Todos os capítulos de RIVAL FOUNDATIONS: Capítulo 91 - Capítulo 97

The formal proposal for what would eventually become known as the Riverside Corridor Initiative, a considerably more modest undertaking than the Legacy District but no less significant to the struggling neighborhood it would serve, reached the city council's desk nearly eight months after Whitfield's original suggestion, and Sienna found herself, presenting alongside Damian and Devon, drawing on every lesson learned through the Legacy District's own long, demanding journey."We're not proposing to simply replicate what we built downtown," she told the council, walking them through a proposal specifically tailored to Riverside's own distinct character and needs. "This corridor has its own history, its own community, its own particular challenges. I want to be clear that whatever we build here needs to reflect Riverside's own identity, not simply import a template from somewhere else."The council's reception proved considerably warmer than the Legacy District's own contentious beginnin

The first real trouble arrived three weeks later, and it arrived in a manila envelope.Foster Engineering, the geotechnical firm Sienna had hired to survey the corridor, sent over their preliminary soil report on a Thursday afternoon. Sienna was in the middle of a call about window sourcing when Priya appeared in her office doorway holding the envelope with both hands, the way you might carry a bird that had flown into a window."You should look at this," Priya said. "Before you do anything else."Sienna finished the call quickly and opened the report. She had read dozens like it over the years, dense with tables and boring in the best possible way. This one had a section near the back, highlighted in yellow by someone at Foster who had clearly not enjoyed typing it. Lead. Arsenic. Elevated levels of petroleum compounds along most of the eastern parcel, where a tannery and then a metal foundry had operated for most of a century.She read the summary twice, then set it down very carefu

Summer came to Riverside the way it always did, all at once and bringing heat. By the second week of June the remediation crews had marked out the entire eastern parcel in bright orange flags, and the site looked less like a cleanup than a very strange kind of garden, rows of test plots and sensor stakes and tiny hand-lettered signs explaining what each patch was meant to do.Rosalind had turned twelve the week before, and her only birthday request had been a proper field notebook with waterproof pages. She now carried it everywhere, tucked into the back pocket of a pair of work pants Sienna had been forced to hem twice. Every weekday morning at seven thirty, Damian drove her to the site, handed her off to Dr. C's crew, and then drove to his own office looking, Sienna thought, more like a proud parent than a billionaire."She's very good," Dr. C told Sienna on the fourth day, finding her at the trailer with a clipboard. "She logged the moisture readings for the whole north plot yester

Marcus arrived at the Riverside trailer on a Wednesday in a pair of canvas pants and a straw hat that made Priya stop mid-sentence."That's a lot of hat," she said."It's a gardening hat. It's been a very productive tomato season, I'll have you know." He set down a cardboard box of old drawings and looked around the site with the expression of a man visiting a city he had once loved. "I told you I'd think about a limited role. I've thought. Two days a week, no more, and I do not attend any meeting with the word synergy in the title.""Deal," Sienna said, grinning. "I'll put it in writing.""See that you do."It had been nearly a year since his retirement celebration, and the change in him was visible. He moved more slowly, but his shoulders had lost the long, tight hunch they carried through his last years at the firm, and he laughed more easily than she had ever seen. The garden had done something for him. So, she suspected, had the plain fact of being needed for something he chose r