marriage and his thirties, and he would burn down the world before he let
anyone take it from him.
5
He didn't know, floating there, that someone was already trying.
---
The trouble with Diane Holloway was that she had never once, in the two
years Tom had lived on Larkspur Lane, done anything he could take a
photograph of.
That was Tom's private joke about her, and it wasn't entirely a joke. Diane
was fifty-four, blonde in the expensive way, and president of the Oakmont
Estates Homeowners Association, and she conducted her campaigns the way
good hackers conducted intrusions: nothing you could screenshot, everything
deniable, all of it corrosive. The first citation had arrived six weeks after
Tom moved in — his fence, she wrote, exceeded the permitted height by six
inches. Tom had measured it with a laser level. It exceeded the permitted
height by one inch, maybe, on the downhill side where the grade dropped.
He'd trimmed the post caps and paid the twenty-five-dollar "administrative
review fee" and told himself it was the cost of living somewhere with good
schools.
Then came the cameras. Tom had installed four of them himself the spring
after someone walked off with three packages in a week — one watching the
street, one on the side gate, one on the rear fence, one covering the pool and
patio. He'd mounted them neatly, run the cables through the eaves, set up the
tablet on the patio table so he could check the feeds with his coffee. Diane
had brought it up at the next HOA meeting with the thin smile Tom would
come to know the way sailors know weather.
"Several residents," she'd said, "have expressed discomfort with excessive
surveillance equipment. We all value security, of course. But there's a line
between vigilance and — well." The pause had been surgical. "Making one's
6
neighbors feel watched."
Nobody had expressed anything. Tom had asked around. Hank from two
doors down had laughed so hard he'd spilled his beer. But the letter arrived
anyway, on association letterhead, suggesting Tom "consider the
community's comfort" and remove "no fewer than two" cameras. Tom had
considered it for exactly as long as it took to recycle the letter, and had kept
all four cameras, and had added a doorbell camera for spite.
Then the pool pump. Diane had stood on his driveway at seven-fifteen on a
Tuesday morning with a phone app open, informing him that his pump was
producing fifty-eight decibels at the property line and the covenant allowed
fifty-five. Tom, who measured things for a living, had borrowed a calibrated
meter from work and measured forty-nine. He'd sent her the readings. She'd
sent back a letter thanking him for his "cooperation" and fining him fifty
dollars for "disputative correspondence."
The worst one hadn't been a letter. It had been a Saturday last October,
Chloe's weekend, the two of them raking leaves in the front yard — or rather,
Chloe photographing leaves while Tom raked — when the white golf cart
had rolled silently to the curb. Diane had gotten out with her clipboard and
walked right up the driveway, smiling at Chloe the way a shark might smile
at a swimmer.
"Chloe! Growing like a weed. Tom." The smile had stayed on Chloe and slid
off him. "I couldn't help noticing the pump running. It's barely nine."
"It's on a timer," Tom had said. "It runs nine to five. As it has for two years."
"Mm." Diane had made a note. On the clipboard. In front of his daughter.
"The covenants do specify quiet hours until ten on weekends. I'm sure it's
just an oversight." She'd turned back to Chloe. "How's school, sweetheart?"
7
Chloe, who missed nothing, had said, "Fine, Mrs. Holloway," in the tone she
used for telemarketers.
After the cart had rolled away, Chloe had looked at her father. "She's the
worst person on this street, right? Like, officially?"
"She's the president of the association," Tom had said carefully.
"That's not an answer."
"It's the most diplomatic answer you're getting."
Chloe had photographed the golf cart disappearing around the corner, and
titled the photo "The Fun Police," and made it her phone wallpaper for a
month.
It would have been funny if it hadn't been so clearly personal. And Tom
knew exactly when it had become personal: the March meeting, fourteen
months ago. He'd spent two weekends building a spreadsheet — three years
of HOA financials, assessment letters, and the GreenLine invoices Diane's
office was legally required to make available on request — and he'd printed
it all and put it in a manila folder, and he'd sat in the third row of the
clubhouse with his hands folded, waiting for the open forum.
Diane had run the meeting the way she ran everything: briskly, beautifully,
and with total control of the microphone. Budget review. Landscaping update
— Doug Raines had stood at the back in a GreenLine polo, arms crossed,
nodding along as his sister praised the "exceptional value" of his company's
work. Committee reports. Then: "Open forum. Mr. Beckett, I see your hand."
Tom had stood. He'd kept his voice exactly level — consultant voice,
incident-report voice.
"Thank you, Madam President. I've reviewed the last three years of
8
association financials." He'd held up the folder. "In thirty-six months, this
community has paid three special assessments totaling eleven thousand
dollars per household. In the same period, the landscaping contract — held
without competitive bidding by GreenLine Landscaping — has increased
forty percent. I'd like to understand the relationship between those two facts."
The silence in the clubhouse had been total. Somebody's chair creaked. Doug
Raines had uncrossed his arms.
Diane's smile hadn't moved. But something behind it had gone very still.
"Mr. Beckett," she'd said, "the association's finances are reviewed annually
by a licensed accountant, and I assure you everything is in order. Perhaps if
you attended the budget workshop instead of just the meetings where you can
perform — "
"I attend all of them," Tom had said. "Including the workshops. The
workshop minutes don't mention the contract renewal either."
A murmur had moved through the room — small, surprised, quickly