On the Monday after that week, I called Daniel Okafor. I had his name from Priya, who had used him years earlier for a contract matter and had described him as precise and unhurried. I did not want a lawyer who would make speeches. I wanted a lawyer who would write a letter, correctly, and then tell me what not to do next.
Okafor's office answered promptly, and I explained, briefly, who I was and what I needed. I owned a pool at 14 Cloverfield Road. I had withdrawn permission for a neighbor to use it in writing in July. Use had continued. The pool had since been drained for replastering, and police officers had visited on a Saturday morning. I did not want to file a lawsuit. I said that plainly, twice, because I wanted there to be no misunderstanding about what I was hiring him to do. I wanted a letter, not a lawsuit.
He listened without interrupting, and then he asked for the dates. I gave them to him: July 1, when the letter was mailed; July 3, when it was signed for; August 24, when the child was found in the shallow end; September 2, when Aqua Design quoted the replastering. He asked whether I had documentation of ownership. I said I did, and I listed it, briefly: the Aqua Design contract, the county permit, the final inspection certificate in my name, the two canceled checks, twelve years of maintenance invoices. He did not ask me to read them to him. He asked me to bring copies to his office, or to send them, in order, which I already had.
We met briefly that week, and I brought the copies in a folder, not the binder itself. The binder stayed at home, on the shelf by the front door, because it was the original and I did not lend originals. Okafor reviewed the folder, made notes in a small, neat hand, and told me that a short letter would be sufficient. It would state, in plain language, that I was the owner of record of the pool at 14 Cloverfield Road, that permission to use it had been withdrawn in July, that no further entry for the purpose of using the pool was permitted, and that I would keep records of any further use. It would not threaten a lawsuit. It would not accuse anyone of a crime. It would simply put the position in writing, from a lawyer's office, so there could be no later claim that the position had been unclear.
He sent the letter that week, by mail, to Sandra Fielding at 16 Cloverfield Road. Then he made one phone call to me, to confirm that it had been sent, and to give me one piece of advice. Do not discuss the matter with Sandra directly, he said. Do not argue about the letter at the fence. If there is further use, write it down, as I had been doing, and send him a copy. That was the whole of his advice, and it was the advice I had already been following for seven months, which may be why I trusted him.
I filed his letter, or rather my copy of it, in the folder with the Aqua Design estimate, and I wrote down the date of his phone call in the log. One letter, one phone call. That was the extent of the legal action I took that autumn, and it was enough. I had not hired a lawyer to fight a battle for me. I had hired one to write a letter that said, clearly and without heat, what I had already said in July. The pool stayed empty and locked, the gate code stayed changed, and I went back to the ordinary work of the week, with the record a little longer than it had been before, and a little harder to argue with.
I was careful, in that entry, not to overstate what Okafor had done. He had not filed anything. He had not gone to court. He had not threatened anyone. He had written a letter, and he had called me once to confirm it, and those two acts were the whole of it. That restraint mattered to me, because the summer had taught me that the strongest position is usually the quietest one, stated once, in writing, and then left to stand. A lawsuit would have made the story louder without making it truer. A letter, filed beside the July letter and the September estimate, made the file longer by exactly one document, and that was the right amount. I closed the folder, put it on the shelf beside the binder, and checked the gate before dark, as I did every evening that autumn.