The woman with the vest walked toward me.
“You need to move your truck now.”
I stepped out.
She stopped when she saw my work boots and dusty jeans.
Maybe I didn’t look like the festival crowd she had been expecting.
“I live here,” I said.
Her smile disappeared.
She studied the farmhouse.
Then me.
“Oh.”
“Who hired you?”
“I’m volunteering.”
“For whom?”
“The HOA.”
That was when I understood.
Cedar Ridge Estates sat east of my property.
Two hundred and forty-one houses built around a private golf course, artificial lake, clubhouse, and enough ornamental stone walls to defend a medieval kingdom.
The development had been built twelve years earlier.
My land existed decades before it.
We shared about three-quarters of a mile of boundary.
We shared nothing else.
Mercer Farm was not part of Cedar Ridge.
Never had been.
Never would be.
But Cedar Ridge had spent years pretending otherwise.
