The Sugar House Read online

  “I meant what I said about getting you an attorney to help you find whoever adopted your half sister,” he said, moving back to what had somehow led them to this suddenly uncomfortable place. “Have you learned anything that might help with that?”

  He doubted a change of subject had ever been so artless. But Emmy had the grace, or maybe it was the sense of self-protection, to allow it.

  “I haven’t,” she admitted, tightening her hold on herself. It had been duty that had brought him back. By denying nothing, he’d as much as admitted that he was there because he felt bad about all that had happened, and bad for her for having to go through it. He cared for her because he felt sympathy for her. And that meant he didn’t care for her at all the way she did about him. “I really haven’t had time.”

  “So what are you going to do now?”

  She could tell from the way he glanced to the envelope then back to her that he wanted to know who she might ask to find out who her father’s lover might have been. Common as the name was, she knew of no Jones in the area. It could have been a generic name to protect the mother, for all she knew. But she didn’t want to think about that now. She couldn’t. She was too busy fighting the awful suspicion that beyond feeling obligated to her, he’d felt sorry for her. Worse, that he’d felt sorry for her when he’d held her, when they’d made love.

  Her sense of self-preservation had been sorely lacking where he’d been concerned. It kicked in now as she backed away.

  “I’ll do what I always do.” Six feet of pine flooring now separated them. It might as well have been a mile. “The rest of this sugaring season will mostly be a loss, but I’ll get through and get by.”

  Needing to hide how she hurt, she offered a smile. “In the meantime, you shouldn’t waste your time on me. I’m fine, Jack. I really am. I’m actually a lot like you. You’re the only other person I know who doesn’t seem to want anything but your work. Somehow it seems to be all you need. I just need to remember I don’t need anything but work, either.”

  Jack had no idea what to say just then. He could practically see her withdrawing, could almost physically feel it. The phenomenon was as disconcerting as the little voice telling him he should feel relieved, that he could get back to his hustling and not worry about the responsibility he felt for her anymore. She was letting him off the hook. She’d just told him he owed her nothing, that the problems between their families were settled.

  He had never intended for their relationship to get complicated. And it wouldn’t have, he reminded himself, had he kept his hands to himself. But somewhere along the line, he’d become sidetracked by her spirit, her gentleness, the feel of her against him, and he’d totally lost focus of his original goal.

  That goal had been to offer an apology and return property. Those had been his sole intentions when he returned to Maple Mountain two weeks ago. Yet, at that moment, dealing with the unresolved part of that situation held no importance at all. He wasn’t sure if it was his ego or his heart that felt sucker punched. He wasn’t even totally sure why the feeling was there. All he knew for certain was that it was time to step back and regroup.

  “Do you want me to leave?” he asked, at loss for where else to go from there.

  Her smile was gone. So was the strength from her voice. “It might be best.”

  As if he hadn’t fully expected that, one corner of his mouth pinched before he gave her a little nod.

  Just like that, Emmy thought. Just like that the hope she should have never allowed herself to feel was gone.

  Her aching heart seemed to be battering her ribs as he walked up to her and lifted his hand to her face.

  “Since Charlie won’t be around to work today, I could at least help you until dark.”

  She shook her head, needing him go.

  He seemed to realize that as his mouth thinned again. “Then, promise me something?”

  Swallowing past the knot in her throat, she said, “Sure.”

  “Promise me you’ll take care of yourself?”

  “Only if you promise me back.”

  The pads of his fingers drifted to her jaw. “Deal.”

  “Deal,” she repeated and, wanting to be brave, rose on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.

  Her lips had barely touched his recently shaved skin and his clean scent tightened the ache inside when she pulled back. As she did, she felt the hand that had settled with such familiarity on her shoulder give a little squeeze.

  “Do yourself a favor, Emmy,” he said, reluctantly letting that hand fall. “I know you love this place. Just don’t bury yourself here. Okay?”

  He didn’t wait for a response. He turned then, leaving her hugging herself while he crouched in front of Rudy, told her dog to keep an eye on her and after ruffling the fur on her blissfully oblivious pet’s head, headed for the mudroom and his jacket.

  Long moments passed before she heard the back door open and the quiet, almost hesitant thud of it closing behind him. That decidedly final sound seemed to echo long after his car pulled from her drive.

  Chapter Twelve

  Maple Sugar Days in mid-April had once been Emmy’s favorite celebration. People came for miles to attend the Saturday-morning pancake breakfast, to watch candy-making demonstrations and visit the craft booths filled with everything from specialty foods to beautiful, hand-crafted furniture of bird’s-eye maple and quilts appliquéd with maple leaves. The area’s sugar houses opened their doors. And the women’s league put on a chicken dinner and the sugar-on-snow party that drew every local for miles.

  Depending on Mother Nature’s mood, snow could still be heavy on the ground when festival weekend rolled around, the roads could be visible for the first time in months, or the snow could be gone and Northern Vermont knee deep in mud season. When the festival arrived this year, Emmy thought the weather perfect. Bare patches exposed the dead leaves around the trees, and a few hardy crocus peeked through the remaining snow on her flower beds. The days were clear and cool. The nights clear and colder.

