Then I realize Jane didn’t say where.
Vegas. Has to be. Grace is twenty-two and has been cooped up in Boston through the worst of February. Of course it's Vegas.
Chapter 21
Reading the Ice
February 19 – 21 | Cedar Falls
West
Cedar Falls arrives without theatrics.
No photographers. No handlers. Nobody who recognizes me. Or if they do, they don't show it.
The private strip sits thirty minutes outside Cedar Falls—clean asphalt, new hangars, the kind of infrastructure that tells you someone's investing long-term.
Levi Johansen had sent me three articles over Christmas. The global mistletoe event. The charity fundraiser. The kiss that turned into a viral storm and pulled national coverage with it. For a week, Cedar Falls was everywhere — morning shows, sports feeds, international wires.
A small town that knows how to generate noise when it wants to.
Now it's February.
According to Cameron Wilder, snowfall’s at record lows. December dumped hard enough to trigger a road slide. Since then—dry. Cold. Thin.
In cities, weather is background. An inconvenience or a novelty, depending on how much you enjoy seasons.
Here it's news. It's business. It’s operational—tourism, weekend traffic, seasonal hires—all of it contingent onpowder.
Because when snow runs thin, the arena becomes the heartbeat for families and tourists looking for winter activities.
The ridgelines are lighter than they should be this time of year. I wouldn't have known that if Cam hadn't mentioned the drought while I was in Anguilla. The men were tracking melt rates. I was tracking SPF levels.
The detail stuck anyway.
I drive toward town.
Mega Max Velocity Park sits on the outskirts—the indoor track Cam sent photos of. One mile of climate-controlled asphalt under a roof.
The parking lot’s full.
Like the hockey arena, if powder isn’t reliable, people drive here instead.
Families. Tourists from next towns over. Anyone who booked a ski weekend and got thin powder instead.
You don’t build something like this for a good season.
You build it for insulation and insurance.
That tells me more about Cedar Falls than any pitch deck ever could.
The air feels cold and clean. The road narrows. Two lanes, no shoulder, pines pressing close on both sides.
Then Main Street opens up.
Mane Street Bistro, windows fogged from the dinner rush, a cluster of trucks parked out front at angles that suggest the parking lines are more advisory than regulatory.
Jane would love this. She'd walk in, order something off-menu, charm the owner into giving her the recipe, and have three new clients by the time we finished dessert. That's how she operates—turning strangers into allies in under ten minutes.
