My name is Mara Ellison, and I was forty-two when Gloria decided my backyard belonged to her argument.
I worked as a physical therapist at a rehabilitation clinic fifteen minutes from home.
My late husband, Ben, and I had saved for years to buy our house, and we built the pool shortly before his diagnosis.
After he died, I could barely look through the sliding door without remembering his last summer.
Paige was seventeen then, and she would sit beside the water with him long after the sun disappeared.
That pool was not a luxury I was willing to surrender to a woman with a grudge.
I called Paige downstairs and asked her to stay behind the kitchen counter.
She looked through the glass and whispered that Gloria had finally lost her mind.
I told her to open the camera application and save the available footage without editing it.
Then I called the county nonemergency line and reported a trespass and property damage.
The dispatcher asked whether anybody was injured.
I said no and added that I intended to remain inside until an officer arrived.
Gloria continued speaking into her phone.
She walked to the shallow end and moved a soggy carton with the tip of her shoe, as though arranging her work for a photograph.
A few moments later, a white sedan stopped in front of our house.
A woman stepped out wearing a neatly pressed blue shirt and carrying a leather portfolio.
I recognized her as Elaine Rusk, the secretary of the Willow Run neighborhood committee.
Our subdivision had no homeowners association, but Gloria liked to behave as though the committee could issue fines and order people around.
Elaine looked up at our windows before entering the backyard through the unlocked gate.
Gloria lowered her phone and greeted her with an exaggerated sigh.
I opened the door just far enough to hear.
“I told you she’d let the place become a health hazard,” Gloria said.
Elaine looked at the floating rubbish and pressed her lips together.
“You said the pool was contaminated,” she replied.
“It is,” Gloria announced.
I stepped onto the patio, leaving the door open behind me.
“She contaminated it herself,” I said.
Elaine turned as if she had forgotten my house contained a person.
Gloria lifted her chin.
“I found it this way,” she said.
“And you’re going to prove that?” I asked.
Gloria smiled.
“I have witnesses.”
CHAPTER 3: A COMMITTEE WITHOUT POWER
Elaine did not smile back at Gloria.
She looked at the empty black bag lying beside the lounge chair.