  For years the Larkin sugar house had welcomed the visitors who came to see syrup being made. And over those years, traditions had evolved in the little family operation that had become inviolate as far as she was concerned.

  When she’d been a young girl, her mother had kept a pot of cider spiced with cinnamon warm on the hot plate in the sugar house for those guests. And her father, who spent most of his time at the evaporator feeding the fire, stirring the syrup and keeping the curious from getting close enough to burn themselves on hot metal or steam, would bring out the red and gold maple leaves he’d collected and pressed the previous fall.

  Emmy’s job had been to hand out those brilliant bits of autumn foliage to the children and to help her mom serve the cider that had been pressed from their own apple trees.

  Even after her father’s death, when she and her mom had done the sugaring themselves and there had been no time to make the little maple candies, maple cream and maple sugar that had been her mother’s specialties, their sugar house had been on the Maple Sugar Days tour and the cider and the leaves had been passed out.

  Emmy had faithfully kept those traditions. Until now. The tubing she’d ordered had arrived, but not in time to increase her production before the festival. She was only getting enough sap for one boil an evening.

  She stood in her bedroom, holding up two white blouses on hangers. One had a high neck, the other a collar.

  Turning to where Rudy lay chewing on the oval of plush pink that had once been a bunny but now resembled a football with an ear, she held one in front of her, then the other.

  “What do you think, Rudy? It’ll be under a sweater, so high collar? Open?”

  Rudy lifted his eyes, the remaining body part in his mouth and the rest dangling, and went back to chewing.

  “That’s what I thought, too,” she murmured, and returned both to her closet.

  Threading her fingers through her hair, she backed up and plopped down on the foot of her bed.

/>   She couldn’t believe she was having trouble deciding what to wear that night. Since her sugar house wouldn’t be open for tours, she’d offered to help out at the community center and serve sugar on snow, the maple treat northern New Englanders craved. But she didn’t have to be there until four that afternoon.

  It was barely after nine o’clock in the morning now.

  She should have been in the sugar bush. She actually should have been out there an hour ago. She’d just been too busy procrastinating. For the past half hour, anyway. She hadn’t wanted to call Jack before then and possibly wake him up—if he was even home.

  Knowing she would only drive herself crazy sitting there, she hauled herself up and down the hall. He had given her his phone numbers before he’d left the first time. All four of them: main office, private line, home and cell phone.

  For days she’d been working her way up to making the call. She’d actually decided last night that it was time. It was actually past time, she admitted, picking up the receiver and making herself punch in the number for his home phone.

  The ringing on the other end began immediately, causing her heart to jump and her courage to falter.

  There hadn’t been a day go by that she hadn’t missed Jack and wished he were by her side. Or a night that she hadn’t realized how futile it was to try to pretend nothing about her life had changed. She went through the same motions she would have before he’d appeared and upended her life, but nothing about her life was the same. She hadn’t meant for it to happen, hadn’t even realized it was until it had been too late. But because of him, she had started to dream of things she’d been afraid to let herself think about, of maybe someday having a husband, children—and a life away from the only one she’d ever known and had fought so hard to protect.

  But that peace had cracked and shattered when Jack had left, and she had no idea how to get it back.

  When she heard his phone ring the third time, she almost breathed a sigh of relief. She would get his answering machine. It would be better that way, she thought. She could just leave a message asking her question, and he could leave a message for her, answering it.

  The line clicked a moment before she heard a deep “Hello?”

  The painfully familiar voice wasn’t recorded.

  “Hi,” she said, and sat down at her desk because her knees suddenly felt a little shaky.

  “Emmy.”

  Jack unzipped the jacket of his jogging suit and tossed his keys onto the credenza inside his foyer. Had the caller ID on the cordless phone there not indicated that the call was coming from Vermont, he would have let the answering machine pick it up while he grabbed a towel and dried off. The mist he’d started jogging in an hour ago had turned to steady rain along about his fourth mile.

  It was also about then that he’d decided he was never going to get her out of his mind.

  His heart rate still slowing, he spoke the first thought to enter his head at the sound of her voice. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” came her quiet reply. “I’ll only keep you for a minute,” she continued, sounding as if she thought she might be bothering him. “I just wondered if you’d give me the name of the real estate person you used when you bought that parcel of property.”

  That property had been on his mind that morning, too. Everything about her had. But then, there hadn’t been a day go by that thoughts of her hadn’t haunted him. “You don’t need her to get that land,” he said, thinking that was what she wanted, wondering what had finally made her change her mind. “I’ll just give you the deed.” If you’ll give me your name, he would have added, but she was already talking.

  “That’s not why I called,” she quietly told him. “I want to sell what I already have. The land. The sugar house. My home. You’re the only person I know who’s dealt with a real estate agent. The people I know around here don’t tend to sell their property. They pass it on to family.”

