"I'm calling the police!"
I nodded.
"That's convenient."
She stared.
"What?"
I looked behind her.
"Because they're already here."
She turned.
A sheriff's deputy and a county property inspector were approaching along the walkway with a sealed document folder.
The deputy looked at the peach on the ground.
Then at the woman's handbag.
Then toward my security camera.
The HOA president's expression changed instantly.
But the deputy wasn't the person she needed to worry about most.
The inspector was carrying the original survey of our neighborhood.
And the survey was about to reveal why the HOA president had spent nearly a year trying to make me abandon my grandfather's land.
My name isn't important to what happened.
What matters is that I was forty-one years old, a Black American homeowner, a licensed civil engineer, and the third generation of my family to own fifteen acres outside Savannah, Georgia.
My grandfather purchased the original property in 1964.
Back then, the area was mostly pasture, woodland, and small family farms.
The road was gravel.
There were no decorative entrance signs, no neighborhood security cameras, and certainly no homeowners association.
There was only a modest farmhouse, a barn, a shallow creek, and a collection of fruit trees my grandfather planted after returning from years of construction work along the Georgia coast.
He believed land should produce something.
Not necessarily money.
Sometimes shade.
Sometimes food.
Sometimes a place where children could learn that good things required patience.
The peach tree beside my stone wall was his favorite.
He planted it during the spring after my father was born.
For years, its fruit fed our family.
My grandmother made preserves.
My father carried baskets to neighbors.
When I was little, my grandfather would lift me onto his shoulders so I could reach the highest branches.
He always told me to twist the peach gently.
Never yank.