CHAPTER EIGHT — THE BROKEN PIECE
While Adrian arranged Naomi’s travel, Daniel returned home and found a white truck parked outside his gate.
Two men in matching jackets said they represented the arts center’s insurance carrier and needed to inspect the statue.
“Show me your authorization,” Daniel said.
They produced business cards but no appointment confirmation.
“We were told the sculpture was held on behalf of the Mercer Foundation,” one man replied.
“It’s on private property, and the police have photographed the damage,” Daniel said.
“Nobody touches it without a written arrangement.”
The taller man grew annoyed.
“We can make this complicated.
”
“You already have.”
Daniel called the number printed on the business card while the men stood beside him.
The person who answered said the company had no such assignment.
The men left before he completed the call.
Daniel reported the encounter to Officer Cortez and sent her the registration plate number he had recorded.
He did not claim to know who had sent them.
He asked a conservator named Mira Chen to pack the broken fragments for safe storage.
Mira arrived with padded crates and studied the surface of the arm before moving it.
“This break is fresh,” she said.
“There are older fractures beneath it that someone repaired carefully.”
“Could you restore it?”
“I can stabilize it, but we should decide what the finished work is supposed to be before making new material look old.”
Daniel showed her Naomi’s model.
Mira examined the fractured base and found tiny holes where an inscription plate had once been fitted.
“Somebody removed a metal plate,” she said.
“Can we tell what it said?”
“Not from the holes alone.”
The discovery was frustrating because it suggested a missing piece of the story without identifying who removed it.
Mira documented the cavities and secured the stone in padded supports.
Daniel asked what would happen if someone tried to lift the full statue without professional equipment.
“They might lose the entire torso,” she replied.
“And somebody might lose a foot.”
She arranged temporary protective barriers around the plinth until her team could move it safely.
Daniel spent the night in his kitchen reading the exhibition brochure instead of sleeping.
He underlined every claim that could be checked against people still alive.
The next morning Rosa arrived before dawn with Mateo and a thermos of coffee.
“Show me where she stood,” she said.
Daniel led her to the garden.
Rosa walked around the damaged figure once,
then laid her hand on the intact shoulder.
“My mother hated having her picture taken,” she said.
“She would have argued with the artist about that serious expression.”
Mateo asked whether he could photograph the figure for the family’s relatives.
Rosa nodded.
“This time we decide who gets the photograph.”
CHAPTER NINE — WHERE THE OTHERS WENT
The landscape wholesaler who had purchased two statues from Peter Doran’s estate had since sold one to a hotel developer and kept the other near its loading dock.
Daniel and Rosa drove there with Adrian, arriving as a forklift carried pallets of paving stone toward a truck.
The owner, a woman named Grace Lin, recognized the crescent mark in Adrian’s photograph.
“I thought it was a quarry trademark,” she said.
“Would you show us the sculpture?” Rosa asked.
Grace took them behind a row of concrete fountains.
A stone figure stood there beneath a tarp, holding an empty lunch tin.
Rosa gasped.
“That’s Mr. Webb.”
She recognized Anthony Webb from the mill photographs and remembered him giving children small sweets after his shifts.
Adrian photographed the maker’s mark and the surviving unfinished lettering beneath the base.
The letters were not a job title.
They were the beginning of Anthony’s name.
Grace said she had paid for the sculpture and would cooperate with any lawful claim, but she could not simply surrender inventory based on a story.
Rosa surprised Daniel by agreeing.
“Then we should find his family and discuss it properly,” she said.
Grace offered to hold the figure off the sales floor for two weeks.
The hotel developer, however, had scheduled delivery of its figure for that afternoon.
Daniel called the developer’s office and learned that the statue had already been integrated into a courtyard plan.
The receptionist transferred him to a project manager named Owen Patel, who asked him to email the images.
“If it’s a memorial for someone, we need to know that before installing it,” Owen said.
By late afternoon Adrian had located a former plinth supplier, Halden Stoneworks, which still operated from a fenced yard outside the city.
Its manager, Denise Halden, remembered her father’s stories about the memorial commission.
“He said the stones kept him from closing the business,” she said.
“But he never sold them because he was afraid someone would come looking.”
“Are they still here?” Daniel asked.
Denise hesitated.
“Four are, but one was damaged when the roof leaked.”
“Can we see them?”
“You can, if the family representatives are present.
”
Rosa called two other families while Daniel waited beside the truck.
The first family said they wanted no involvement.
The second sent a granddaughter named Celia Price, who arrived with a folded photograph of her grandfather.
Denise unlocked a metal warehouse, and they entered together.
