"All this time?"
Rafael nodded cautiously.
"The available records indicate the connection has been present for months."
Luke closed his eyes.
He thought about the water bills.
The strange vibration.
The endless arguments about pool access.
And the association president who behaved as though his backyard belonged to the entire neighborhood.
For months, someone had been treating his property as an unpaid utility source.
He'd been paying for it without knowing.
But the water connection was only part of the story.
The investigation into Bluehaven's invoices produced a second surprise.
The original fountain renovation proposal had included a conventional connection to the HOA's own authorized water supply.
That approach required certain infrastructure work and came with a substantial cost.
A later version of the project reduced the expense.
It described a temporary auxiliary arrangement using an existing nearby connection.
The location of that connection wasn't identified clearly in the summary provided to the HOA board.
One internal email referred to it as "the legacy recreation line."
Nora stared at the phrase.
She'd been reviewing the association's financial records for weeks and had never heard the pool described as a legitimate part of the HOA's water system.
She contacted Bluehaven's office.
The company's operations manager agreed to provide the relevant documents through the attorneys handling the matter.
What those records suggested was troubling.
Celeste had represented that the HOA possessed rights to use the old auxiliary line.
She'd provided a version of the historical access agreement to support the claim.
And she'd assured the contractor that the necessary property permissions had been addressed.
The technicians who performed the physical work hadn't personally verified the ownership history.
They relied on the authorization supplied through the project.
That reliance didn't automatically resolve Bluehaven's responsibilities.
But it explained how the connection could have been installed even though Luke never approved it.
Someone had treated a disputed document as permission to modify his plumbing.
The same document Celeste had used to claim that the neighborhood could swim in his pool.
The original historical agreement was examined more closely.
Samuel Whitaker provided an authenticated copy from his files.
It described a short-term arrangement permitting limited community swimming events during the subdivision's early development period.
It had expired long before Luke purchased the property.
It didn't establish a perpetual easement.