In the morning I went out to the backyard with my coffee before he was up, and I walked along the fence. It took me a while to find it. About two-thirds of the way down, behind the hydrangea I've been meaning to cut back for three years, one of the cedar boards had a knot in it at about waist height, and the knot had been worked loose and could be pushed out like a cork. Behind it, wedged into the gap between our fence board and the Vandersloots' matching board on the other side, there was a small glass jar, the kind jam comes in at a hotel breakfast. Inside the jar was a folded piece of graph paper.
I didn't open it. I want that on the record. I stood there with my coffee and looked at that jar for a long time, and every nosy cell in my body wanted to, and I didn't. I put the knot back. I went inside.
At 8:15, before I'd even decided what to say to him, there was a knock at my front door. Three knocks, evenly spaced. I knew whose they were before I looked.
Ottoline Vandersloot was standing on my porch in a navy blazer and pressed gray slacks and the kind of low, sensible heels that are designed to be walked in all day without looking like you're thinking about walking. Her hair, which had been dark blonde when I met her and was now an expensive, careful ash, was pulled back hard. She had an iPad in a leather folio under her arm. Behind her on the walk, looking like she would rather be anywhere else on the planet, was Radhika Menon, the board's vice president, who lives on Tansy Court and teaches middle school science and who once, at a pool party, told me she'd only taken the VP job because nobody else would and she was afraid of what would happen if the seat sat empty.
"Sela," Ottoline said. She has always said my name like it's a word in a foreign language she learned out of a book. "I said Friday at noon. I've changed my mind. I'd rather not wait."
"Good morning to you too, Ottoline," I said. "Hi, Radhika."
Radhika gave me a small, miserable wave.
"Radhika is here as a witness," Ottoline said. "For both of us. I want this done properly."