"I know."
"Are you going to be okay?"
"I'm going to be better than I've been in four years." She hung up.
I sat at the table looking at 14 folders, a shoebox, a phone recording, an undersized drainage letter, and the certified plat of Parcel 7A. I had a case.
What I didn't have, yet, was a storm.
The rain started Thursday afternoon: not dramatic, a few fat drops, then a steady patter on the porch roof—the kind of rain you don't bother going inside for in a normal week.
I stood at the porch railing and looked up the ridge toward the spillway. I could already hear it. The thing about a torn-open earthen dam is that even light rain finds the break. The runoff that should have spread across 40 acres of overflow basin was funneling now through the gash Karen's excavator had cut, taking the shortest path to the lowest ground.
The lowest ground was the back end of Cedar Ridge.
I drove down to Frank's house, parked my truck on the high side of his driveway. He came out before I'd even closed the door.
"I was going to call you."
"I know."
"How bad?"
"By tomorrow night: the cul-de-sac, the clubhouse parking lot, the East Rim houses."
He didn't ask which East Rim houses. He knew.
"How long do we have?"
"To move the elderly and the kids? Tonight. Tomorrow morning at the latest."
He nodded once. "Then let's go knock on some doors."