I trade the sun-bleached LA hills for fog and rust in under six hours.
The rental car hums along the two-lane road that hugs the river, wipers beating an uneven rhythm against a fine, relentless drizzle. The air vents spit a faint plasticky scent, trying and failing to cover the smell of damp upholstery. I turn the radio off miles back; silence feels cleaner than any song that might try to score this.
The mill appears around a curve the way it always has—too suddenly, too big. Brick bones, broken windows, dark hollows where light never quite reaches. Today, a new feature wraps around it: a gleaming silver fence, chain-link and severe, with bright warning signs stapled to the posts.
I pull onto the gravel shoulder and kill the engine. The sudden absence of mechanical noise leaves only the soft hiss of rain on metal and the distant rush of the river. For a moment I just sit, fingers locked around the steering wheel, watching my breath fog the windshield in quick clouds.
“You can turn around,” I say to the empty car.
My voice sounds smaller here than it does in a glass office or on a soundstage. There’s no microphone, no boom operator, no red light. Just my reflection in the windshield—a slightly older face than the town remembers, framed by the muted LA haircut that cost more than my mother’s first car.
I look at the passenger seat. Three bouquets rest there, wrapped in crinkling paper: gas-station daisies, a bunch of cheap carnations, one spray of wild-looking greenery the florist’s assistant insisted on throwing in. Nothing photogenic enough for an apology post. Perfect.
“You already flew in,” I murmur. “Get out of the car, Nora.”
My hand shakes once on the door handle. I open it before I can negotiate with myself.
Cold hits first—the kind that snakes under my jacket and hugs the damp fabric of my T-shirt to my skin. The air tastes metallic, like I’ve licked an old penny. Soil and wet leaves and distant diesel layer on top, a smell my body recognizes too well.
Gravel crunches under my boots as I move to the trunk. I pop it, grab the cheap umbrella I bought at the airport, and leave it closed. I want the rain on my face.
The overgrown path that used to be a side road curls toward the mill. Years of disuse have turned asphalt into a patchwork of moss, puddles, and stubborn weeds. Here and there, crushed beer cans and glass shards glitter dully, half-buried in mud. No one has bothered to pretty any of this up for demolition.
I balance all three bouquets in my arms and start walking.
“You know this way,” I say under my breath. “You’ve done this walk.”
The last time, I was sixteen and furious, boots too thin for the cold, hands jammed into the pockets of a knockoff leather jacket. A girl with a different name walked beside me, sarcasm sharp enough to cut through the fog. A camera crew waited ahead, along with a script I hated and a staircase that would change everything.
I push that version of the scene away. Today, there is no crew. Only heavy machinery parked along the far edge of the lot, hulking shapes under tarps. An excavator’s arm juts up like an orange question mark above the fence, still for now.
The closer I get, the louder the river sounds, rushing past on the other side of the mill like it’s late for something. The drizzle thickens into a fine, clinging mist, beading on my eyelashes. A raindrop slips inside my collar and tracks down my spine, cold enough to reset my posture.
I reach the fence.
The chain-link rises taller than my head, topped with fresh coils of razor wire that catch what little light the overcast morning offers. Yellow signs scream in block letters: DANGER. KEEP OUT. CONDEMNED STRUCTURE. TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.
“You’re late on that warning,” I mutter.
I shift the bouquets into one arm and step closer, fingers curling through the cold metal diamonds. The fence vibrates faintly, humming with the tension of being stretched this wide. Beyond it, the mill sits like it’s waiting for a cue it never wanted.
Rust streaks down from broken windows, leaving brown-black tears on the brick. The old fire escape still clings to the side nearest me, one segment dangling where a bolt failed years ago. The stairwell inside, the one that matters, hides deeper in the belly of the building, but my body swears it can feel the ghost of those slick, narrow steps under my boots.
“Hi,” I say.
My voice snags in my throat at first. I swallow and try again.
“Hi, Lila.”
The name hangs between me and the mill. The drizzle patters against the fence, soft and relentless.
I thread the first bouquet—white daisies with yellow centers—into the links at eye level. The paper crinkles when I shove the stems through a gap until they wedge, petals pressing against the metal like they’re trying to breathe through it.
