Margaret's first act as president was to commission an independent financial audit of every decision Karen had made since taking office 4 years earlier. Her second act was to hire the HOA's original independent legal council, the firm Karen had bypassed when she retained her own attorney, to produce the Phantom Legal Opinion, and to restore them as the association's counsel of record. I heard Karen listed her house for sale 4 months after June 14th. She never spoke publicly about Lakeside Grand again. I walked the 14 acre lakefront parcel for the first time on a morning in late July.
Karen's resort fencing had come down 2 weeks earlier once the court confirmed access rights as part of the civil enforcement order. I parked on the gravel road and walked the perimeter of what she had built or tried to build on land that had been mine for 6 years without either of us thinking much about it. The construction had left marks. Concrete foundation forms near the water's edge. A half-completed drainage system running along the eastern boundary.
The skeleton of the pavilion still standing glass walls intact. timber framing solid the floor inside, covered in a thin layer of construction dust that nobody had swept because nobody was coming back to sweep it. It was a mess. It was going to take time and money to sort out and the civil litigation would determine who paid for what and when. But it was quiet. That was the thing.
I hadn't expected how quiet 14 acres can be when nobody is building anything on it. On the way back, I drove down the gravel road slowly past my property survey markers. The laminated placard Karen had fined me $750 for mounting to my fence post still there. County survey registration number still legible. Past the entrance to what had been Lakeside Grand.
The county notice still posted on the gate. Red text on white paper. Closed pending legal action. Edges curling slightly in the summer heat. I parked at the edge of the lake, cut the engine, poured coffee from the thermos I'd brought, and didn't forget to drink it this time.
No catering vans, no florists carrying centerpieces down the lantern-lit path. No guests in formal wear picking their way across the lawn. No clipboard. No construction noise. No project manager with blueprints under his arm.
Just the water and the tree line in the morning. I sat there for a long time. She had spent $12 million. Other people's money, borrowed money, fraudulent paperwork, trying to build something permanent on land that was never hers. I had spent 18 months making sure the county knew exactly whose land it was.