Chapter Eleven
April stood with her hands on her hips outside the newly installed gate that surrounded the small garden at A Fresh Start.
“What happened?” she asked, disbelief suffusing her voice as she stared at the dozens of plantings that had been dug up and tossed around. Tiny vegetables that had just started to take root had been ripped from the soil, the rows of neatly tilled dirt marred with the deep impressions of footprints.
“Vandals,” Simeon said. He pointed to the piece of chain-link fence that was pulled back slightly. “We’re thinking they snuck in over there. Based on the size of the opening, they couldn’t have been that big. It was probably just some teens who decided to go out and cause trouble.”
April let out a rare but well-deserved curse. “The kids will be devastated when they see this. All that hard work they’ve put into it, gone, just like that.”
“Some of the vegetables were just starting to sprout,” Simeon said, gesturing to the small green tomatoes that now lay on the ground instead of hanging on the vine where they should have been.
April shook her head. “I’m going to have to call Jodi at the community gardens to see if they have any they can spare.”
“First, we’ll call the police,” Simeon said.
“We should, although without any cameras I don’t know what good it’s going to do.”
“Maybe someone in the neighborhood saw something. You never know.” He clamped a hand on her shoulder. “Look at it this way. The kids will learn one of the biggest life lessons there is, that disappointments can come at a moment’s notice.”
“Is this your way of looking at the bright side?” she asked him.
He shrugged in that ever-optimistic way of his, managing to wring a laugh from her when all April wanted to do was hit something, preferably the little bastards who’d terrorized their gardens.
Maybe Simeon had the right idea. It was a life lesson, not just for the kids in the program, but for her, too.
She knew that setbacks like this one were to be expected.
Not every kid in this neighborhood would be saved.
Her job was to work with those they’d managed to reach and make sure they didn’t fall in with the likes of those who’d caused this mess last night.
April bent down to start clearing away the discarded vegetables, but then decided against it. If the police were coming it was better not to disrupt the crime scene. Instead, she took out her phone so that she could snap a few pictures.
When she looked at the screen, April noticed that she had two missed calls from Damien, along with a text message that read Need to talk to you now.
When she called him back, he picked up on the first ring.
“Hey,” she greeted. “You needed something?”
“Yes, where are you?” he asked.
“At A Fresh Start. There was an incident overnight,” she said, looking around at the gardens.
“Is everything okay?” Damien asked, concern in his voice.
“Everything except for our gardens,” she said. She waved a hand. “I’ll tell you about it later. I had a couple of missed calls from you. What did you need?”
“I’ll...uh...explain it to you when I get there. Give me about an hour.”
April didn’t like the hesitancy she heard in his voice. There was something off about it. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll talk to you then.”
To her surprise, the police arrived ten minutes later. April would have thought there would be more pressing issues commanding their attention, but apparently it was a slow crime day in the city. That was something to be thankful for, at least.
However, as she expected, there wasn’t all that much the police could do about the vandalism.
They took pictures of the shoe impressions in the dirt, and took statements from a couple of the neighboring shop owners.
However, they warned April, Simeon and LaDonna, who had arrived just after the police, that the backlog for their detectives was months long, and it wasn’t likely that this would be high on the list of priorities.
Before leaving, the police officers, who both revealed that they’d worked in the city’s Seventh District for several years, thanked April and the others for the work they were doing with the kids at A Fresh Start.
“I’ve worked these streets for a long time and I’ve noticed a difference in the way the kids behave since the start of this program.
I can tell which kids attend and those who don’t.
The kids from A Fresh Start are more respectful and more open to talking to us.
You all probably don’t hear it enough, but I want to thank you for what you do. ”
“I second that,” the other police officer added.
Emotion clogged April’s throat. Apparently, it was the same for her colleagues, as well. No one was able to speak for several moments.
“Thank you so much,” April said when she was finally able to find her voice. “We appreciate it.”
