“The people at the upstairs window.”

Before I could ask another question, my phone rang.

An unfamiliar woman introduced herself as an inspector from the county environmental health office.

She said the county had received another report of an unsanitary residential swimming pool.

The word another stopped me.

I asked who had made the report.

The inspector said that information was not available to her during the call.

“We will need to visit this afternoon,” she said.

I looked through the glass at the trash floating around the pool drain.

Vivian had accomplished something before breakfast, and I did not yet know what she wanted.

I asked the inspector to identify herself and send the appointment information through the county’s published contact system.

She agreed without complaint.

Then I called Lucy’s school and told them she would arrive ten minutes late.

I wanted her to describe the people she had seen before their faces became another mystery dismissed by the adults around her.

She told me that two elderly women had stood behind the upstairs curtains of Vivian’s house on different nights.

One had tapped repeatedly on the window while Lucy was swimming.

The other held up a piece of white paper with something written on it.

Lucy had shouted that she could not read the writing, and Vivian had appeared outside almost immediately.

She had told Lucy that the people were visiting relatives who did not appreciate being stared at.

I remembered the way Vivian’s house seemed to have lights on at every hour.

I remembered the white passenger van that arrived at dusk and departed before the first school bus passed.

I had never counted the people entering or leaving because it was none of my business.

Now I wondered why Vivian cared so intensely about where my daughter looked.

At school, I walked Lucy to the entrance and promised I would inspect the fence before she used the pool again.

She hugged me hard enough that I felt the zipper of her backpack against my ribs.

“Don’t fight with her,” she whispered.

I promised to be careful, which was not quite the same thing.

When I returned home, Vivian stood in my driveway beside a silver contractor’s truck.

A young man in a blue polo shirt held a measuring wheel.

“Noah,” she said brightly, “I brought somebody who can solve your problem.”

I asked what problem she meant.

“The visibility of your unsanitary pool from the surrounding properties.”