Chapter 20
MOLLY
My life feels like a dream.
Two trips in the space of two weeks.
I'm in New York before I know it, and Penelope is waiting for me outside.
“Hello. You made it here okay?” She’s leaning against a big shiny sedan.
“It was a short trip. I enjoyed it.”
A man with a cap offers me his hand and I shake it.
Penelope chuckles. “He's asking for your rucksack.”
“Oh.” I feel silly. “I'm okay holding onto it, thank you, though.”
I get inside the sleek black car. The leather seats are cool and buttery soft, and there's more room in the back than I know what to do with.
Penelope isn’t driving. That guy? He’s her chauffeur.
I glance at her, taking in her simple gold chain, her big, shiny gold earrings. She looks powerful and successful, and I suddenly forget to make conversation.
“I've arranged for you to stay at The Belmont,” she says, easily, as if it’s no big deal. “It's close to the depot project in Brooklyn.”
“Thank you,” I murmur.
“I've also emailed you your return tickets. Your flight is at seven tomorrow evening. That should give you plenty of time to explore the city.”
“That’s … that’s very kind of you. Thank you.”
“I'll show you around the development, and you're more than welcome to take your time looking around, but I'll have to leave for another meeting soon after.”
I'm in awe of her, and what she does. Always traveling. Always going to meetings. Working for Luca Valizar. Her work seems glamorous and exciting, but I have my children. Inquisitive, and so funny without realizing they are.
I couldn't do anything else. I wouldn't want to do anything else.
“You were in Boston?” I ask, not feeling so inferior anymore.
“Cambridge,” she corrects. “Mr. Valizar has acquired an old mansion there. I was meeting with the restoration team. Apparently, some of the original interiors have been hidden behind renovations for decades.”
“And he's restoring them?”
“If something beautiful can be saved, Mr. Valizar generally saves it.”
How interesting. He seems to save old and broken things. That’s the conclusion I’ve come to. Penelope gets a phone call, and apologizes for taking it. I stare out of the window, listening to her sounding professional, and efficient, and in charge.
By the time she finishes her conversation, the car stops outside a huge old brick building with soaring arched windows and black steelwork.
We get out of the car and I stare at the building.
“This was an old freight depot?”
“An abandoned one. It hadn't been used in decades. You wouldn't believe what it looked like before the restoration.”
She pulls something out of the plastic folder she's carrying. “Here.”
She hands me a few photographs. I look through them, then at the building before me, then back at the photographs again.
It can't be the same place. In the photographs, weeds push through acres of cracked concrete.
The brick buildings are blackened and crumbling, their windows boarded up or smashed.
Rusting steelwork stretches between them.
I look up again.
The brickwork is still here. So is the steel. Even sections of the old tracks remain, winding between gardens and walkways. One of the old loading bays is now crowded with tables from a café. Children dart around nearby while their parents sit beneath the trees.
“They didn't demolish it.”
“That was the original plan.”
I turn to Penelope.
“And?”
She smiles. “Mr. Knight didn't like the original plan.”
Something inside me shifts.
“This was his idea?”
“The vision was. Architects and planners made it happen, obviously. But Mr. Knight was the one who looked at what it used to be and made what you see come alive.”
My gaze catches on an enormous four-faced clock rising above the old depot building. “Was that here too?”
“They found it during the original survey. It used to hang above the central concourse.”
I search through the photographs and find one that shows the original one. It’s the same clock. The same building. And yet it looks and feels like a completely different place.
Before us, to the side, children run around in a play area, weaving around water jets that spring up from the ground. It has brightly colored benches and tables nearby and a group of students are eating lunch at one of them.
“Enzo did this?” I ask, unable to comprehend the scale and beauty of what I'm looking at; at the dead land it used to be and what it is now.
“He didn't build it, or design it, but he knew what it could become.”
“All this?”
“The concept. The purpose. Who would use it? Why they would come? Mr. Knight saw a place people had stopped seeing.”
I examine the photographs again, look around at the space in front of me and think about the neglected plot at the end of the school’s street. The once-beautiful pavilion now crumbling and overgrown.
I see possibilities. I see what that space could become.
“Do you see now why I thought it was important for you to see this?” Penelope's voice pulls me out of my vision.
“I do see.” Because in that instant I see so much.
“We could do so much more with that plot of land. There could be somewhere safe for the younger children to play, with benches around it so parents can sit and still see them. And we could have gardens. Not just pretty ones. Little raised beds where the children could grow things. Herbs and flowers they can touch and smell.”
I start to walk as the ideas come faster now.
“There could be an outdoor classroom. Somewhere we could take the children for story time when the weather's nice.”
I can already picture my class there, sitting in a circle on the ground. I scan around the vast space. This is so much bigger than the site near the school, but we still have space to do amazing things with it.
“There should be somewhere quiet too,” I suggest. “Some children don't like lots of noise. They need somewhere they can go when everything gets a bit too much.”
My mind starts to race as ideas spring up.
“Also, it shouldn't just be for little children. There could be somewhere for older kids too, so they're not taking over the little ones' play area.”
I turn to Penelope and smile because now I can see it so clearly.
“It could be somewhere everyone belongs.”
“And that's why you're here.” Penelope is watching me carefully, and I realize that I've boxed myself into a corner, again. I came here to prove I was the wrong person, but I've inadvertently proved Penelope right.
Yet the hard, bitter truth persists. I can't work on this project—because of Enzo—and I can’t tell anyone, least of all Penelope.
I smile at her. “I see.” That's all I manage to say.
But I have to walk away. I'll figure a way out later.
Penelope checks her phone.
“I have to go.”
“Another meeting?”
“Always.”
And just like that, she's gone. I continue to walk around the space, soaking in the atmosphere. This place is alive, and has a vibrancy that is hard to ignore. I buy a salad from one of the cafés and sit on one of the benches to eat it.
Excitement bubbles up inside me because I finally know what we can do with the neglected plot of land.
But then my hopes sink like a deflating balloon. I won’t be working on this. Once I get back home, I’ll email Penelope my final decision. The guilt dulls my mood, so I force myself to think of something else. Of the plans I have for the rest of my short time here.
I’ve already made a list: I'm planning on visiting Times Square, then Grand Central Terminal, then go on the free ferry to Staten Island, but not get off. I'm not paying to stand on an island.
I'll have dinner near Battery Park later this evening. Tomorrow I'll walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and then go to Central Park where I'll have a slice of pizza sitting on a bench.
I rummage around in my bag for some lip salve and see Enzo's mask wrapped in bubble wrap and tucked beneath my folded sweater. I'm fearful of breaking it, and it's taking up precious space. I packed light, but I want to buy a few souvenirs, so I need to get rid of the mask.
I need to give it back.
Not give it to him. I can't see Enzo. I can't face him, and I certainly don't want him to know that I'm here.
I'll just leave it at reception.
I look up the address of the Knight offices, and decide to make my way there.