Back in Willow Creek, Marisol was learning that winning the war and governing the peace were two very different things. She had been elected president of the new board in a landslide, which thrilled her for exactly one week, until she realized what she had inherited. The reorganization plan had left the community solvent but thin. The reserve fund, which should have held over a million dollars, held a little under two hundred thousand. The insurance premiums had tripled, because try explaining to an underwriter that your last board committed federal crimes. The landscaping contract had to be rebid, and the bids came in at half of what Evergreen Grounds had been charging, which told everyone exactly how much had been stolen. Tom Okafor, as treasurer, published every number on the community website, and the numbers were ugly, and people were angry, and some of them were angry at Marisol, as if she had been the one stealing. "I didn't sign up for this," she told me one evening on my patio, and she laughed, but it was the tired laugh of a woman carrying something heavy. "Actually," she said, "I did sign up for this. I ran for it. God help me, I campaigned." I refilled her sweet tea. "You're the only person everyone trusts," I said. "That's why it's hard." She nodded. "Trust is heavy," she said. "Nobody tells you that."
The first real test of the new board came that spring, when a resident named Samuel Adeyemi moved in with his twelve-year-old daughter, who had epilepsy, and a seizure-alert dog named Biscuit. No relation to Jessica Tran's Biscuit. This happens more than you would think. There are a lot of dogs named Biscuit. Samuel submitted a reasonable accommodation request, with full documentation, the way the law requires. Dorothy Pabst, as chair of the new accommodations committee, reviewed it personally. She called Samuel. She asked about his daughter, about the dog, about what the family needed. She approved the request in six days. Six days. Then she did something that made me prouder than almost anything else in this whole story. She wrote a letter to the family, on association letterhead, welcoming them to Willow Creek Preserve, and she included a copy of the accommodation policy, and a handwritten note that said, "Your family belongs here." Samuel came to the next board meeting, not to complain, but to say thank you. He stood up during homeowner comments, and his voice broke, and he said, "We moved here because we heard this was a community that had learned something." The room applauded. Dorothy cried. Marisol cried. I did not cry, because I had done enough crying for one lifetime, but I came close.
The contrast was the point. That was what Dorothy understood. Every properly handled request was a brick in a new foundation. Every welcome letter was proof that the kingdom was gone and something better had replaced it. The DOJ monitor, a patient woman named Susan Park who visited quarterly, told Marisol at the end of the first year that Willow Creek was the most cooperative community under monitoring she had ever seen. "Most of them fight us," Susan said. "You people send us cookies." Marisol had, in fact, sent cookies. Oatmeal raisin. Susan said they were excellent.
But the past was not done with us. It rarely is. The bankruptcy trustee announced that Vanessa Aldridge's lake house would be auctioned to satisfy the creditors, and the news landed in Willow Creek like a stone in a pond. People had opinions. Some wanted the association to bid on it, to turn it into a community retreat, which struck me as poetic but impractical. Some wanted it sold to the highest bidder and the money divided. Some just wanted to drive by and look at it, which several people did, and reported back that it was smaller than expected, which pleased everyone enormously. In the end, the trustee sold it at auction for four hundred and ten thousand dollars, well below market, and after the creditors were paid, there was a surplus of about ninety thousand dollars that came back to the association. The board put it to a community vote. Option one: put it in the reserve fund. Option two: build the playground the community had been promised for a decade. The playground won in a landslide. It opened the following summer, with a ribbon cutting and a barbecue and a plaque that did not mention Vanessa Aldridge but that everyone understood. My favorite part was the fence around it. The fence had a gate, and the gate had a sign, and the sign said, in big friendly letters, ALL ARE WELCOME. Marisol's idea. She said she wanted the children to grow up reading it.