Mara stood near the fence line with her arms folded tightly across her chest. She was wearing her work clothes—yoga instructor attire, which meant she’d left her studio to come here, to witness whatever I was about to witness, to try to make sense of it before I arrived.
She didn’t say I’m sorry. She didn’t say this is terrible or awful or unbelievable.
She just shook her head. “I tried to stop them.”
“What do you mean you tried to stop them?”
She explained that two trucks arrived late that morning—company logos on the doors, workers wearing orange safety shirts and hard hats, equipment that made professional cutting sounds. She walked over and asked what they were doing. One of the men told her they were “just following the work order.”
“Whose work order?” she asked.
“Cedar Ridge Estates HOA.”
I blinked. I tried to process what she’d just said, tried to make the words arrange themselves into something that made sense.
