On the cleared site where their circular driveway and fountain had once stood, the Department of the Navy and the Department of Defense had installed a permanent geodetic monitoring monument; surrounding it now, occupying the entire three-acre parcel, stood The Chief Master Surveyor Arthur Mercer & Eleanor Mercer-Vance Sovereign Community & Widows’ Legal Sanctuary, its state-of-the-art surveying archives, property rights defense pavilions, and educational classrooms training four hundred young forensic accountants, female surveyors, and legal apprentices every year in fiduciary contract defense, sovereign estate law, and constitutional property protection.
On the broad, covered cedar back deck of my restored cottage overlooking the deep-water canal where the naval patrol cutters and civilian skiffs glided clean, smooth, and free toward the bay…
Sitting at a long twelve-foot reclaimed chestnut trestle table with an open set of regional land surveys and a steaming ceramic mug of dark-roast chicory coffee…
Was Eleanor Mercer-Vance.
I was seventy-two now.
