Chapter 3 - The Street Where I Grew Up
Westbridge looked smaller than I remembered.
The corner grocery store was closed, and the basketball hoop behind our old apartment building had been taken down. A chain-link fence surrounded part of the former Hart Materials yard. Behind it stood two brick warehouses with broken windows and a rusted water tower.
I walked the public sidewalk with a neighborhood organizer named Gloria Price, who'd been helping residents request information about the site. She knew my work as a landscape architect and had no idea I was Arthur Hart's daughter until I told her.
"I should have disclosed that before I asked for a tour," I said.
She studied me for a moment.
"Are you here to defend him?"
"No. I'm trying to understand what happened."
"Then start by listening to people who still live here."
We met two residents who described concerns about water quality and past industrial activity. Some neighbors believed their health problems were connected to the site. Others were skeptical of the company's reports. I had no basis to determine the causes of anyone's illness from a conversation on the sidewalk.
I asked for the public testing records and the name of the state environmental program overseeing the investigation.
Gloria had organized them by year. Some showed contaminants above screening levels in certain samples. Others indicated results below thresholds at different locations or times. The work was complicated, and the documents did not support a simple claim that every property was equally affected.
"We want testing we can trust," Gloria said. "And a plan that people can understand."
I thought of the boardroom, where Gideon had called the environmental reserve a financial issue. Here it was a question about gardens, property values, and families deciding whether they should worry about their tap water.
I called Natalie from my car and asked what I could share with the community. She told me to rely on public information unless and until the status of the private documents was resolved, and not to disclose anything that might be protected improperly.
I accepted the boundary. It frustrated me, but I understood that reckless disclosure could damage the very investigation I hoped would help.
Arthur agreed to meet at a diner outside town. He arrived without a driver, wearing a brown coat I'd never seen. His hand trembled when he lifted a coffee cup. He explained that he had an essential tremor, a condition he'd managed for years and kept private because he disliked being watched when he signed papers.
"Blair thinks I'm losing my mind," he said.
"Is that why she wants control of the company?"
"Partly. She also wants the employees paid and the factories kept open. She's frightened that the environmental claims will swallow everything."
I hadn't expected him to defend her.
Arthur told me that when I was born, my biological mother was a young woman named Laurel Quinn. She wasn't ready to raise a child, and the adoption was arranged through lawful proceedings. My adoptive parents, James and Marlene Moore, had loved and raised me. Arthur learned enough to follow my early years from a distance but did not interfere with the adoption or contact me until I found him as an adult.
"You had no right to decide my future after the adoption," I said.
"I know. I drafted the trust because I thought I could keep corporate fights from reaching you."
"You didn't keep them from reaching Westbridge."
He looked toward the window.
He said that years earlier the company had received internal warnings about disposal practices at the site. He approved some investigation, but he also deferred to Gideon's advice that disclosures should wait until the data were verified and the legal strategy was settled.
"Did you delay warnings people needed?" I asked.
"I don't know everything that was communicated. I know I trusted Gideon longer than I should have."
I pushed my coffee aside.
"Then help the investigators get the records."
"I'm trying to get the trustees to approve a reserve for cleanup."
"A reserve doesn't change what people knew when they made decisions."
Arthur nodded, as if the words were something he had been unable to say to himself.
As we left, he told me Blair had scheduled an emergency trustees' meeting to approve a company restructuring before the records could be reviewed independently.
"Gideon says delay will put hundreds of jobs at risk," Arthur said.
"And what do you say?"
May you like
He looked at the street where my parents had once walked me to school.
"I say we're running out of time to tell the truth."
