Oakhaven’s legal team filed motion after motion.
Discovery requests.
Experts.
Requests for historical usage records.
Questions about dam operation.
Questions about public access.
Questions about whether fishermen had ever entered without permission.
Peter answered.
I paid.
My savings began shrinking.
The worst ruling came in November.
Judge Robert Stanton granted limited temporary recreational access while the underlying claims were litigated.
The order was narrower than Oakhaven wanted.
No motorized craft.
Specified hours.
No access to my upland property.
But it still felt like theft.
Margaret came to the dock the next morning.
She did not dance.
Real people rarely behave that theatrically.
She did something worse.
She smiled.
“See?”
She said.
“The system works.”
I stared at the water.
She added:
“You should have sold when Arthur offered.”
“Is that legal advice?”
“It’s practical advice.”
“By the time this finishes, Peter Sullivan’s invoices may make the decision for you.”
That part frightened me because it was true.
That night I sat beside the fireplace.
No lights.
No television.
Just embers.
For the first time, I thought seriously about selling.
Not to Arthur.
Maybe to a conservation group.
Maybe the state.
Anything that ended the fight.
Then I thought about Grandpa clearing brush from the spillway.
Great-grandfather Thomas pouring concrete with equipment that would look primitive now.
Four generations keeping this place intact.
Sentiment can ruin people financially.
I knew that.
But surrender felt equally dangerous.
At two in the morning, I went upstairs.
The attic held the documents nobody had organized after Grandpa died.
Tax maps.
Mill records.
Old photographs.
Letters.
Dam maintenance logs.
A rusted iron document case sat beneath a workbench.
Grandpa had shown it to me once.
I never opened it.
The lock was stiff.
The key hung from a nail nearby.
Inside were documents wrapped in waxed cloth.
The original land deed.
Engineering plans.
State correspondence.
Then a typed charter dated 1924.
LAWSON INDUSTRIAL IMPOUNDMENT.
I sat on the attic floor and read.
Most language was obsolete.
Some provisions had been superseded by later state law.
Others referred to agencies that no longer existed.
But one section mattered.
The impoundment owner retained operational authority for necessary inspection, maintenance, and safety work subject to regulatory oversight.
Historic documentation required periodic examination of outlet works and foundation areas.
Later records in the box showed that during a major inspection in 1979, the lake had been lowered dramatically.
Grandpa had written in the margin:
NEXT MAJOR BED INSPECTION APPROX. 2024 DEPENDING STATE REQUIREMENTS.
The following year.
I kept digging.
Found correspondence from the state dam safety office.
Found inspection summaries.
Found a classification map showing the eastern flood-storage shelf.
The exact shelf beneath Arthur’s lowest cabins.
I called Peter at seven the next morning.
He answered sounding half asleep.
“What?”