Specifically, the front bumper had been damaged. A scrape and partial separation of the bumper from the fascia on the passenger side, consistent with the kind of contact damage that occasionally occurs during towing when the hookup is done hastily or the vehicle is moved in a tight storage space. Renata had objected strenuously to the impound lot staff. She had, according to my source who had a contact who worked adjacent to the impound lot, been very vocal about the damage and had demanded that the lot take immediate responsibility and pay for repairs. The impound lot staff had given her a damage dispute form and process for filing a claim.
She had, according to the same source, not received this information calmly. The damage to the SUV was real. Whether the impound lot was responsible for it or whether it had preexisted the tow was a matter for the dispute process. I have no information about how that dispute was resolved. What I know is that on a Thursday afternoon, approximately 2 weeks after she had driven her silver SUV over my grandfather's snowman without stopping.
Renata Kolb was standing in an impound lot looking at a damaged bumper on that same vehicle, having just paid the towing and storage fee to get it out. The universe, I have always believed, has a rough but functional sense of proportion. A special session was held on a Tuesday evening. 44 homeowners attended, which was the largest attendance at any HOA meeting in Millfield Commons' history, according to Robert Finley, who mentioned this as he called the meeting to order. The meeting was structured differently from the regular meeting.
It had been organized as a governance review session with specific agenda items addressing the amendment process, the enforcement procedure, and the conduct standards expected of HOA officers. Robert had done real work in preparing the agenda, and I respected him for it. The discussion was substantive. Each agenda item was addressed with specific reference to the HOA's governing documents, the community standards, and the state statutes that governed homeowner associations. Several homeowners who had legal or governance backgrounds contributed to the discussion.
The process that emerged over the course of 3 hours was not a trial of Renata Kolb. It was, more accurately, a community deciding what it wanted to be and what standards it expected of the people who governed it. At the end of the session, the board voted on three formal resolutions. The first established a homeowner review panel, three community members elected by the full homeowner community, with authority to review HOA officer conduct complaints and make recommendations to the board. The second required that all future HOA amendments undergo a 60-day homeowner comment period before any vote, with comments formally incorporated into the meeting record.
The third established a code of conduct for HOA officers, which included a provision stating that an HOA officer who engaged in conduct unbecoming of the position, as determined by the homeowner review panel, could be subject to a recommendation for removal. All three resolutions passed unanimously. Renata abstained on the third one. The annual election was held in March. Paul Whitmore ran for HOA president.
Renata Kolb did not file. Paul was elected with 81% of votes cast, which was the highest margin in Millfield Commons' election history. My grandfather came with my mother to the annual meeting. He had not attended an HOA meeting before. He was not a homeowner in Millfield Commons.
He was a frequent visitor. My parents' house was his second home, but my mother had asked him to come, and he had agreed. He sat in the back row during the election results and clapped when Paul's numbers were announced. Afterward in the parking lot, he and I stood together for a few minutes while my mother said goodbye to some neighbors. It was March, still cold, the kind of late winter cold that has lost its ferocity but not its bite.
He had his coat collar turned up and his hands in his pockets, and he looked, as he always looked to me, like a man entirely at ease with where he was. He said, "That was a good meeting." I said I thought so, too. He said he was going to build another snowman when there was good snow. He said the girls would want to help again.
I said I would come and help, too. He looked at me with the specific expression of a grandfather who knows exactly what his grandson is worth and is entirely satisfied with the assessment. He did not say anything for a moment. Then he said he appreciated everything I had done. I told him I had mostly just shown a neighbor some camera footage.
He said sometimes that is everything. He was not wrong. The camera footage was the foundation of all of it, the police report, the community awareness, the special session, the election. None of it would have developed the way it did without a clear, dated, unambiguous piece of evidence that showed what had actually happened on that Saturday morning. Harold Henderson had installed his security camera for his own reasons with no connection to any of this.
He had simply placed it at an angle that covered the street because that is where you put a security camera if you want it to do its job. And its job on that particular Saturday morning was to record 4 seconds of a silver SUV making a deliberate choice. 4 seconds that cost Renata Kolb her impound fees, her bumper, her HOA presidency, and the comfortable assumption that what she did in a neighborhood where she had authority would not be seen and would not matter. It was seen. It mattered.
My grandfather built his next snowman in February during the last real snow of the season. The girls came over. They built the base section together, all three of them, and they put the carrot on straight this time and the scarf from the costume box and two round stones from the garden border for eyes. My grandfather photographed himself with it again and sent me the photograph with a caption that just said still here. I looked at that photograph for a while when I received it.
The snowman in the yard, my grandfather smiling beside it, the houses of the neighborhood quiet and white behind them, everything exactly where it belonged. Still here.