Chapter Forty-Four
Mila
Tuesday morning, my mother sits on the couch with her prune face on. It’s an expression I’ve grown accustomed to since the tiara theft. “When will you be back?” she asks.
“I’m not sure.” Shrugging into my denim jacket, I go over to the window and look out. The sky is the color of an elephant, and heavy clouds are rolling in fast. Hopefully the rain will hold off until after our meeting with Dr. Yang at the foundry site.
“Well, I have an appointment at one-thirty, so you’ll have to be back in time to drive me.”
I turn to stare at her. “What appointment?”
“With Dr. Hart. My PCP.”
“When did you make it?” I check my phone. “It’s not on the calendar.”
“Early this morning. I haven’t had a chance to add it to the calendar.” She picks at a thread in her sweater. “But I need it. I have an awful rash.”
“What rash? Where?”
“My arms.” She arches a brow. “Do you think I’m making it up?”
“Show me the rash, Mom.”
She purses her lips. “This is very disrespectful, Mila. I don’t know what’s come over you the last week or so. First the tiara and now this.”
“I’m just asking to see the rash.”
Her eyes are full of indignation, but she pushes up her sleeves, and sure enough, there’s a rash on both of her inner arms. “There. I hope you’re satisfied.” She scratches at the raised red marks.
My shoulders slump, and I close my eyes. Guilt pokes holes in my anger, letting all the fight out. “Sorry. I’ll be back at one to take you.”
When I arrive at the foundry site, Everett and a black-haired, light-brown-skinned man I assume is Kevin Yang are standing on the cracked pavement of the old parking lot.
Behind them is a massive vacant lot where the imposing foundry once stood.
Adjacent to that is a two-story red-brick office building with arched windows, decorative brickwork around the glass, and an entrance with “Hart Iron Works, Est. 1893 ” carved into the limestone above the door.
I grab my backpack and get out of the car. It hasn’t started raining yet, but the wind has picked up, and my hair blows around my face.
As I approach, Everett is giving Dr. Yang a little history.
“Twenty years ago, Hart Iron Works built a modern foundry in a different location, and the original was torn down. The administration building was spared demolition, and several uses have been proposed and discarded. The family would like to donate it to the town for a community center, but as we’ve discussed, there are issues with that.
” He turns and sees me, his eyes lighting up. “Hey.”
“Hi.” I want to throw my arms around him, but I keep my cool in the presence of the professor.
“Dr. Yang, this is Mila Ferguson,” Everett says. “She’s a botanical illustrator and grew up here. It was her idea to explore phytoremediation as a possible solution to the contamination problem.”
Dr. Yang extends his hand and a smile. “It’s Kevin. Very nice to meet you.”
I give him a smile. “Thanks for letting me tag along today.”
“Of course.” He glances at the lot, then down at the tablet he holds. “I’ve reviewed the test results. It’s quite the project you’ve got here, but I think phytoremediation is a viable cleanup solution. What’s your budget?”
As they discuss numbers, I move closer to the lot, stepping around a fallen warning sign and some rusty metal scraps.
Holding my windblown hair off my face, I scan the area.
The Hart mansion can be seen high on the hill to the east, and the land slopes gently toward the lake to the west. The foundry site itself is scattered with gravel, bare patches of dirt, and fractured concrete slabs, with weeds growing up through the cracks.
The faint outline of the foundry’s footprint is still visible, and the perimeter is lined with an ugly, rusted chain-link fence.
But it’s full of memories. Secrets. Laughter.
I can hear it on the wind, an echo from the past. And I can picture five bikes parked along the perimeter before there was a fence. Five girls sitting in a circle on a concrete slab. Five teenagers passing around a bottle of cheap wine.
What’s most amazing to me are the birch saplings and vegetation that have grown up through cracks in the dirt. Stubborn things, determined to grow, despite their surroundings. Something about it strikes me right in the heart.
I think about that final time the four of us met here. Four friends with good intentions, trying to keep a promise. Unaware they were about to lose each other.
Fragments of memory come to me like pieces of a mosaic, reassembling to form the whole. My late arrival. Gabi’s homemade cookies. Rachel’s tearstained face. Yasmine’s clipboard. Being told that my assignment was to kiss Everett McKean.
