching cast-aluminum posts in Hunter Green. I had never seen her stand the way she stood that night. She stood like a person who has decided to take the weight of something on her own shoulders before anyone else can lay it there.