Everyone is." "I don't want to be invited." She took a long sip of wine. Her hand trembled slightly, not from fear, from rage. "Why can't you just be quiet?
Why do your people always have to be so loud?" Aaron said nothing, laid another rack of ribs in the marinade. "You know what this street was before you?" She stepped closer to the fence. "Peaceful, clean, families who understood how to behave, people who respected the neighborhood."
She waited for a reaction, got nothing. That made it worse. "And then you moved in, and suddenly it's smoke every weekend, cars I don't recognize, people I've never seen walking up and down my street like they own it." "They're called guests, Diane." She flinched, like the calmness was an insult, like his refusal to yell was the cruelest thing he could do.
"You think you're so clever." Her voice dropped, low, controlled, venomous. "You think because nobody's stopped you yet, that means you've won something. But I know what's happening here. I see it, even if nobody else has the guts to say it."
She set her wine glass on the fence post, crossed her arms. "This neighborhood has standards. It has a history. And people like you," she paused, looked directly into his eyes, "people like you never know when to leave." The words hung in the evening air like smoke that wouldn't clear.
Somewhere down the street, that sprinkler was still going, back and forth, back and forth, perfectly indifferent. Aaron set down the seasoning, wiped his hands on a towel, looked at Diane, not with anger, not with hurt, but with the steady, patient gaze of a man who'd been waiting for exactly this moment. "Good night, Diane." She grabbed her wine glass, turned, walked three steps, stopped. "Tomorrow, I'm shutting this down.
I don't care what it takes. Police, fire department, the county. I will call every authority in this state." She didn't turn around. "You do not belong here, and by tomorrow night, everyone will know it."
She went inside. The back door slammed hard enough to knock a wind chime off the hook. Aaron stood alone in his backyard. The ribs were marinating. The cameras were recording every word, every gesture, every syllable of "People like you" captured in high-definition video with crystal-clear audio.
He pulled out his phone. Three calls. First, Vivian Slater. "She just made a statement on my property line. I have everything on video.
Yes, all of it. Tomorrow, it ends." Second, Cynthia Norwood. "We're still on for tomorrow. Bring a photographer, and bring extra batteries."
Third, Officer Tanya Bowen. "Tanya, I need you to not be on shift tomorrow. Request the day off because when this happens, I don't want anyone saying I had an inside person on the scene. Dawson runs the shift, clean, by the book." He hung up, checked his cameras one last time.