That evening his daughter called from Ohio, as she did every Sunday and Wednesday, and he told her about the letter, making it sound smaller than it was, and she said, Dad, do you want me to come down, and he said no, no, it was just paperwork, he had it handled. After he hung up he sat in the living room with the television on and the sound low, and Eleanor's knitting basket still sat beside her chair, and her reading glasses still lay on the side table, folded, waiting, and Harold understood, not for the first time, that grief was not a storm that passed but a climate you learned to live in, like the humidity in August. He fell asleep in his chair and dreamed about the firehouse, about the brass pole and the smell of diesel and Eleanor bringing a birthday cake to the station in 1988 with forty candles that set off the smoke detector, and he woke at half past four with his neck stiff and the dream still warm around him like a blanket.
The next morning there was a white golf cart idling at the curb in front of his house, and in it sat the compliance officer, a young man named Tyler who could not have been more than twenty-five, with a clipboard and a digital camera. Harold watched from the porch as Tyler photographed the Mustang from four angles, measured the distance from the bumper to the sidewalk with a rolling wheel, and attached a bright orange sticker to the driver's window. The sticker said NOTICE OF VIOLATION in letters two inches high. Harold walked down the driveway in his slippers, and Tyler looked up with the practiced neutrality of someone who has been trained not to engage, and Harold said, Son, do you know what that sticker's adhesive does to forty-year-old paint, and Tyler said, Sir, I'm just documenting, take it up with the board, and drove away in his little cart, leaving Harold holding the orange sticker he had peeled off with infinite care, the paint beneath it miraculously unharmed, his hands shaking with a rage he had not felt since a landlord in 1979 had tried to evict a widow on his block at Christmas.
He went to the board meeting. The Maple Hollow HOA met on the second Thursday of every month in the community clubhouse, a room that smelled of carpet cleaner and old coffee, with folding chairs arranged in rows and a long table at the front where the five board members sat like judges. Harold had never attended a meeting in forty-four years. He arrived early and sat in the back, in his good jacket, the one he had worn to Eleanor's funeral, and he listened as the board approved the minutes and discussed the pool chlorine levels and voted to fine a family on Chestnut Lane for leaving their trash bins out past seven p.m. When the floor was opened for resident comments, Harold stood up, and the room, which had been murmuring, went quiet, because Harold Brennan at seventy-eight was still six foot two and still carried himself like a man who had commanded rooms full of smoke and flame.
He said his name and his address. He said he had received a letter about his wife's car. He said the car had been in his driveway since 1982, that his wife had died nineteen months ago, that he was in the process of getting it registered and repaired, and that he was asking the board for sixty days of grace, which was, he noted, less time than the board had once given a homeowner on Elm Street to repaint a nonconforming fence. He spoke plainly and without self-pity, and when he finished, the room was silent, and several of his neighbors turned in their seats to look at him with an sympathy that made his throat tight.
Diane Kessler thanked him for his comments with a smile that did not reach her eyes. She was a woman in her late fifties, trim and polished, with the brisk efficiency of a former corporate manager, which she was. She said the board sympathized with his loss, truly it did, but the covenants existed to protect everyone's property values, and exceptions could not be made, because exceptions became precedents, and precedents became lawsuits. She said the fourteen-day clock had already begun and would not be extended. She said the board would, however, be happy to provide him with a list of approved storage facilities where the vehicle could be kept out of sight. Harold looked at her for a long moment, and then he said, very quietly, My wife is buried at Fairview, Mrs. Kessler. This car is the only thing of hers I have left that still smells like her. And Diane Kessler said, Mr. Brennan, I understand this is emotional, but the rules are the rules, and moved on to the next agenda item, and Harold walked out of the clubhouse into the parking lot and stood beside his old pickup truck with his hands braced on the hood, breathing the way he had taught rookies to breathe in a smoke-filled stairwell, slow and deliberate, until the red went out of his vision.