Three years ago, I bought a townhome in Pine Crest Ridge with a VA loan. Two bedrooms, one and a half bathrooms, a small patio facing Pikes Peak. I painted the walls myself. Warm gray in the living room, navy blue in the bedroom. I hung a framed photo of my unit on the mantel. Twelve soldiers in body armor, standing in front of a Stryker outside Mosul, 2019. That photo was the most expensive thing I owned, and it did not cost a dime.
Pine Crest Ridge is a planned community about four miles from Fort Carson’s main gate. Sixty-eight townhomes, neat sidewalks, mountain views that cost you two hundred and forty dollars a month in HOA dues. A third of the homeowners are military. Another third are retired military. The rest are civilians who either love or tolerate the sound of artillery practice drifting down from the post.
I deployed to Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, last February. A nine-month rotation. Intelligence analysis for a joint task force. The kind of work where your phone stays locked in a cabinet and you do not talk about Tuesday. Before I left, I gave my spare key to Nate Calloway. Nate lives two doors down. He is fifty-eight, a retired Army master sergeant, twenty-four years of service, three combat tours. He keeps his lawn at regulation height and drinks Earl Grey on his porch every morning at 6:30, regardless of weather. Nate is the kind of man who says twelve words a day and means every single one. I trusted him with my house the way I would trust him with a grid coordinate.
“I’ll keep an eye on it, Cole.” That was the whole conversation.
Brenda Hayworth introduced herself to me three years ago, the week I moved in. She pulled into my driveway in a pearl-white Lexus RX. Blonde bob freshly styled, clipboard in hand, smile calibrated to approximately forty percent warmth. She was fifty-one then, fifty-four now. Six years as HOA president. The kind of HOA president who sends violation notices the way other people send Christmas cards, often unsolicited, and with her name printed larger than necessary at the bottom.