The first week was pleasant. A retired electrician named Arthur Finch brought over tomatoes from his garden. A young couple two doors down introduced themselves and offered to help move furniture. The woman across the street, Priya Shah, waved every morning on her way to work. Their daughter left a drawing of my yellow car in my mailbox with a note that said IT LOOKS LIKE A SUNSHINE SHARK.

I put it on the refrigerator.

Then I met Vivienne Hargrove.

She arrived in a navy dress, pearl earrings, and the sort of smile a person uses when they expect applause for remembering your name. She carried a binder with colored tabs and a folder stamped CEDAR GLEN HOMEOWNERS ASSOCIATION.

“Mr. Bennett,” she said. “Welcome. I’m Vivienne. Board president. We believe in standards here.”

I invited her inside. She declined and remained on the porch, studying the landscaping as if it might confess something.

“Garbage bins behind the fence, please. Lawn cut no higher than three inches. No commercial equipment parked outdoors. And we discourage unnecessary noise.”

“Understood.”

Her eyes shifted past me toward the garage. “I heard you have a rather expensive automobile.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“We’ve had issues with showy vehicles attracting undesirable attention.”

I looked at her. “The car stays in my garage.”

“Good. We try to preserve the character of this street.”

The way she said character bothered me. I had heard the word used as a fence before. I was a Black man living in a neighborhood where most houses were owned by white families; I knew that sometimes a sentence could remain technically polite while still telling you where someone believed the boundaries were.

Vivienne gave me the binder. She mentioned the board’s monthly meeting, the community landscaping standards, the cost of maintaining the gates, and the annual social event. Her son, she explained, would soon be leaving for college. Her husband handled real estate investments. She had been board president for eight years.

“People appreciate strong leadership,” she said.

Arthur Finch, I learned later, had a different description.

“People got tired of arguing,” he told me over the fence one afternoon.

Arthur was seventy-four, a widower with a slow, dry manner of speaking. He had installed a camera over his garage after someone repeatedly moved his trash bins into the street and the association fined him for it.

“Vivienne says the board is unanimous every time,” he said. “Most of the time we don’t know there was a vote.”

“Doesn’t sound healthy.”

“It keeps the peace, if peace means nobody opens their mouth.”

He offered me another tomato.

I laughed, but there was nothing funny about the way he checked the street before he spoke.

CHAPTER FOUR — Dylan

Dylan Hargrove came to my garage on a Thursday afternoon with one foot on a skateboard and his eyes fixed on the Lamborghini.

He was tall, fair-haired, and dressed like the kind of teenager who expected somebody else to notice how expensive every item was. He had a casual, practiced smile. It looked friendly until you said something he didn’t want to hear.

“That’s yours?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“For real?”

“For real.”

He walked closer and trailed his fingers toward the hood. I placed a soft cloth between his hand and the paint. He laughed.

“Relax. It’s just a car.”

“Then it’ll be easy for you not to touch it.”