“Where?”
“At your mailbox. Maybe twice.”
“So when you called the police, you knew I wasn’t some random person who had climbed a fence.”
“I didn’t know who you were.”
“You knew I might live there.”
She looked down.
“Yes.”
I thought about the way she had looked at my driver’s license and still searched for another explanation.
Jonathan said nothing.
He didn’t need to.
Patricia finally said, “I made assumptions about you.”
It wasn’t a polished apology.
Maybe that was why I listened.
“I was wrong.”
I nodded.
“I appreciate you saying that.”
She looked relieved too quickly.
I continued.
“But that doesn’t resolve the property.”
Her expression changed.
The legal options were unpleasant for everyone.
I could demand removal of the encroaching structures, although doing so would probably lead to expensive litigation. Patricia could make several legal arguments based on the history of the property, but none offered the simple certainty she had apparently hoped for.
Or we could negotiate.
I asked for an independent appraisal of the affected land.
Not a neighborhood favor.
Not a revenge price.
The actual value.
Patricia would purchase the strip at the appraised amount, pay the surveying and legal costs required to redraw and record the boundary, and cover the installation of a new fence along the revised line.
There was one additional condition.
The new boundary could not reduce the privacy buffer required around my backyard.
That meant she would have to add landscaping on her side.
Her attorney called the proposal reasonable.
Patricia didn’t look happy.
I wasn’t trying to make her happy.
I was trying to finish the problem correctly.
She accepted.
The paperwork took almost three months.
During that time, we barely spoke.
The neighborhood, unfortunately, spoke plenty.
Someone had recorded part of the police interaction from the sidewalk, and the story moved through the community faster than I expected.
A few neighbors came over to apologize even though they hadn’t been involved.
Others wanted details.
I stopped giving them any.
I didn’t need Patricia turned into entertainment any more than I had needed to become a spectacle in my own backyard.
The conversation I cared about happened with Noah.
One evening we were shooting baskets when he asked why I hadn’t made Patricia tear down her pool.
“Wouldn’t that have taught her a lesson?”
I caught his missed shot.
“Maybe.”
I passed the ball back.