She narrowed her eyes.
I continued.
"I bought a house. I refused to give away my property. And I called for help when you broke into my backyard."
For a moment, she seemed unable to respond.
Then she looked toward the pool.
Her expression changed.
Not regret.
Fear.
She seemed suddenly worried about what the investigators might discover beyond the blue bag.
I noticed.
And I remembered it.
Because the next morning, someone sent my attorney a document that made the president's strange reaction much easier to understand.
The document was an unsigned copy of a proposed environmental incident report.
It carried the name of Southern Water Integrity Services.
My property address appeared at the top.
The report described a suspected dangerous water contamination incident involving my pool.
It recommended immediate closure and restrictions on access pending further assessment.
The date was Friday.
One day before the president entered my backyard with the blue bag.
I stared at the document.
Then read it again.
The report appeared to describe the consequences of an incident that hadn't happened yet.
My attorney called me.
"Where did this come from?"
I told her it arrived anonymously through the contact address listed on her firm's website.
She paused.
Then asked whether I knew anyone at the testing company.
I reminded her about the earlier letter.
The one claiming an urgent water-quality concern without confirmed sampling.
She grew quiet.
Then said.
"We need to verify this document before assuming it's authentic."
I agreed.
But the timing was impossible to ignore.
The president had dumped an unidentified substance into my pool on Saturday afternoon.
Yet a document bearing Friday's date appeared to anticipate a contamination emergency at exactly that address.
For the first time, I began to wonder whether the blue bag wasn't the beginning of a threat.
Maybe it was the final step in a plan someone had prepared long before Saturday.
I spent most of Sunday trying not to imagine what could've happened if the children had entered the pool.
The water looked ordinary.
That was what bothered me.
Sunlight reflected across its surface, the turquoise color seemed unchanged, and the pale cloud I'd seen beneath the water had dispersed.
A person walking past might never have guessed that the pool was closed because someone had deliberately dumped material into it while making a threat about a dangerous organism.
I stood behind the patio door.
For a moment, I remembered the sound of the woman's laughter.
Then I turned away.
The pool's appearance couldn't tell me whether it was safe.
Only a proper assessment could do that.
I called the specialist coordinating the testing.