He studied me for a moment. “What do you do?”

“I own a detailing company.”

“Like washing cars?”

“Among other things.”

“So you clean rich people’s cars and they let you borrow this one?”

“No. I bought it.”

His eyebrows rose, but not with admiration. Something about my answer offended him, as if the world had displayed an equation he wasn’t willing to solve.

“I could drive it better than you,” he said. “My friend has a McLaren. We take it out all the time.”

“I’m sure you enjoy that.”

“Let me take yours around the block.”

“No.”

He smiled again. “I’ll be careful.”

“No.”

“Five minutes. You can come with me if you’re scared.”

I set the cloth down. “Dylan, I’m not lending you my car.”

The smile vanished. “You think I’m going to wreck it?”

“I don’t hand my keys to people I just met.”

“I’m not people. I live here.”

“I’m aware.”

He looked past me into the clean garage, at the shelves, the tools, the leather seat covers. Then he gave a small shrug that looked more like a threat than indifference.

“Whatever. It’s probably leased.”

He rolled away on his skateboard without saying goodbye.

I thought that was the end of it. Most people understand a refusal after they’ve had time to cool off. But Dylan had been raised in a house where a refusal was treated as an insult to the family, not a boundary. An hour later, Vivienne called me from a number I didn’t recognize.

“Dylan tells me you embarrassed him.”

“He asked to drive my Lamborghini. I declined.”

“You could have been kind.”

“I was kind.”

“He says you treated him like a criminal.”

“I told him no.”

A silence followed. I could almost hear her rearranging the conversation so it would end with her being right.

“We believe in neighborliness, Malcolm. People around here share.”

“I share tools. I lend extension cords. I don’t lend a high-performance car to someone without experience.”

“How would you know what experience my son has?”

“Because he told me he’d never driven a Lamborghini.”

She made a sound of disgust. “I’ll remember this.”

I stood in the garage a moment after she hung up. I could smell the detail spray Theo had given me to test. The yellow hood reflected the overhead lights in a clean row.

It would have been easy to call back and apologize just to quiet the situation. Instead, I shut the garage and went inside to make dinner.

That was the first decision Vivienne couldn’t forgive.

CHAPTER FIVE — The First Notice

The first letter arrived on a Tuesday. It said my garage door had remained open longer than permitted and that the appearance of a “high-value exotic vehicle” created an unnecessary disturbance.

I read it standing at my kitchen counter, a bowl of cereal cooling beside my elbow. The notice included a seventy-five-dollar fine and an instruction to submit proof of compliance within ten business days.

I opened the HOA binder Vivienne had delivered and looked for the rule. There were pages about fences, paint colors, roof materials, outdoor decorations, and the placement of recycling containers. Nothing about an open garage door. Nothing about exotic vehicles.

I emailed the board secretary and asked for the section number.

An hour later, Vivienne replied from her personal account.