Chapter 5
"I'll do it," Millicent said.
She stood up from her folding chair, her straw hat in her hands, and walked to the window at the front of the room. Through the glass, the terrace wall was visible, and on it, the carved stone plaque set beside the steps.
The number had been cut into the stone in the spring of 1991, the year the club had been founded. Four digits. Deeply incised. Under it, a single word: WILLOWMERE.
Millicent craned her neck. "Parcel number 1142," she said. "It's there. Clear as anything, carved into the wall."
The room turned to look at Hollis's hand. His aunt's handwriting. The same four digits.
Claudia made a sound, a small compressed syllable that might have been a laugh and wasn't. She backed one step into the table edge and stood stiff, both hands still at her sides, chin up but her eyes cutting sideways at her committee.
Priya looked down at her shoes. Warren Ellery had not moved.
"This doesn't change anything," Claudia said. Her voice had gone to a blank, toneless register. "A deed can be contested. It was never meant—she was old, she wasn't in her right mind—"
"My aunt was lucid," Hollis said. "The doctor who saw her that spring wrote a statement; the county attached it to the deed. She knew exactly what she was doing."
Claudia's lips pressed together. She looked at the deed again, the parcel number that lined up so perfectly with the plaque she'd passed a thousand times, and for the first time since he'd met her, she had no words ready.
Warren cleared his throat.
"Claudia," he said. "How long have you known the lease was never signed?"
"I've been president for eleven years." She still wasn't looking at him. "The agreement was in place before my term. I always assumed the paperwork existed."
"You assumed," Warren repeated. "You assumed. You've been running this club for eleven years on an assumption, and you never once checked whether the ground you stood on was actually under your feet?"
"It was a formality—"
"It was the foundation of everything you've ever told this club." Warren's voice was level, but it carried. "Every decision you've made, every hire, every plant you've ordered, every person you've spoken to like they were beneath you — all of it rested on a piece of paper that did not exist. And you never looked."
Claudia's face flushed. It went red in patches along her throat, climbing up her jaw.
"The grounds have been maintained," she said. "For thirty years. That has to count for something."
"It counts for a great deal," Hollis said quietly. Everyone turned to look at him. He was still holding the deed, still standing in the middle of the room. "The club cared for this property when my aunt was too old to do it herself. I don't want to take that away. I think the garden would be worse off without the people who've worked it."
Priya looked up. Claudia's throat worked.
"But the terms of that arrangement," Hollis went on, "are going to be written down. Signed. Dated. Filed with the county. And the president of this club is going to be someone who understands what a lease is."
The silence was total.
"I'm not asking anyone to leave," Hollis said. "I'm telling you what the new arrangement will be. One year at a time, renewable by mutual agreement. The board votes on who leads. And the groundskeeping position stays filled by me, for as long as I want it, because I'm the owner, and it's my garden. I'll hire a service if I want a service. But that decision is mine."
He folded the deed and put it back in his pocket.
"Friday's vote on the lease renewal is cancelled," he said. "There's nothing to renew. There never was."
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