It was a good speech. It was so good, and so calm, and so full of article numbers, that for a moment I almost apologized. Then I heard the screen door behind me and turned, and Pia was standing on the porch in sweatpants and a hoodie with a towel draped over her head like a prizefighter, holding the hem of the towel away from her neck with both hands, because it hurt where the cloth touched.
"Go inside," I said.
"I want to see," she said.
Georgine looked at her. I watched her look. I watched her take in the towel and the way Pia was holding it, and the fierce, blotchy pink of the skin at the back of Pia's neck where the towel didn't reach, and for a second, under the straw hat, Georgine's face went loose and old.
"She was in the shower," I said again. "She had bleach on her head. Hair bleach. When you shut the water off, she was halfway through rinsing it, and it stayed on her scalp, and it burned her. I rinsed her out of the toilet tanks and the water heater. You understand me? You did that."
"I didn't know anyone was home," Georgine said, very quietly. Then she seemed to hear herself, and her chin came up. "There's no requirement to give notice in an emergency abatement. If there had been anyone home, I would naturally have knocked."
"You don't get to shut off my water," I said. "You're not the district."