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noncommittal expression. Seeing her with him allowed me a glimpse of a very different person—someone spontaneous and fun. I felt sad that she wouldn’t allow herself to be that way around me or anyone else she came into contact with at Green Acres. Clearly, something had happened to her—a bad early marriage or relationship, I suspected—that made her such a standoffish and solitary young woman.
    “Hello, down there!” Eleanor called, waving to us from the side deck. The housekeeper had greeted us cordially when we arrived and invited us in for cookies and a cup of tea when we’d finished our work. “Warm brownies just out of the oven, if anyone’s interested.”
    “Yes!” Danny said, his face brightening again.
    “You guys go ahead,” I told Mara. We’d been at it for more than an hour, and the temperature was starting to drop off as the afternoon lengthened. I still had a lot of ground to cover, but Mackenzie had given me permission to walk the property whenever I wished. And I already knew that I’d need several additional visits to get all the readings I wanted. “I’m going to take some more photos before the light goes. I’ll see you up there.”
    I watched them climb the hill, hand in hand, Danny galloping along beside his mom, obviously excited by the prospect of what awaited him in the enormous house above. I reached down to pick up the measuring tape that Danny had left on the ground. When I stood up again, I felt a rush of vertigo. The world wavered. Clouds scudding above the mountains in the distance looked suddenly ominous. A front was coming through—the forecast called for temperatures to be twenty degrees warmer by daybreak. Good news, really. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to explain my sudden uneasiness. I’d grown accustomed to being on my own outdoors. In fact, I usually cherished it. So what was this about? I wondered. But the sun was fading, and I didn’t have time to chase shadows. I forced myself to shake off the willies and keep moving.
    I worked quickly, framing different shots of Mackenzie’s property in my viewfinder, seeing the many possibilities—and problems—that the land presented. For the most part, the gradient was at least twenty degrees, with just a few places where the slope leveled off. It began to occur to me that I was going to literally have to move the earth to create my own flat surfaces. Just how large those man-made terraces could be and how many the hillside could support would depend, I knew, on a number of variables, including underlying drainage and soil composition. I would have to bring in a landscape contractor for advice—and an environmental expert. Eventually, I’d need to consult with the EPA. I began to make a mental list of all the calls I was going to have to make on Monday morning.
    By the time I started up to the house, a plan had begun to take shape in my mind. It was nothing I could even put down on paper yet. Just a sense of movement and form—like a flow of water over rock. A visual echo of the rolling mountains in the distance and the meandering course of the river through the valley.
    I entered the house from the flight of stairs that led up to theside deck, and followed the sound of voices down a long hall and into a brightly lit kitchen gleaming with brushed aluminum appliances and copper utensils suspended above a butcher block island. The walls were sunflower yellow, the counters thick blue slate. The floor was covered with glazed terra-cotta tile. Despite its size and elegance, it was a working kitchen, with open shelving lined with spices and mixing bowls. At the far end of the room, a long wooden table paralleled a large fireplace. Mara was sitting on a bench facing me. Eleanor was kitty-corner to her at the end of the table with Danny on her lap. Mara and Eleanor were leaning toward each other, obviously intent on whatever they were discussing.
    “. . . be happy to check it out for you,” Mara was saying.
    “That would