CHAPTER 6: Henderson project.
1021 Words
The Henderson estate stays behind the iron gate in coral gables,there was a driveway that curved through stones. A waterfront view that costs more than most people's entire life savings.
Leo Henderson used the front door out of habit he had never examined closely to break.
He had come today for a straightforward reason, the Henderson capital had contracted a landscaping firm to redesign the garden,it was a routine property maintenance decision.
Chad had assigned him to oversee it because Chad considered it beneath his own attention.
Leo had been told it would take thirty minutes. He checked his watch as he walked around the side of the house towards the garden.
He had a lunch meeting at one,he also had dinner with two of Chad's senior partners by seven.
Leo turns the corner into the garden and stops walking.
There was a woman knee deep in the soil of what used to be the east flower.
The one his mother had planted herself,it was slowly dying ever since she stopped tending to it.
The woman whose knee was deep in the soil was working with focused,unhurried energy.
She had curly dark hair she had pulled with what appeared to be a pencil,she was wearing old boots and a jacket with a navarro landscape design logo on the back.
She did not look up when Leo walked in. Leo stood at the edge of the garden and waited for her to acknowledge him.
The kind of acknowledgement that comes with the Henderson name.
She moved three feet to the left and kept working.
Leo cleared his throat.
“Excuse me," he said.
She looked up, but not with the expression he was expecting. She looked up with the expression of someone who had been interrupted in the middle of something important.
Her eyes were hazel,slightly narrowed above the morning sun.
There was a streak of soil by the corner of her cheekbone she was completely unaware of.
" Yes,” she said.
Leo looked amused as the reply,no acknowledgement of who he was.
“I'm Leo Henderson," he said.
She looked at him for a moment.
" I know..”she said and went back to work
Leo stood at the edge of the garden processing what just happened.
In his experience,people did not look at Henderson and go back to what they were doing.
This woman had looked at him,confirmed she already knew he was and returned her full attention to the soil.
He walked towards her.
" I came here to oversee the redesign project,” he said.
“I know that too," she said without looking up. She was working around the root system of something.
“And you are?" He asked.
" Sofia Navarro” she sat back on her heels and looked up at him properly.
“Navarro landscape design,we have a signed contract with Henderson capital for a full twelve weeks. I started this morning.”
She stood up,she was smaller than he had registered from a distance. She pulled off one glove and extended her hand and Leo shook it.
“I'll walk you through the plan” she said, turning away from him and moving towards the far end of the garden.
" The east bed needs full replanting; the roots there have been neglected for at least a decade. The west side is structurally fine but aesthetically it's been maintained without any actual vision. So we are starting from scratch there too" she unrolled the drawing against the wall and held them flat with both hands. “The centrepiece is the existing banyan tree on the south side. Everything in the new design is built around it”
Leo looked at the drawings,then he looked at the banyan tree she was referring to too. It was old,the roots touching the ground in three places.
“We might need to remove the tree," he said. “It blocks the sightline to the water from the terrace. Sofia looked at him.
“We’re not moving the tree” she said.
“The sightlines is not worth a sixty year old banyan” she rolled the drawing back up.
“The design works with tree" she said again
Leo looked at her and looked at the tree.
“i’ll need to check with my brother” he said
“Your brother signed the contract,the contract includes full creative autonomy on design decisions within the agreed scope” she said and picked up her glove and pulled it back on.
Leo stood in the middle of the Henderson estate garden with the Miami morning sun moving around him and the distant sound of water moving
Beyond the terrace and a very unsatisfied feeling of running into a conversation he did not win.
Leo checked his watch, he had been here for eleven minutes.
" What's the timeline for the east bed?" He asked.
Sofia didn't look up.
“Three weeks,if the weather holds. Four if it doesn't”
“And the tree situation?" Leo asked
“It's resolved, the tree stays," she said.
Leo looks at the back of her head, the pencil holding her hair,the soil on her jacket.
“I'll come back tomorrow, to check the progress" he said.
" You don't need to do that” Sofia replied immediately.
Leo left,he was at the gate the moment he realised he was smiling since approximately the moment she went back to work.
Forty floors above the Henderson capital buiding bore his brothers cold ambition on every surface,Victor hale sat in his office at the end of the day and opened his phone
He pulled out the surveillance report on Amelia Rossi
He read it,set the phone face down on his desk.
He picked up the phone again and dialled a number.
“she’s getting closer, Viv Carter almost told her today” there was silence at the other end of the phone then the call ended.
Vivienne Carter has printed three documents,she had met Amelia outside the building,twice in one week.
Victor hale picked up his phone again, this time he dialled Chad Henderson.
- Writer
