The next morning, I got up, got dressed, and I drove down to the county records office with the deed my Frank kept in the fireproof box, the one nobody in that HOA had ever bothered to look at.
See, those survey stakes Frank drove into the ground in 1998 were not decoration. My Frank was a land surveyor for thirty years, and when we bought the third lot ever sold in that development, he read the plat the way other men read the sports page. And he found something the developer had gotten wrong.
The clerk pulled the original filings for me, and there it was in black and white, same as Frank always said. The strip of land the HOA had built their clubhouse and their precious entrance sign on had never been deeded to the association at all, it belonged to our lot, and it had for twenty-six years.
Frank never made a fuss about it. He was not that kind of man. He figured the neighbors meant no harm and the clubhouse did some good, so he let it lie, kept his roses, flew his little flag, and told only me. He said a man does not go to war over a thing nobody is hurting him with. But he wrote it all down, the survey, the deed numbers, the recorded plat, and he put it in the box, and he told me, keep this, in case anybody ever comes for the house.
Somebody had come for the house.
I did not go to war either. I am Franks wife, after all. I just had my lawyer send the HOA a very polite letter, with copies of the deed and the survey, informing them that their clubhouse sat on my property, that I had no wish to disturb it, and that I would be delighted to grant them a permanent easement, in exchange for which the association would drop every fine, cease all harassment of the older residents on my street, and put my late husbands name on a small brass plaque by the roses he planted.
The president came to my door again. No clipboard this time. No smile either, at least not the same one. She had read the letter. She understood now, she said, that they would get the house one way or another had been a poor choice of words.
I gave them the easement. I am not a cruel woman, and Frank would not have wanted the clubhouse torn down over pride. But the fines are gone, the older folks on my street are left in peace, and there is a little brass plaque by my mailbox now that says FRANKS GARDEN, right where his hands last touched the earth.
I kept his roses exactly the way he left them. Turns out he left me a good deal more than roses. He left me the whole ground they were standing on.