At the end of the meeting, the board voted to rescind every fine ever assessed against 1 Chokecherry Court, and to suspend enforcement of Article VII, Section 7.4 for every lot in the subdivision for the duration of any declared drought, and to put an amendment to the Declaration on the ballot in January, permitting native and drought-tolerant landscaping in every front yard, which Prue asked me afterward, a little shyly, if I would help draft, since I seemed to know the statute. I said I'd think about it. I did think about it. I drafted it in October.
The board also voted to shut off the irrigation on the Gateway Green entirely, for the rest of the season, at the district's request, until the system could be inspected and a backflow preventer installed. Nobody voted against it. Nobody really could. By the end of August the bluegrass had gone the color of a paper bag, and by the middle of September it was the same lion color as my front yard, and you could no longer tell, driving in off the boulevard, where my lot ended and the common area began. The red maple dropped about a third of its leaves in the first two weeks. The rest turned scarlet, all at once, a full month early, and hung on.
I got a check from the district in November, a credit for every overage and surcharge and drought tier on my account since March, plus interest, and a letter of apology on district letterhead, signed by the general manager. The bank in Ohio got a letter too, though I never heard what came of it. Pia's hair grew out about an inch, and she had the orange cut off at a salon in Castle Rock in October, by a woman who looked at the healed pink patch at the nape of her neck and said, "Oh, honey, who did this to you?" and Pia said, "It's a long story," which it is. It was short now, shorter than it had ever been, a dark cap that showed the shape of her head, and she liked it, and so, to his eternal confusion, did Rafe.
Georgine's case resolved in February, without a trial.
I went to the hearing, and so did Pia. She asked to come, which I hadn't expected, and Esme and I talked about it for a long time and decided it was hers to decide. The deputy DA, a brisk young woman with a rolling briefcase, explained the plea agreement to us beforehand in a conference room down the hall. Georgine would plead guilty to the felony theft count and to tampering, and the criminal mischief and reckless endangerment counts would be dismissed. She'd receive a deferred judgment on the felony, which meant that if she completed four years of supervised probation without a violation, the conviction would be withdrawn; if she didn't, she'd be sentenced on it. She'd pay full restitution, to the district, to the bank, and to us, including the urgent care bill and Pia's haircut, which the deputy DA had insisted on putting in. She'd perform two hundred hours of community service. She'd be prohibited from serving on the board of any homeowners association or special district for the length of her probation. She'd have no contact with our family. And she'd have no contact with the district's infrastructure of any kind, which the deputy DA said was the first time in her career she'd ever written a condition like that, and which made Fidel laugh, a short, unhappy laugh, when he heard about it.
"They're going to make her get a plumber," he said, "to change a washer in her own kitchen."