It makes me smile, but I’m also choked up. I want to turn back time. I want to warn those girls not to let go of each other, not to let hard things tear them apart. I know you’ve been through a lot, I would tell them, but you need to lean into each other, not shut each other out.
I touch the ladybug charm at my neck. There’s some detail escaping me—some missing piece of the mosaic—but I can’t think what it is.
When I hear my name, I look over my shoulder and see Everett and Dr. Yang to my left along the fence. Everett puts a hand on my shoulder. “What do you think? Can you see a garden there?”
“Absolutely. I already want to draw that plant over there with the yellow flowers.” I point to it.
“That’s wild mustard,” says Dr. Yang. “Part of a species that are good hyperaccumulators—they can tolerate higher levels of certain metals than other plants.”
“Did someone plant it?” I ask, surprised.
“No, it’s a weed. But it tells us that nature has been working on this problem already, at a very slow pace. We can accelerate that.”
“What do you recommend as a plan of action?” Everett asks.
Dr. Yang opens his tablet. “Based on the results you shared with me and the particular contaminants you’re working with, I’d suggest Indian mustard and sunflowers for the first two seasons—they grow quickly and begin extracting metals immediately.
Then pennycress and ferns for more targeted chromium extraction.
Eventually, willows and poplars along the perimeter for deeper soil remediation. Every season would look different.”
Everett nods. “How long would it take?”
“For complete remediation, five to seven years,” the professor answers. “But you’d see progress within the first year. And the costs would be spread out over time instead of being one massive bill like you’d see for dig and haul cleanup.”
I exchange a look with Everett—that’s good news.
“And would the building be usable while the plants are doing their thing?” Everett asks.
“Yes. Since the remaining structure is on a concrete slab,” Dr. Yang says, pointing at the old office building, “it’s safe to use while remediation is going on outside.
You could conceivably allow it to function as a community center as quickly as you could repurpose it.
” He frowns and pulls his cell phone from his pocket. “Excuse me, I have to take a call.”
Dr. Yang walks away with his phone to his ear while I envision a field of sunflowers growing tall and strong, faces to the sky.
I imagine kids wandering through paths of plants, learning about the important job they’re doing, maybe drawing what they see.
I even picture myself instructing them, showing them how to capture light, color, texture.
Demonstrating how basic shapes become complex forms in nature.
A circle becomes an apple. A cup becomes a tulip. A cylinder becomes a branch.
What is now an ugly toxic problem for Hart Iron Works can transform into a beautiful symbol of the Hart family’s continuing commitment to the town and a legacy of Everett’s leadership.
I see those four girls again, this time surrounded by sunflowers, ladybugs flying from bloom to bloom. “I can see it, Everett. It’s going to be so pretty.”
“Let’s hope Tad and Tiffany Hart think so.”
Facing him, I place a hand on his chest. “They will. We’ll convince them together. When I get home later, I’ll draw something you can show the Harts—a vision of what it could be, complete with a sign that says ‘The Hart Healing Gardens’ or something. Rich people love to put their name on things.”
“Mila, you don’t have to do that.”
“I want to,” I insist, pulling back to look up at him. “I want to be part of this.”
“You already are. And your time is—”
I put a finger over his lips. “Let me worry about my time. This is important, Everett. It’s not just about the Harts.
It’s about the health of this community, the generations of kids who will come here and learn.
It’s about the greater good in Hart’s Landing.
A lot of people think I burned something down here.
Can you please let me help to build something up? ”
A smile cracks his serious facade, and he shakes his head, removing my finger from his mouth. “How am I supposed to say no to that?”
“You can’t.” Rising onto my toes, I smile. “I win.”
In the end, Dr. Yang lingers so long that Everett and I only have about fifteen minutes together. After watching the professor drive away, we climb into his truck and exchange a despondent look. Fat raindrops pelt the windshield.
“I wish I had more time,” I say. “My mother scheduled a doctor’s appointment for one-thirty. She has some kind of rash on her arms, and I was a big jerk about it.”
“You were?”
“Yes. I thought she was making it up, so I demanded to see the rash. And it’s true—her arms are all broken out.” I poke myself in the chest. “I’m the asshole.”