36. Kate #3
Most days, I woke before the stove cooled, slipped into boots stiff with frost, and fed the fire until it snapped like a metronome. Then the table became my world: butcher paper unrolled edge to edge, pencils sharpened to surgical points, coffee steaming in the same chipped mug.
The Land Will Sing Again.
I wrote the name across the top of every sheet in bold charcoal strokes, the letters curling like woodsmoke. The old college campus—twenty-three crumbling buildings on two hundred acres of river valley—was all mine for now, bought and paid for with heartbreak and lies.
I started with the main hall. Gothic arches, ivy swallowing the stone.
I drew sightlines from the conductor’s podium to the back row, calculated acoustics with a borrowed slide rule, shaded in retractable risers so the space could breathe as recital hall or full orchestra pit.
My fingers smelled of graphite and cedar shavings.
When the light shifted, I moved to the dormitories—gut the asbestos, raise the ceilings, install practice rooms no larger than confessionals, each with a window facing the river so students could watch water instead of walls.
By noon the sun climbed high enough to melt the porch ice.
I laced my boots, grabbed the rolled blueprints, and hiked.
The trail began behind the woodshed: pine needles muffling my steps, chickadees scolding overhead.
Ten minutes downhill, the trees parted and the river flashed silver between trunks. I followed it south, counting paces.
Two hundred and thirty-seven from the frozen rapids to a rusted iron stake half-buried in moss.
My stake. My property line. The campus lay another quarter mile beyond—close enough that I could smell the ghost of chalk dust on the wind.
I stood there until my toes went numb, blueprints fluttering like prayer flags.
Close enough to walk to work. They never thought to look for me hiding right under all their noses in Guerra’s safe-house shack.
Shielded. Protected. The truth was slowly starting to sink in—maybe I really was the queen on the board?
The one taking out players. Even Drew needed space from me.
Who knew I was such a honeypot? I almost snorted.
I was kryptonite to powerful men. And it felt good until it didn’t.
Back at the cabin, I spread topographical maps across the floor.
The access road was a scar of red clay…I sketched a footbridge instead, cedar planks wide enough for instrument cases.
I rerouted the river path to curve past the sculpture garden—bronze trebles clefs rising from wildflower beds.
I labeled the old gymnasium Amphitheater and imagined moonlight concerts, the audience on blankets, the river providing percussion.
Afternoons bled into dusk. I cooked one-pot stews, ate by lantern light, then climbed the loft with a fresh sheet of vellum. Michael came then, slipping through the cracks the firelight left open.
He stood at the edge of dreams in the same Armani suit he wore the night he first saw me.
“Play it like you mean it, Kate.” His fingers ghosted over mine on the phantom fretboard, calluses rough, voice low.
We built the campus together in that half-sleep state between dreams and waking: he chose the Steinway for the recital hall, I argued for solar panels on the library roof.
He kissed the hollow beneath my ear and whispered that the land would forgive us both if we made it sing.
I woke gasping, sheets twisted, the stove ticking as it cooled.
Moonlight striped the rafters; the blueprints waited downstairs like patient children.
I padded down the ladder, added a note in the margin—Michael’s Bench, facing east—and went back to bed smelling of woodsmoke and graphite and the river that carried his name every time it crested.
Some mornings, I found new sketches I didn’t remember drawing— a greenhouse for winter rehearsals, a footpath lined with chimes that played in the wind. My handwriting in the margins—perfect sightlines for sunrise.
I lost track of the days, snow melted into mud, then into the green hush of spring..
I hiked daily now, boots caked, blueprints in a waterproof tube slung across my back.
I stood on the ridge above the campus and watched deer graze where the parking lot used to be.
I pressed my palm to the sun warmed stones and felt the land humming, waiting.
One evening I returned to find the rotary phone ringing—three short, one long.
Vega’s code. I let it ring out. I wasn’t ready for the world to find me.
Not until the plans were perfect. Not until I could walk onto that campus and hear Michael’s chord progression in the wind that I wrote without my knees buckling.
I hung the final blueprint above the stove—a bird’s-eye view, every building labeled, every path lit by solar lanterns. In the center, the main hall’s roof opened like a music box. I traced the river with my finger, from the cabin to the campus to the horizon.
The land would sing again.
I just had to finish the score and have Vega deliver the printers and CAD software I would need to get it done.