CHAPTER TWELVE — LYDIA’S DECISION
Carol asked Simone to clear a small conference room before she would speak.
Rosa insisted that Naomi and two family representatives remain, and Simone agreed.
Daniel stayed near the door, aware that he was the least essential person in the room.
Carol sat with her hands folded tightly beneath the table.
“My mother thought the original garden would destroy the relationship between the mill and this town,” she said.
“The mill had already destroyed people,” Rosa replied.
“She believed there was no future in blaming the company after it closed.”
“She could have remembered the dead without praising the owners.
”
Carol looked toward Naomi.
“The company offered to finance the arts center if the memorial avoided assigning fault.”
Daniel felt Adrian turn beside him.
“So the arts center was funded by the company?”
“Partly,” Carol answered.
“What happened to the families’ contributions?” Rosa asked.
Carol swallowed.
“Some paid for workshop expenses before the commission was suspended.”
“And the rest?”
“The foundation transferred the remaining fund into the construction campaign.”
No one spoke for several seconds.
“We paid for specific memorials,” Celia said.
“We were told the money couldn’t be recovered because the statues burned.”
Carol pressed her fingertips into her palms.
“My mother thought the new center would serve more people.”
“Did she ask us?” Rosa demanded.
Carol looked away.
“She expected you would understand.”
“That wasn’t your family’s choice to make,” Rosa said.
Julian opened his mouth, but Simone stopped him.
“The film must come down pending correction,” she said.
“The board will have to decide that,” Julian replied.
“I’m responsible for what the exhibition tells visitors,” Simone answered.
“And it tells them something I now know is false.”
She left to stop the projection.
Carol caught Daniel’s eye.
“You still don’t know why I broke the statue.”
“Then tell us,
” he said.
“The crescent mark connects it to the Mercer Foundation’s original commission.”
“We already know that,” Adrian replied.
“The foundation used the unrealized memorial designs as the basis for later fundraising.”
Carol spoke more quickly now.
“Those designs were registered as if they were completed and displayed.”
Naomi stared at her.
“You told donors that my unfinished work had been installed?”
“Only in early proposals,” Carol said.
Julian shook his head sharply.
“Aunt Carol, stop talking.”
“They have a right to hear it,” she snapped.
Then her voice dropped.
“I kept approving the story because I didn’t want my mother’s name dragged through another scandal.
”
Rosa looked exhausted rather than triumphant.
“You could have told us any year you wanted.”
“I know.”
“You chose to use a hammer instead.”
Carol looked at her hands as if she could still feel its weight.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN — WHAT THE GARDEN COST
The revelation did not settle who owned the surviving statues.
Naomi’s workshop had held some for unpaid fees, other companies had purchased or inherited others, and the foundation had controlled the original commission.
Adrian suggested forming a temporary working group with the families, present owners, conservators, and the arts center.
Rosa refused to let the Mercer family chair it.
“They’ve chaired every conversation that ended with us being told to wait,” she said.
The group agreed that family representatives would select an independent facilitator.
Daniel offered his garage as storage for documents but not for statues he could not move safely.
Carol’s attorney arrived before midnight and advised her to leave without answering further questions.
Carol followed him through a side exit while reporters waited at the main doors.
The next morning the city council announced an inquiry into how the foundation had represented the project to donors.
The arts center temporarily closed the exhibition gallery, leaving its ordinary classes and workshops open.
Simone released a correction acknowledging that finished stone figures had survived the alleged fire.
Daniel received a letter demanding that he surrender the damaged statue to the Mercer Foundation.
Adrian advised him not to ignore it and connected him with an attorney who specialized in cultural property disputes.
Rosa worried the legal fight would swallow the statue for another generation.
“I don’t want a court deciding what my mother’s face means,” she told Daniel.
“Neither do I,” he answered.
“But I also don’t want Carol destroying it again.”
“Then don’t give her the chance.”
Mira moved the damaged figure into a secure conservation studio and documented every fragment with Daniel present.
Rosa watched the packing and asked to keep a small piece that had fallen from the figure’s sleeve.
Mira explained that separating original fragments could complicate restoration.
Rosa considered that and asked for a photograph instead.
Daniel saw the effort it cost her not to take the piece home.
Later that afternoon Denise Halden called to say someone had offered to purchase all four figures from her warehouse at twice their estimated value.
“The buyer wants them moved tonight,” she said.
“Did they give a name?” Daniel asked.
