“You sent police to my home,” she said.
“I reported someone who appeared to need assistance.”
“Those women are my relatives.”
“I hope they are safe.”
Vivian’s eyes narrowed at my refusal to argue.
“I have never seen you care so much about strangers.”
“I don’t need to know someone to care whether they’re safe.”
She looked toward my garage camera.
“You have an unhealthy interest in my household.”
“My camera faces my pool.”
“You could turn it off.”
“You could stop throwing trash in the water.”
For a moment, her face slackened as if she had forgotten which story she was telling.
Then she smiled again.
“You really believe everything is about you.”
She walked home without another word.
I took a photograph of the clock on my microwave and recorded the time of the exchange in my notes.
The following morning, the pool contained three unopened cartons of milk, a pile of wilted flowers, and a damaged plastic fan.
The fan bore a bright orange sticker with a number printed beneath a barcode.
I pulled it from the water with a net and photographed the sticker.
I knew enough about repair shops to recognize an inventory label.
The serial number had been partially scraped away, but the sticker remained intact.
I bagged the fan and placed it in the locked storage cabinet beside my garage.
Then I called a pool maintenance company that had serviced the equipment before I bought the house.
The technician, a woman named Tess Romero, arrived that afternoon.
She tested the water, inspected the filter, and listened while I described the garbage.
“I have cleaned a lot of pools,” she said.
“Most careless neighbors throw bottles or leaves, not equipment labels and whole cartons of milk.”
She asked whether I wanted the entire system flushed.
I said yes, even though I knew the cost would consume another portion of my savings.
Tess helped me photograph the filter contents before removing them.
She noticed several fragments of fabric caught in the intake basket.
“These look like pieces of a disposable bed pad,” she said.
“Can you tell where they came from?”
“Not from the water alone.”
She put the fragments into a sealed disposal bag and told me to keep a dated photograph if I needed to pursue a vandalism complaint.
We worked together until sunset.
The water cleared slowly, but the smell of spoiled milk lingered on the patio.