  He’d started for his bathroom, since it was the nearest place with a towel, and passed the spacious living room that his new housekeeper had finally cleared and arranged. Even with its floor-to-ceiling view of the bay, the room with its sleek modern furnishings seemed sterile to him. It needed color, heavier fabrics. Warmth.

  He now came to a dead stop in the hall.

  “You want to sell everything?”

  “As soon as I can.”

  In the two weeks since he’d walked away from her, he had picked up the phone a dozen times to see how she was doing. And a dozen times he’d hung up because he’d told himself he needed to stop worrying about her. She’d survived this long without him; she would be fine.

  He wished now that he had called. She wasn’t fine at all. He knew how emotionally bonded she was to her home and her land. He knew, too, that she’d never known a life other than the one she lived on that land in Maple Mountain.

  “Why do you want to do that?” he asked, his protective instincts clearly in place. “Is it because the sugaring is so bad? If you need money—”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Then what is it?”

  The line hummed with her hesitation.

  “Emmy?”

  “It’s because of what you said before you left,” she finally replied. “You said I should do myself a favor and not bury myself here.” She gave a little laugh, the sound clearly intended to make light of her discovery. It failed miserably. “I just didn’t realize until after you’d gone that I already had.”

  He didn’t care at all for the hollowness in her voice. He didn’t care, either, that he hadn’t had time to come to grips with what he’d began to realize about her while running in the rain. He could deal with it on the way to Maple Mountain.

  “Hey, listen,” he said, his tone casual despite the odd urgency he felt. “Why don’t we talk about this? I need to run by the office for a couple of hours. But I can be there by five. Six at the latest.”

  “You don’t need to come here, Jack. Really,” she softly stressed. “I don’t want to intrude on your time. I just need the name of your real estate agent.”

  Ignoring her protest, he headed into his bathroom, grabbed a towel to wipe over his face and moved into his bedroom to change. “You’ll be down from the sugar bush by then. Right?”

  “Jack…”

  “Emmy,” he echoed. “I’m coming, okay? Where will you be?”

  “At the community center,” she finally told him. “It’s Maple Sugar Days this weekend. I’m serving there tonight.”

  Jack had forgotten how many people came out for what was actually a celebration of spring in the north country. The melting fields and piles of snow that lined the now-bare two-lane road through Maple Mountain gave way to trucks and cars parked headlamp to taillight when he turned onto the short road that ended at the brightly lit community center. On the other side of Main Road behind him, the lane to the little community church was packed, too.

  So was the utilitarian white building itself when, having finally found a place to park, he walked through its front door and was greeted by the din of locals and visitors sitting elbow to elbow at eight-foot-long tables.

  The walls of the wide, high-ceilinged room were lined with craft booths and hundreds of construction-paper maple leaves hung suspended from the rafters. He remembered making leaves like that himself. All the grade school kids had. Still did, from the looks of it, he thought, and glanced over the crowd for Emmy.

  The conversations near him seemed to quiet.

  The one taking place two tables ahead of him stopped completely.

  For a quick, uncomfortable second, he thought of the cool receptions he’d been greeted with before by some of the locals. But he had no time to do more than notice a few people’s heads moving together to whisper to each other before he heard a familiar, “Hey, Jack!”

  Charlie waved a half-eaten doughnut. From the table beyond him, Joe lifted his hand, too.

  Jack waved back as Hanna Talbot walked in front of him with a large j
ar of home-canned pickles. “You home for the festival?” she asked on her way by.

  He hadn’t seen Hanna since he’d checked into her family’s hotel the night before the storm. Her naturally reserved smile seemed infinitely more friendly than it had been then.

  Smiling back, he said he was, since it seemed an easy enough way to explain his presence, and let his glance sweep back across the room.

  Several of the local women moved between the tables carrying baskets of biscuits and maple bread and platters of fried chicken. Others were serving the dessert of sugar-on-snow that was really the reason everyone was there. The sugar of pure, thick and hot maple syrup had been drizzled like lacework over snow packed in aluminum pie plates. The chewy confection was greeted with ready forks and smiles and followed with a bite of pickle or donut from the bowls and plates in the middles of the tables.

  Passing baskets of biscuits, Mary Moorehouse lifted her chin at him and smiled. A couple dozen feet closer, the wiry, outspoken woman he recognized as Bertie Buell narrowly eyed his casual brown leather jacket and heavy ivory sweater.

  Lips thinned, she motioned him over to where she sat at a table with the minister and his wife.

  “If you’re lookin’ for Emmy, she just went into the kitchen,” she said, and took a bite of pickle.

  He’d barely offered a quick “Thanks” before he looked up to see Emmy returning with a tray of pie tins.

  He caught her eye a moment before she turned to speak to the teenage girl beside her. Looking like a teenager herself, petite as she was, she handed the girl the tray and walked over to where he was now being watched by nearly all the locals and half the visitors.

  Mindful of their audience, he kept his hands to himself as his glance skimmed the deep auburn hair she’d pulled back in a braid and the pine-green sweater that turned the silver chips in her gray eyes to slivers of pewter. He couldn’t believe how much he’d missed her. Or how he hated the caution he saw in the delicate lines of her face.