Jason said he had removed boards that crossed onto his property.
The inspector asked for his survey.
Jason said the line was obvious.
The inspector asked for the permit for the garage.
Jason pulled up a contractor invoice on his phone.
The inspector looked at it for less than a second.
“That is not a permit,” he said.
The whole yard went still.
A delivery van rolled past at the corner.
Somewhere behind us, a dog barked twice and stopped.
The inspector began measuring.
He checked the porch landing.
He checked the ramp footprint.
He found the old survey pin near the fence and ran a bright string line through the grass.
He compared the measurements with the approved site plan on his tablet.
The ramp had been entirely inside our property.
Not close.
Not debatable.
Entirely inside.
Jason watched the inspector measure the distance from the string line to the side of the new garage.
The inspector measured once.
Then again.
He walked to the rear corner and measured there.
He took photographs.
He entered notes into the tablet.
Jason’s confidence drained by degrees.
“What is it?” Jason asked.
The inspector didn’t answer right away.
He opened the garage file.
There was no final approval in it.
There was an application started months earlier, but the site plan attached to it showed a smaller structure farther from the property line.
The garage Jason had built didn’t match the plan.
Worse, part of the side wall crossed the recorded boundary.
The building also covered a narrow access strip shown on the survey.
That strip was the very area Jason had accused Emma’s ramp of invading.
The inspector walked to the garage with the orange paint.
Jason moved in front of him.
“What are you doing?”
“Documenting the noncompliant section.”
“You can’t paint my building.”
“I can mark the area under inspection.”
Jason looked at me as though I had arranged the geometry.
I had done nothing except keep the papers he assumed didn’t matter.
The inspector lowered the nozzle.
The orange paint hissed across the gray siding in one hard diagonal line.
