“You knew my father.”
“I never said I didn’t.”
“You made it sound like you barely knew him.”
“I said he respected boundaries.”
I held up the photograph.
“You look pretty friendly here.”
Her face did not change.
“We were neighbors.”
“My dad hated photographs.”
“He tolerated some.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
I waited.
Vanessa folded her arms.
“Our families used to cooperate more.”
“Until?”
“Your father became difficult.”
That sounded like Dad.
“How?”
“He refused to modernize the shoreline agreement.”
“What agreement?”
Vanessa’s face tightened.
Then she said:
“If you cannot locate your own property records, Claire, that is not my responsibility.”
She closed the door.
I stood on the porch staring at it.
Now I knew two things.
Vanessa was hiding something.
And whatever it was had started before my father died.
The trouble escalated gradually.
Which somehow made it worse.
First, Vanessa complained when Lily used the dock.
Then she complained about our canoe.
Then a landscaping company arrived and began planting shrubs along what Vanessa claimed was the property line.
I stopped them.
The foreman showed me a diagram Vanessa had supplied.
It placed the boundary four feet inside my yard.
“Is this a certified survey?” I asked.
He looked at it.
“No.”
“Then don’t dig.”
He shrugged.
“Fair enough.”
Vanessa came storming outside.
“You cannot interfere with my contractor.”
“I can when he’s standing on my property.”
“It is not your property.”
“Show me a survey.”
“I don’t need to keep doing this with you.”
“You haven’t done it once.”
Lily watched from the porch.
I hated that.
After Vanessa left, Lily asked:
“Are we going to lose the lake?”
“No.”
“You don’t know.”
Children are ruthless that way.
They hear the uncertainty adults decorate.
I sat beside her.
“No. I don’t know yet.”
She looked toward the water.
“Grandpa said this was our lake place.”
“I know.”
“He let me feed ducks from that dock.”
“I know.”
“Would Grandpa lie?”
“No.”
Then Lily asked:
“Could Grandpa be wrong?”
That was harder.
“Yes.”
She nodded.
“But so could Vanessa.”
I smiled.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Apparently uncertainty was easier for her than for me.
A week later, I hired a surveyor.
His name was Mark Ellison.
He arrived with equipment I did not understand and spent most of the morning walking through our yards while Vanessa watched from her terrace.
