Jake had looked at the kitchen with its wide windows, the backyard big enough for cookouts, the garage where he could finally store his tools, and the quiet street where nobody seemed in a hurry to be anywhere.
“Yeah,” he said. “This feels like home.”
They signed the papers six weeks later.
The trouble began before the moving truck had even finished backing into the driveway.
A woman in a cream cardigan appeared across the street, holding a coffee mug in one hand and a clipboard in the other. She had silver-blond hair styled so perfectly it looked like a helmet. Her mouth was pressed into a line that suggested she had never once enjoyed a surprise.
“That,” Lena said quietly from the porch, “must be the HOA lady.”
Jake followed her gaze.
The woman did not wave. She observed.
Later that afternoon, while Jake carried boxes labeled KITCHEN and BOOKS into the house, Lena found a folded paper tucked beneath their door mat.
It was a welcome notice from the Ashford Hills Homeowners Association.
