Kayla Breck is the president. She runs the meetings like a dental appointment, briskly and with an air of mild disappointment, and she has instituted a rule that every agenda item involving a specific homeowner must be discussed with that homeowner privately first. Mabel comes to the meetings in her rain boots and sits on the floor with Rook. Vince Ostrander moved to Florida. Thad Mize hasn't been charged. Detective Amberley told Paloma the theft investigation was "ongoing as to other signatories," and that's all anyone will say. Thad waves at me from his driveway every morning. I wave back. I haven't decided yet what I think about Thad.
Rook is eleven. The vet says his hips are about what you'd expect and his spine is a little worse. We've added a second medication, and a ramp to the back porch, and I've stopped pretending he'll ever jump into the back of a car again. He doesn't seem to mind. He still walks with me every morning, shorter now, down Sandpiper and back. Sometimes we go the long way around the pond, on the path, because we're allowed to again, and because Mr. Huynh likes the company. He's still keeping his log. The other day he showed me the entry for that morning. Five-ten. Bernie and Rook. Heron on the far bank. Nothing strange.
The house on the corner sold in a week, for eleven thousand dollars over asking. It would have pleased her, I think. A young couple with twin boys and a beagle moved in. The beagle barks at everything, and nobody fines anybody.
Paloma called on Friday. Candace's lawyer has made a settlement offer. It's a fair number, Paloma says. More than fair. Enough to cover everything with something left over, if I want to put it toward the K9 retirement fund in Fairfield County, which I've been thinking about. Or I can go to trial in the fall and probably get more, and stand up in front of a jury and tell them about the nine nights, and Royce's leash in a canvas tote bag, and the sound Rook made the day his partner died, and watch Candace hear it.
I have until next Friday to decide.
The envelope she left is on my kitchen counter, propped against the sugar canister, where it's been for three weeks. I haven't opened it. I pick it up some mornings and turn it over and put it back. I don't know if I'm afraid of what's in it, or afraid that it won't be enough, or afraid that it will be.
This morning, on our walk, Rook stopped at the corner where her house used to be, the way he sometimes does, and put his nose up and read the air for a long moment with his eyes half closed, sorting through a hundred things I'll never know, the beagle and the twins and the cut grass and whatever is left of the woman who used to stand in that driveway at six in the morning with her phone held up in front of her.
Then he looked up at me, waiting to be told what the situation was.
"I don't know yet, buddy," I said. "I'll let you know."
And we walked on home together, slow, the way we do now, while the sprinklers ticked on along Sandpiper Court and the sun came up over the pond, and nobody had left anything anywhere, and the whole street smelled like grass.