“This one’s for you,” I tell the building, which is the closest thing I have to her body right now. “For Lila Park, who deserved a better co-star and a less cursed set.”
My hand grips the fence tighter until my knuckles go bloodless. Water seeps under my cuff.
“You warned me,” I whisper. “You warned all of us. I didn’t listen. I chose the story that saved me and buried you. I’m late, and it’s heavy, and it’s still yours.”
Wind pushes a ragged strand of hair into my mouth. The taste of rain and old shampoo mixes with the copper on my tongue.
I breathe, step a little to the right, and wedge the second bouquet into place: pink and red carnations, the discount kind you buy when you’re apologizing on a budget.
“This is for Rhea,” I say.
The word kicks something loose in my chest. I blink hard, rain and tears blurring the fence into one shifting silver plane.
“You didn’t get a mill to blame,” I tell the empty yard. “Just a soundstage and a line on a call sheet. You deserved harnesses that held, supervisors who meant it, a star who refused the shot. You got me instead. I can’t bring you flowers at a grave you never wanted. So I’m bringing them here. To the factory that built the story that ate us.”
The carnations bob slightly in the breeze, bright spots against the dull wire.
I step left this time, closer to the gate, and place the last bouquet lower, near where my hand naturally falls. Wild greenery and a few purple flowers I don’t know the names of.
“And this,” I say, “is for the girl who walked up those stairs thinking silence equaled survival.”
The words feel strange, talking about myself in the third person, but I keep going. My throat burns.
“You weren’t a monster or a hero,” I murmur. “You were angry and scared and so sure that being good meant being quiet. You hurt people because you’d been told the story mattered more than their bodies. That doesn’t excuse you. But it explains you. And I’m tired of pretending you never existed.”
A tear escapes and tracks through the rainwater already streaking my cheeks. I swipe at it with the back of my hand, leaving a cold, wet smear.
“You don’t get flowers to erase anything,” I tell the fence. “You get them because I need to stop hiding from you. All of you.”
A throat clears behind me.
I turn, heart spiking, half expecting to see a paparazzo with a long lens or a teenage fan with a phone raised. Instead, a guy in a battered hi-vis vest stands there, hands in his jacket pockets. He looks mid-forties, unshaven, mud on his boots. A logo for the demolition company peeks out from under the vest.
“Didn’t mean to sneak up,” he says. “We’re about to start bringing it down. You shouldn’t be that close.”
I gesture to the fence. “I’m staying on this side.”
His gaze flicks to the bouquets, then to my face, lingering a second longer than casual recognition would allow. His eyes narrow like he’s almost placing me, then shift away.
“You got, uh, a connection to the place?” he asks.
I let the damp air sit on my tongue before answering. “I used to work here,” I say. “Kind of.”
It’s not untrue. Work is work, whether you’re clocking in to sew seams or to cry on cue.
He nods slowly, like he knows the second part of the sentence but isn’t going to call it out. “Rough history,” he says. “Town’ll breathe easier once it’s gone.”
“Will it?” I ask.
The question slips out before I can polish it.
He shrugs one shoulder. “Less kids dare each other to break in, at least. Less rust falling on people’s heads. Might put in a park, I heard. Or condos. Depends who you ask.”
The idea of a playground or luxury glass-front apartments sitting on top of this ground makes my stomach flip. Then I picture kids using a safe slide instead of an unsecured stairwell for thrills, and I don’t know what to root for.
“You want to watch?” he asks. “From over there.” He points to a patch of gravel farther back, marked with orange cones. “Safer sightline. And you won’t eat quite as much dust.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’ll watch.”
He jerks his chin toward the machinery. “We’re starting in five.”
He walks away, boots squelching softly. I stay where I am a moment longer, fingertips resting on cold metal, eyes on the flowers pressing up against the fence.
“I’m not filming this,” I whisper. “No posts. No statements. Just… this.”
My phone buzzes in my pocket, a tiny vibration against my hip—a text from Quinn, probably, checking whether I landed, or a calendar alert about the next safety fund call. I don’t look.
