Janine had already been to court. She had simply slept through her chance to respond. She still did not seem to understand that.
Tuesday, 7:00 p.m. The Maple Crest Community Clubhouse.
I parked in the back row of the lot and walked in alone. Frank was waiting just inside the door. He nodded at me once. I nodded back.
I was wearing a clean shirt, dark jeans, and the kind of plain windbreaker that helps you disappear in a room. I was not, technically, a Maple Crest resident. I had no independent right to attend, but Frank had signed me in as his guest, which was permitted under the bylaws he had read carefully on Sunday night, bylaws Janine herself had helped draft years earlier.
The clubhouse was a long room with about forty folding chairs set up in rows facing a head table. The head table had five seats. Janine sat in the center one. Brent, the vice president I had met at my front door, sat to her right. Three other board members, two women and a man I did not know, sat alongside them.
The room was almost full. I counted roughly forty-two residents. Frank had done his work.
I recognized faces I had only seen in his folder. Doris, from two doors down. The veteran with the flag. The young couple with the vegetable garden. They were spread across the room, not clustered, exactly the way Frank had asked them to sit.
They had brought no signs. They made no noise. They had simply come.
I sat in the third row, on the aisle, with Frank’s folder in my lap and my own slim envelope underneath it. I set one sealed manila envelope on the chair beside me, addressed in handwritten ink to the Board of Directors, Maple Crest HOA.
Janine called the meeting to order at 7:02. She did not look at me directly, but I could tell she had registered me the moment I walked in. There was a slight extra crispness to her opening remarks.
She moved through the standard agenda items briskly. Minutes. Treasurer’s report. Landscaping committee.
Then, at item seven, she paused, removed her reading glasses, and addressed the room.
“Before we proceed to new business, I would like to bring the membership up to date on a serious matter affecting our community. Over the past two weeks, the owner of the parcel adjacent to our north boundary has installed an unauthorized barrier obstructing a long-standing community access route. He has refused to remove this barrier. He has harassed members of this board. And on Saturday morning, in retaliation for our reasonable enforcement efforts, he caused this board’s president, myself, to be subjected to a hostile and unprofessional interaction with a county sheriff’s deputy.”
I did not move. Frank did not move. The room was very quiet.
“As a result,” she continued, “I am introducing Resolution 24-09, which authorizes the board to expend up to forty thousand dollars from the association’s reserve fund to retain legal counsel and pursue civil action against this individual for obstruction of community access and related damages.”
She picked up the resolution and slid a copy down the table to each board member.
Brent did not pick his up. He looked at the printed sheet, slid it half an inch with his fingertips, and left it lying on the table in front of him.
Janine did not notice. She was already proceeding.
“Are there any questions before we vote?”
A man in the fifth row stood. Not someone Frank had coached, someone I did not recognize. Mid-fifties, polo shirt, tired eyes.
“Yes, I have a question. Where is this easement actually recorded?”
“It is a historic community access, Mr. Pemberton. It has been in continuous use for...”
“That’s not what I asked. I asked where it’s recorded. On what document?”
A second resident, a younger woman two rows ahead of me, raised her hand without standing.
“And what parcel is it on? Is it on association property?”