“A holding company with an address I don’t recognize.”
Adrian advised Denise that there might be competing ownership claims and urged her to pause any sale while she obtained independent advice.
Denise agreed to a seventy-two-hour hold, but she refused to accept indefinite uncertainty.
“I have staff to pay and a warehouse to run,” she said.
Daniel realized that rescuing the memorials would require more than proving how the past had been misrepresented.
Someone would have to solve the immediate problems of storage, payment, transport, and ownership.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN — THE FOUR FIGURES
The family representatives met at Halden Stoneworks before dawn to inspect the four sculptures.
Rosa brought Mateo, Celia brought her father, and two other families arrived after hearing about the gallery confrontation.
Mira assessed the statues’ condition while Adrian recorded their provenance as carefully as the available evidence allowed.
Denise explained what it had cost her father to store the stone for decades.
“My father thought the foundation would return,” she said.
“After he died, I kept them because throwing them away felt wrong.”
One man named Victor Ellis stood before a figure of his grandfather and began to cry.
“I was six when they said the statue burned,” he told the group.
“I didn’t even remember what he looked like until my sister found his picture last year.”
The sculpted face was still unfinished around the ears, but the eyes had been carved with unsettling care.
Mira explained that finishing the piece would involve choices the families should approve rather than assumptions about what Naomi once intended.
Naomi offered to help train younger local stoneworkers to complete the missing details where appropriate.
Victor asked whether preserving the unfinished marks might better tell the truth.
“My grandfather’s life wasn’t unfinished because someone else stopped paying,” he said.
“But this memorial was, and people ought to know why.”
No one tried to answer for him.
Daniel walked outside with Denise to discuss a short-term storage agreement.
“I can keep them here another month if someone covers insurance and rent,” she said.
“That’s reasonable.”
“I don’t want a charity story that ends with my workers unpaid.”
“Neither do I,” Daniel replied.
Rosa joined them, carrying a legal pad covered in names.
“The families can decide whether to raise money for a temporary hold,” she said.
“The arts center should contribute too, if its board is serious.”
Denise agreed to provide a written estimate.
That afternoon the hotel developer offered to lend its sculpture to the families for inspection and possible public display while title questions were resolved.
Grace Lin made the same offer for the statue in her yard.
The news delighted Mateo, who had spent the morning calling descendants of mill workers in three states.
“We might find nine of them before the week is over,
” he said.
Rosa looked at him.
“Don’t turn people into numbers.”
“I’m not.”
“Then say their names when you find them.”
Mateo nodded and opened his notebook again.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN — THE MAN IN THE SEDAN
Daniel had begun to regard Adrian as a reliable ally, but he still did not know why the appraiser had been searching for these sculptures in the first place.
He asked the question while they waited outside the conservation studio.
Adrian took longer than usual to answer.
“My grandfather was the architect who drew the memorial garden,” he said.
“He was paid for a project that never opened.”
“You could have said that at the beginning.”
“I should have.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I thought it would make you doubt everything I said.”
Daniel was angry to discover another personal connection concealed beneath professional language.
“It does make me question your judgment,” he admitted.
Adrian accepted that without arguing.
“My grandfather kept the drawings but wouldn’t tell me why the project disappeared.”
“And now?”
“Now I think he was embarrassed that he accepted the final check after the families were shut out.”
“Have you ever spoken to Rosa about him?”
“No.”
“Then you should.”
Adrian nodded.
Before they could continue, Mira called them into the studio.
She had found a series of fine chisel strokes on the back of Inez’s statue, separate from the crescent mark.
They appeared to record measurements used to position figures in the original circular garden.
“These marks tell us the piece was intended to face inward,” she said.
“Not toward a private path like Daniel’s.”
Adrian photographed the surface.
“The original arrangement was meant to make the workers face one another.”
Mira corrected him gently.
“The marks show an alignment scheme.”
“The meaning of that scheme belongs in a conversation with the sculptor and families.”
Daniel appreciated the distinction.
A recovered object did not automatically reveal the intentions of everyone who had touched it.
They asked Naomi to examine the measurements later that afternoon.
She recognized her own layout notes and explained that the figures were meant to form a space where visitors stood among the workers rather than looking up at them.
“They were supposed to be ordinary people at eye level,” she said.
“No podiums.”
Daniel looked at Inez’s broken arm.
“Can that idea still work with so many missing figures?”
“Ask the families,” Naomi replied.
“They may want an entirely different place now.”
