A white Lexus SUV stopped at the end of our driveway.
Susan stepped out.
Mid-fifties.
Perfect blond bob.
White tennis skirt even though the sky threatened rain.
Pale blue quarter-zip.
Oversized sunglasses.
Clipboard.
She walked toward me like she owned both the driveway and the afternoon.
“You must be David Harding.”
“Dave.”
She did not offer a hand.
“Susan Whitmore.”
“President of Pinehurst Enclave.”
I had seen her name in the welcome packet.
“Nice to meet you.”
She looked past me.
Directly toward the backyard.
“We need to discuss the bridge.”
No welcome.
No question about the move.
The bridge.
“What about it?”
“It has been a violation for almost eighteen months.”
I laughed because I thought she was joking.
Susan did not.
“It violates Section Four, Paragraph B of the architectural guidelines.”
“Which says?”
“Unpainted exterior structures visible from common areas are prohibited when inconsistent with community appearance.”
I looked behind us.
The bridge was barely visible from the nearest road.
“You can see maybe three feet of it through the trees.”
“That is enough.”
“It’s an access bridge.”
“It’s an eyesore.”
I studied her.
“Did the previous owner build it?”
“They refused to remove it.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Susan’s lips tightened.
“The previous owners were responsible for it.”
“Were they?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know when it was built?”
“That is irrelevant.”
To an engineer, that answer is almost always interesting.
Susan flipped a page.
“The outstanding fines were not attached properly before closing, so we are beginning enforcement with you.”
That sounded less like neighborhood administration and more like someone admitting to a legal mistake.
“How much?”
“One hundred dollars per day after thirty days.”
“For a bridge?”
“For noncompliance.”
“And what exactly do you expect?”
“Removal.”
I stared toward the creek.
“You want me to dismantle a steel bridge over a live waterway.”
“Yes.”
“Without checking environmental permits?”
She gave me the kind of patient smile adults give difficult children.
“It’s on your property.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“You have thirty days.”
“I just moved in.”
“Then it should be easy to start correctly.”
Susan wrote something on the clipboard.
“Welcome to Pinehurst, Dave.”
She walked away.
Sarah appeared at the garage door after the Lexus left.
“Was that the HOA president?”
“Yes.”
“She seems pleasant.”
“She wants us to remove the bridge.”
Sarah stared.
“The ugly one?”
“Yes.”
She looked toward it.
Then back at me.
“You like that bridge too much.”
“I’m beginning to.”
That evening, I opened the closing documents again.
This time, I treated them like engineering plans.
The survey was prepared three months earlier by a licensed land surveyor named Martin Cho.
Parcel boundaries were clear.
Front.
Sides.
Rear.
Then I noticed something I should have caught at closing.
Our rear property line did not cross Coho Creek.
It stopped along the surveyed ordinary high-water boundary on our side.
The wedge of wooded land beyond the creek was not ours.
Neither was most of the bridge.
A hatched corridor, twenty feet wide, crossed the rear corner.