I step back from the fence and walk toward the cones.
The excavator roars to life with a cough and a growl. Diesel fumes cut through the clean wet smell, sharp and oily. The ground shivers under my feet, a faint, steady tremor. A second machine starts up, then a third, a chorus of engines and hydraulics filling the sky where, years ago, only cicadas and distant train horns droned.
The operator maneuvers the excavator closer to the mill, treads grinding over broken asphalt. The metal arm extends toward a corner of the building, joints hissing. For a split second, the bucket hovers inches from the brick, like a held breath.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Okay.”
The bucket slams into the wall.
Sound explodes—brick cracking, glass shattering, metal shrieking protest. Dust blossoms in a thick gray bloom, swallowing the lower windows. Tiny fragments of glass catch in the air before disappearing into the cloud, pale reflections of all the screens that once replayed the prettied-up version of what happened here.
My eyes burn; I lift my sleeve to my face, coughing once. Grit settles on my tongue, a bitter, mineral taste I recognize from those long nights at the mill, shooting until my lungs hurt.
The excavator pulls back, carrying a chunk of wall with it. Bricks tumble, thudding against each other. The building shudders. Another blow lands, higher this time, cleaving through rusted beams. One of the tall windows, long ago spiderwebbed, gives up completely and collapses inward in a rush of shards.
Tears spill before I register them. They mingle with the mist and dust on my cheeks, indistinguishable from the outside wet. I don’t wipe them away. My hands stay at my sides, fingers curled into the damp fabric of my jacket.
“This doesn’t undo anything,” I say under my breath. “You still fell. Rhea still died. I still shoved.”
The words feel like they’re for the building, but they’re for me too.
I watch the silhouette of the stairwell section I know so well. It appears for an instant through a gap in the dust—a sliver of the internal structure, a suggestion of steps. Then the next strike takes it, the bucket ripping open the side, turning geometry into rubble.
The railing that once painted my palms with the cold tang of metal disappears in the collapse. For a heartbeat I hear the echo of shoes on those stairs, teenage voices, a director shouting for reset. Then all I hear is machinery and falling stone.
I picture Lila in her detention facility, metal bench under her, fluorescent lights buzzing. I picture Rhea’s partner in some training room on a different set, watching new workers learn how to say “No, that’s not safe.” I picture Quinn’s laptop open on her couch, timelines replaced with spreadsheets for the fund.
The building goes on coming apart. Bit by bit, floor by floor.
“You’re not getting erased,” I tell the heap forming where the stairs used to be. “You’re getting archived somewhere you can’t be edited out.”
I’m not sure whether I’m talking about the mill or the stories it holds.
The foreman raises an arm toward me from near the site trailer, maybe checking whether I’m okay. I lift my hand in a small wave and stay where I am.
I don’t wait for the final wall to go.
When the outline has shrunk to half its size and dust coats every visible surface in a fine gray film, I turn away. The impact thuds continue behind me, fading with each step down the overgrown path. The river’s rush grows louder again, like it’s reclaiming its place in the soundscape.
My boots slide a little in the mud; I catch myself on a sapling, bark slick under my palm. At the car, I open the door and pause, looking back once.
Through the veil of mist and dust, I can just make out the three small bursts of color on the fence: white, pink, purple. They look fragile and stubborn, clinging to the metal in front of chaos.
“Stay there,” I murmur. “You belong more than I do.”
I duck into the driver’s seat, slam the door, and sit with my hands on the wheel, breathing in the damp, dusty air trapped with me. The windshield is fogged from the outside now, not my breath. The mill’s outline is a vague, collapsing shadow behind the haze.
I start the engine, but I don’t pull away yet.
“No more edits,” I tell my reflection in the glass. “Just revisions you actually earn.”
I think of the one script I haven’t touched in months, still shoved in a drawer at the glass house in Laurel Canyon, pages that tried to turn my worst choice into a tidy narrative.
A fresh thud shakes the ground, vibrating up through the tires.
I put the car in gear, pull back onto the road, and let the river town swallow me up, carrying the question of what I’ll do when I finally pull that script out into the light and start writing in the margins.