"Then walk me through what is."
He didn't. He just stood there with his arms crossed, and Karen pulled the door shut behind her with Diane on the inside, and I stood on the wrong side of a glass door I had every legal right to be on the other side of.
I let the dashcam catch all of it.
I went back to my truck. I'd like to say I sat in the parking lot calm and clear-headed. The truth is, I sat there with my hands on the wheel for a full minute, jaw tight, watching the door of a building I had effectively saved from groundwater, and I let myself be angry. You're allowed to be angry. You're not allowed to let it move your hands.
By the time I started the engine, I had a list:
I had the original state permit with my signature on the bottom sitting in the glovebox of the truck I was sitting in.
I had the certified mail return receipt card from my original refusal of HOA membership.
I had the courtesy reclassification letter Karen had sent me 18 months ago, which a first-year law student could have explained was not how property law worked.
I had the dashcam from the morning, on which Karen had cited section 14 of the covenants and stated on record that the demolition was a collection action for unpaid dues.
I had her on a second recording an hour earlier in front of three witnesses saying she owned the watershed.
I had a board treasurer who couldn't look me in the eye.
I had a vice president who had just blocked me on camera from accessing public records.
And I had a forecast on my phone that said a 4-to-6-inch rain system was going to make landfall in this county on Friday.
It was Tuesday.
I drove home the long way around the back of Cedar Ridge, the route I always took when I wanted to see the subdivision from above. Eight houses sat in what hydrologists call the runoff bowl, the natural low point of the development, where any uncontrolled water from the upper ridge would gather before it reached the storm drains. Frank Devereaux's house was at the bottom of the bowl. So was Mrs. Alvarez's. So was a young couple with a toddler whose name I didn't yet know.
Karen's house was on the rim—the east rim, the first rim the water would hit.
I parked at my own gate, which Karen's contractor had abandoned by then. Ridgeworks demolition truck gone. The only evidence they'd ever been there was a churned-up access road and the torn-open scar of the dam at the top of the ridge.