I was a block away by then, helping a neighbor I'd never spoken to push a stranded sedan out of the curb gutter. He was breathing hard, his shoes ruined. He looked up at me.
"You're the dam guy, right? The one Karen said wouldn't pay?"
"That's me."
He pushed the car another two feet onto dry pavement, straightened up, and looked at me. "She said you wouldn't pay. She didn't say what you wouldn't pay for."
I didn't answer. I didn't need to.
By dawn, the clubhouse parking lot was a lake. Karen's Lexus was floating in it, and on the front lawn, half-submerged, was the same orange notice she'd nailed to my tree, drifting toward the storm drain like it was finally going where it belonged.
Karen lawyered up before lunch.
By the time the rain stopped Friday afternoon, the cul-de-sac was still under six inches of water, and her insurance adjuster had already done one walkthrough. And somewhere between the adjuster leaving and the first pump truck arriving, Karen had hired a lawyer named Wendell Hayes out of a firm two counties over.
I learned this from Diane, who called Saturday morning: 20 seconds, no greeting.
"She's giving a press conference Sunday afternoon, on the clubhouse steps."
"About the flood?"
"About you." She hung up.
I sat at my kitchen table and looked at the certified plat of Parcel 7A. I'd been in this part of a story before—not personally, but from inside the county water resources office. Whenever a board or a council did something stupid with water and the consequences came faster than they'd planned for, the same thing happened: they got louder. They hired somebody to be louder for them, and they picked a single name out of the wreckage and made it the reason for everything.
Sitting there Saturday morning, I knew my name was about to be the one she picked.
The press conference happened at 3:00 p.m. Sunday, on the clubhouse steps. I didn't go; I watched it on the local news at 6:00.
Karen Whitfield stood on the still water-stained concrete in a navy blazer, Wendell Hayes at her left elbow, two surviving board members at her right. She read from a statement: she called the flood "the tragic and predictable result of an unstable upstream private structure built and maintained by a non-resident who refused to participate in community oversight and refused to pay his fair share." She said the HOA had acted with full procedural authority on the advice of counsel to remove a documented community hazard.
The camera held on her face; she actually looked like she believed it.