Lifelines: Kate's Story by Vanessa Grant Page A

said the man from the
construction site.
    Kate
said, “Inside. The phone’s inside.”
    “Is
that a kiln?”
    “Yes.”
    “Are
you setting it up here?” His gaze scanned the piles of boxes.
    “I’m
not sure.” What the hell did she mean, she wasn’t sure? Stick with the damned
goal, Kate. Her face felt strange, as if the unfamiliar curve of lips might
crack her cheeks. “I bought the kiln at auction, and somehow never got it set
up.”
    “Your
husband ...”
    “He
died.” The words squeezed through a tight place in her chest. “I’ll go to the
library and find out about kilns. You wanted the phone?”
    “Yeah.
Thanks.”
    He
rubbed his boots clean on the mat before he followed her into the house.
    “Here,
in the kitchen.”
    He
followed and she gestured to the phone on the wall. Why hadn’t she left him
outside, fetched the remote phone from her bedroom?
    When
he picked up the receiver and punched numbers, she turned away to put on a pot
of coffee. He wasn’t talking, must be listening to the ringing tones. She
measured water and coffee grounds, turned on the switch. She felt stupidly
self-conscious.
    She
heard him hang up the receiver. “Not home,” he said.
    “Do
you want coffee?” Why the hell had she done that?
    He
swiped one hand through his hair. “No, thanks. I’ve got fresh concrete about to
pour and one of my men went off for supplies and hasn’t come back.”
    “Can
I help?”
    “I
don’t think—”
    “If
it’s a spare set of hands you need, someone to level the concrete between the
frames, I grew up on that stuff.” She felt an unexpected surge of excitement.
She could play with mud, level liquid concrete, clomp around a construction
site. She’d worked with her father Sundays when the crew didn’t clock in, dirt
and broken fingernails, standing beside him, surveying the day’s
accomplishment.
    “I
don’t think—”
    “I’ll
change and come along. If I’m no help, or your man turns up, you can send me
home.”
    She
hurried into the bedroom before he could find words to stop her. In her closet,
she found the steel-toed boots David wanted her to throw out. She yanked off
her sweater and pulled on a denim shirt, tucked it into her jeans and topped it
with a battered hiking jacket. Then she pulled her hair back with elastic and
reappeared in the kitchen.
    “Ah
... look, I—”
    “Give
me a chance to prove I can do the job. Please.” Why was she thrusting
herself on him? To escape those goals? “Look, I’m sorry if I’m being pushy.”
She searched for honest words short of spilling her guts to a stranger. “I had
a bad night. Of course you don’t—”
    “Do
you have a thermos for that coffee?”

    K ate
signaled the man in the cement mixer when concrete rose to the strings. Twenty
feet away, Socrates watched from a bed he’d dug in the dirt. At the other end
of the wall, a young laborer named Jim stood with hands in pockets, staring at
the rising concrete.
    “Mac!”
shouted the boy, “It’s full! What should I do now?”
    Kate
found a flat stick with a sharp edge and smoothed the concrete’s lumpy surface.
Then she set the bolts he—Mac—had given her, head-down in the jellied concrete.
When the concrete hardened, two-by-six planks would be set over the bolts and
fastened down to anchor the walls to the foundation.
    While
the driver of the cement mixer repositioned his chute, Mac gestured for Jim to
smooth the surface of the concrete from his end. Kate worked her way to the
middle, then walked around to the north wall where the mixer waited to begin a
new pour.
    At
fourteen, she’d lacked her father’s power and speed hammering nails into studs,
but she’d learned to toe a stud into place and build a wall. She’d celebrated
her fourteenth birthday in Brazil, where her father had contracted a series of
houses on harbor view properties. She remembered the Sunday they finished the
cedar siding on the second house from the end of the road. When their