I walked over to Franks that evening, told him what happened, showed him the letter. His face didn’t change much. That was the part that got me. He wasn’t surprised, not even a little. She did this to the Millers 2 years ago. Different excuse, same move. I asked him what happened with the Millers. He didn’t answer that right away.
Just looked at the letter again, then handed it back. Pull out every document from your closing. every single one. The deed, the survey, title, insurance, all of it. Don’t skim it. Read it. I asked him if the millers had done that. Frank shook his head. They paid it. He didn’t say anything else. Didn’t need to.
That night, I dug out a box I hadn’t opened since moving day. The box was in the back of my closet, taped shut. I’d written closing docks on the side with a Sharpie the day I moved in and hadn’t touched it since. I cut it open and pulled everything out onto the kitchen table. There was a lot. Deed, title, insurance policy, settlement statement, survey plat, HOA disclosure packet, a stack of addendums I didn’t remember signing, and about 40 pages of things I couldn’t identify by looking at the cover sheet. I’m not a lawyer.
I want to be clear about that. I’m a guy sitting at his kitchen table at 9:00 at night with a highlighter and a cup of coffee, trying to figure out if my neighbor just made up a reason to find me. I started with the survey. It was the big folded document, the one that looks like a map. property lines drawn out, measurements along every edge, little markers showing where my lot started and ended.
I found the driveway almost immediately. It sat entirely within my property line, not close to the edge, not bordering anything, fully, clearly, completely inside the boundary of my lot. The surveyor had marked it. The measurements confirmed it. I grabbed my phone and took a photo, zoomed in just to make sure I wasn’t reading it wrong. I wasn’t.
