She looked across the room at me. At Rook.
"I didn't hate your dog, Bernie," she said. "I was afraid of him. That made it easier to tell myself I wasn't doing anything really wrong. Just moving a problem I was already scared of out of the way. That's the truth. I'm not proud of any of it."
She sat down.
Nobody clapped. Nobody booed. The room was so quiet I could hear the pool pump humming through the open folding wall.
The recall passed two hundred and forty-one to nine. Candace didn't stay for the count. When Neville read the result aloud, I looked over at the second row, and her chair was empty, and the index card was lying on the seat. Mr. Huynh got up, slowly, and walked over and picked it up and read it, and then he walked it over to me without a word.
It said, in neat blue ink: Don't explain. Apologize. Then sit down.
XIII.
Candace pleaded in March. The tampering charge was reduced to attempted tampering, a misdemeanor, in exchange for guilty pleas to that, to falsification, and to the theft count, which stayed a felony. She was sentenced to three years of community control, two hundred hours of community service, and restitution: forty-six thousand eight hundred dollars to the Heron Bend Homeowners Association, and two thousand one hundred and forty dollars to Tamsen County for the lab work, the kennel fees, and, Officer Ybarra told me with great satisfaction, "one camping toilet, entered into evidence."
The judge asked if the victims wished to make a statement. The HOA's new attorney said a few words about trust. I'd been asked if I wanted to speak, and I'd said no. I didn't know what I'd say that she hadn't already said for herself in that clubhouse.
The civil case was another matter. Paloma had filed it in December, against Candace personally and against the Association for the actions of its board: defamation, abuse of process, intentional infliction of emotional distress, the cost of the shelter and the vet and the lawyer, the nine nights Rook spent on concrete. "You're going to win," Paloma said. "The only question is how much, and how long you want to keep doing this."