Ray Voss, 58, retired U.S. Forest Service wildland firefighter, had avoided every neighborhood HOA event for 18 months straight. The retired smokejumper built custom Adirondack chairs out of reclaimed ponderosa pine out of his garage for extra cash, and he still held a grudge against the HOA for fining him $75 last spring for stacking his raw lumber 12 inches too close to his property line. The only reason he showed up to the August block party was his 12-year-old next door neighbor had begged him to bring the hand-painted cornhole boards he’d made the kid for his birthday, and Ray never could say no to that kid.
The air hung thick with the smell of charred hamburgers and cherry Kool-Aid, the asphalt under his scuffed work boots still holding the day’s heat even as the sun dipped pink over the foothills. He’d been leaning against the bed of his beat-up 2008 F-150, sipping a Coors Light and watching the kids chase each other with water guns, when he heard her voice. Lena Marlow, 54, the HOA president he’d only ever seen in tailored blazers yelling over meeting microphones about fence height restrictions, was leaning over the cornhole board, laughing so hard she snort-laughed when the beanbag the kid threw bounced off the edge and hit her square in the shoulder. She was wearing a cutoff denim work shirt, no blazer, the top two buttons undone, sun streaks in her salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a messy braid, a spiked seltzer in one hand.