Four shapes stood beneath heavy canvas sheets.
Rosa removed the first cover slowly.
A woman holding a spool of thread appeared in the dim light.
Celia recognized her grandmother’s friend before anyone read the faint inscription.
Daniel realized the story was growing larger than an appraisal or a single damaged statue.
It was becoming a gathering of people who had never been allowed to finish their own memorial.
CHAPTER TEN — THE WRONG ANNOUNCEMENT
The Civic Arts Center issued a statement that evening accusing unnamed parties of circulating misleading claims about the foundation’s history.
Julian Mercer said the family would protect its rights and declined to discuss the sculptures’ current locations.
Local reporters began calling Daniel’s house.
Rosa told him not to answer questions about the families without asking them first.
Daniel agreed and gave one carefully limited statement about the destruction on his property.
He said nothing about ownership and nothing about Carol’s motives beyond what she had said in front of him.
That night a reporter sent Adrian a copy of an advertisement for the exhibition opening.
It promised that the Mercer family’s generosity had restored dignity to the forgotten mill workers.
Rosa read the line twice.
“We weren’t forgotten,” she said.
“We were standing there the whole time.”
She decided to attend the opening with Mateo, Celia, and two other relatives.
Naomi Bell arrived by train the next afternoon and met them in Daniel’s kitchen.
Rosa greeted her without an embrace.
“I wish you had told us,” she said.
Naomi nodded.
“I wish I had too.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I believed Lydia when she said she would negotiate with the families.”
“And after years passed?”
“I was ashamed of what I hadn’t done.
”
Rosa looked at the older woman for a long time.
“Being ashamed did not help us find the statues.”
“I know.”
“Then come tonight and help us ask for them.”
Naomi agreed immediately.
Daniel watched them sit at his kitchen table marking photographs with names and relationships.
He was struck by how little the objects’ market values mattered in that room.
The families cared about who had carved each face, who had paid, and who had been told to stop asking questions.
At six o’clock they walked toward the arts center together, carrying photographs rather than protest signs.
CHAPTER ELEVEN — THE DOORS CLOSE
The exhibition opening drew donors, council members, and television crews into the marble lobby.
Carol Mercer stood on the stage beneath an enormous portrait of her mother.
Julian greeted sponsors beside the entrance, shaking hands with practiced enthusiasm.
Rosa entered with Mateo and approached the registration desk.
The volunteer examined the guest list.
“I’m sorry, your names aren’t here.”
“The public exhibition is open tonight,” Rosa replied.
“This reception is by invitation.”
Daniel showed the tickets he had purchased for the opening event.
The volunteer examined them, then spoke into a headset.
Two security guards moved closer.
Simone Avery appeared from the gallery and recognized Adrian.
“These people are relatives of the workers in the exhibition,” he told her.
Simone looked at the photographs in Rosa’s hands.
“They should be able to enter,” she said.
Julian stepped between them.
“This is not the place for a confrontation.”
Rosa answered before Daniel could speak.
“Then why did you build an exhibition about my mother without inviting me?”
A reporter turned toward them.
Julian lowered his voice.
“We can schedule a private conversation.”
“We tried that for thirty-nine years,” Rosa replied.
Simone asked the security guards to stand back and escorted the group into the gallery.
Carol watched from the stage as Rosa stopped in front of the film describing the workshop fire.
“Turn that off,” Rosa said to Simone.
The curator hesitated.
“I have evidence the narration is inaccurate,” Adrian said.
Naomi stepped forward.
“I carved the faces, and I know where four of them are.”
Several guests stopped talking.
Carol came down from the stage.
“You have no right to interrupt a memorial occasion.”
Rosa turned toward her.
“It’s our memorial occasion.”
Carol looked at the photographs and then at Naomi.
“You told my mother those sculptures were worthless unfinished stone.”
“I told her they were unfinished because she refused the inscriptions,” Naomi replied.
“You walked away from the contract.”
“Your mother stopped paying us.”
Julian demanded that everyone leave the gallery.
Simone refused to close the doors until she understood the evidence.
The standoff drew more guests from the lobby.
Daniel noticed a cameraman lifting his equipment and felt the danger of turning the families into an unexpected spectacle.
He stepped back and let Rosa decide whether she wanted the cameras present.
“You can record my questions,” she told the reporter.
“But don’t show my mother’s photograph without naming her.”
The reporter nodded.
Carol stood beneath the projected image of the imaginary sculpture garden, looking smaller than she had in Daniel’s backyard.
“There were reasons,” she said.
Rosa held up a postcard from Lydia Mercer.
“Then tell us those reasons while we’re still here to hear them.”