Once law enforcement left, April and the others headed inside. There was nothing left for them to do right now. As part of their hard life lessons exercise, Simeon suggested that the kids help to clean up the mess from last night’s vandalism.
They’d all agreed that it was the right course of action, but it made April even more pissed.
The cleanup would eat into their practice time for the streetcar line groundbreaking.
Rehearsals were going well; however, the kids still had a long way to go if they were going to perform in front of a live audience.
They needed all the practice time they could get.
She’d just turned the corner on her way to her music classroom when she spotted Damien coming through the front door of the center. Just seeing him made some of the tension that had built up in her shoulders float away.
“Hello,” she greeted him. Not even bothering to check that there was no one around, she slipped her arms around his waist and stood on tiptoes to brush a kiss over his lips. “I could use a little distraction today after the morning we’ve had.”
“What happened?” Damien asked.
She told him about the vandalism.
“The police came over to take statements, but I know the NOPD has a lot on their plates. They don’t have time to worry about a couple of knuckleheads coming in and tearing up our little garden.”
“You have it on the books. That’s a start. Maybe it’ll encourage them to step up patrols here,” Damien said.
“Hopefully.” April tightened her hold on him. “So, what is it that you needed to speak to me about? My mom is usually the only incessant caller I have to look out for. You had me worried with those two missed calls.”
April felt him tense up.
“Damien?” She leaned back so she could look up at him. “What’s going on?”
He took her by the hand and they walked back down the hallway to the coffee bar. He brought her to the same table where they’d sat over a month ago when he first came here, asking her to escort him to various events this summer. He took her hand in his, linking them at the center of the table.
“I just came back from a meeting with the McGowan Group.”
April’s brows rose. “And?”
“And they like my idea,” he said.
“Which idea? The one that we talked about? The idea to build a complex with affordable housing for the residents already living here?”
“The discussion didn’t get that far,” he said. He tipped his head back and let out another annoyed sigh. April’s suspicions grew. So did her unease.
“I thought that’s what you were going to propose to them?” she asked.
“I never got the chance to propose anything,” he said. “As soon as the meeting began, they proposed their own plan.” He looked around the room, up at the ceiling, beyond her shoulder. Finally, he brought his eyes back to hers and said, “They want this space.”
April pulled her hand out of his hold, as if he’d burned her all of a sudden.
“What exactly does that mean?” she asked.
“They have a plan to develop an area that’s over four times the size of my original plan. It would cover several blocks. However, they think this spot would work better than the space I bought up around the Industrial Canal. The proximity to the river and major thoroughfares has more appeal.”
“Well, did you tell them they can’t have this space?”
Damien held his hands out. “How am I supposed to stop them? How can anyone stop them? By the end of the meeting they were already talking about approaching the archdiocese about buying this land. Once a group with that kind of power gets it in their heads to do something, there’s no stopping them.”
April stared at him across the table. Her blood reached boiling levels. “And you’re the one who put it in their heads,” she said.
Damien put his hands up. “Don’t blame me for this.”
“Don’t blame you? Who exactly should I blame then, Damien? We were just fine here in the Ninth Ward, slowly rebuilding our community one brick at a time. Then you come in here with your grand ideas on how to ‘fix’ everything, and now we may lose A Fresh Start? Who do I blame for this?”
“Michael Berger already said that he would be willing to secure a new building for the program.”
“We don’t want a new building. We are just fine exactly where we are.”
“You just got vandalized,” Damien said, pointing toward the gardens.
“Don’t you dare use what happened last night as an excuse.”
“Why shouldn’t I?” Damien said. “It’s par for the course when it comes to this neighborhood.
” He ran a palm down his face. “Look, I know this news is unexpected, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing, April.
The McGowan Group can provide the funding you need to turn A Fresh Start into a full-time program.
It would be a drop in the bucket for them.
Make that one of your demands for having to relocate. ”
April wasn’t ready to buy into his silver-lining scenario just yet.