The first board came down while I was standing at the kitchen sink.
I heard wood split. Then it split again. Underneath both sounds was the thin, angry whine of a small saw, the kind that cuts fast and apologizes for nothing.
I set my coffee down and went out the back door so quickly I nearly lost my footing on the patio stones.
Vivian Vance was in my backyard.
She had a pry bar in her right hand and work gloves on, which told me she had planned this the way other people plan yard work. Two cedar crosspieces from my grandfather's grape arbor were already lying in the dirt. A stretch of the low stone border around Claire's herb garden had been pried apart, stone by stone, like someone opening a seam. One of the old vines had come loose from its support and hung there, trembling a little in the morning air.
"What are you doing?" I said.
She glanced at me the way you glance at weather. "Morning, Nathan."
"That is not an answer."
She wedged the pry bar under another crosspiece and leaned on it. The wood groaned.
"Stop," I said. "Stop right now."
"You should lower your voice."
"You are tearing apart my arbor."
"No." She pulled, and the board gave with a crack that went through my teeth. "I am removing an obstruction."
I stared at her. "That arbor has stood here since 1993."
"Which is exactly the problem."
She said it calmly. That was the worst part. There was no anger in her, no embarrassment, none of the heat you would expect from a person caught destroying something that was not hers. She was fifty-eight, dressed in clean hiking boots and a jacket that looked like it had never met dirt before that morning, and she was working in my yard like a contractor who had been hired and paid.
She had lived on the ten acres east of us for less than two years. In that time I had spoken to her maybe a dozen times. Mailbox conversations. Fence-line conversations. Nothing that ended with permission to bring a pry bar onto my land.
"Put that down," I said. "And get off my property."
"I'm almost finished with this section."
"You are not finishing anything."
I walked toward her across the grass. The cut vine brushed my shoulder as I passed it. My grandfather had trained that vine himself, year by year, with twine and patience and strong opinions about both.
Vivian did not step back. She set the pry bar down slowly, like she was the reasonable one and wanted the record to show it, and reached for the leather bag she had left by the fence.
"You need to read something before you make this worse," she said.
"I'm not making anything worse. You brought a saw into my yard."
"You are approaching me in a threatening manner."
"I am walking across my own grass."
She drew out a folded document and held it up between us, the way a referee holds a flag. "Before you threaten me again, read this."
"I haven't threatened you once."
"Then read it."
I did not take it right away. I looked at the arbor instead. The crosspiece she had just pulled loose lay across the herb garden with rosemary crushed under it. One of the upright posts stood bare now, and on it, at about chest height, were the pencil marks where Owen and Lily had measured themselves every September since they were small enough to stand still for it. The marks were still there. The board above them was on the ground.
That is when my hands started to shake, which embarrassed me, so I put them in my pockets.
"Give it here," I said.
She handed me the paper like she was dealing a card she knew would win.
At first glance it looked like every official document I had ever been afraid of. There was a seal at the top, round and complicated. Under it, in heavy block letters, a division name. A case number. My address, printed correctly. My parcel number, printed correctly. And under all of that, in bold: NOTICE OF REQUIRED ACCESS RESTORATION.
My mouth went dry in a way that had nothing to do with the coffee I had left in the sink.
Vivian watched my face and took real pleasure in what she found there.
"Now you understand," she said.
"I understand that you have a piece of paper."
"I have a county notice."
"Since when does the county send its notices by neighbor?"
"Since the property owner ignored every other method."
"I have never seen this before in my life."
She folded her arms. "That, Nathan, is a claim you are going to have trouble proving."
Behind her, the saw sat in the grass where she had left it, its blade catching the light. The arbor stood with one side opened to the sky, and the vine hung down where nothing held it anymore.
I looked at the seal again. I looked at the bold letters. And for one ugly second, standing in my own backyard, I did not feel certain of anything at all.