"He's not an attack animal," I said, when she finally opened the floor. I stood up. Rook stood up too, because he always stands when I stand, and I heard someone in the second row inhale. "He's a retired patrol dog. He's eleven next spring. He has hip dysplasia and early arthritis in his spine. He takes carprofen twice a day and a joint supplement that costs more than my cable bill. He eats a prescription GI diet that I have to order from a veterinarian. He relieves himself in exactly one place, in my backyard, on command, because my husband trained him to, because when you are searching a car on the interstate with a man in the back seat who may or may not have a gun, you do not want your dog deciding to take a—" I stopped. I took a breath. "He doesn't use the common areas. Not once. I'm a retired ER nurse. I've looked at what's being left out there. It isn't from a dog."
There was a pause. Then somebody laughed. Not cruelly, just the startled, nervous laugh people do when a meeting goes somewhere they didn't expect.
"I'm sorry," said Vince Ostrander, the insurance man, "are you suggesting someone in Heron Bend is going around—"
"I'm suggesting someone is planting it. Yes."
"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," someone said behind me.
"Is it more ridiculous," I said, turning around, "than a ninety-pound dog with bad hips escaping his yard eight times without me noticing, walking a quarter mile, and going to the bathroom in the exact spots where the president of the HOA happens to be walking at six in the morning?"
That got a different kind of quiet.
Candace let it sit for exactly the right amount of time. Then she said, in a voice that was gentle and patient and sad, "Bernie. I know this has been a very hard few years for you. I know how much that dog means to you because of Royce. Everyone in this room knows. And I don't think anyone here wants to see you hurting." She looked around the room, and people nodded. "But we have a two-year-old who put her hands in it. We have families who walk the pond path. We have to be able to make decisions as a community based on what's in front of us, not on theories." She folded her hands. "I'd ask the Board to vote."
They voted four to one. Thad Mize was the one. He didn't say anything. He just didn't raise his hand when the others did, and when Candace looked at him he took his glasses off and polished them on his shirt and didn't look back.
After the meeting, while people were folding chairs and avoiding me, a small man in a windbreaker with a Marine Corps ball cap came over and stood next to me while I got Rook's leash sorted out. It was Bao Huynh, the five o'clock walker. He was eighty-one. He'd come to Heron Bend to be near his granddaughter and walked the pond loop twice every morning, rain or shine, with a pedometer clipped to his belt.