Threat of Danger Page 6

  The room around her was as she’d left it at eighteen. Cheerleading trophies still lined the top of the dresser; Justin Timberlake posters covered the walls. Bold colors drew the eye everywhere—her favorite had been the deep red of chili peppers, the color of her bedspread and throw pillows, and the rug that covered hundred-year-old hardwood floors. Clearly, the whole earth-tones, shabby-chic trend hadn’t yet begun when she’d last lived here.

  She glanced at her phone on the nightstand. Groaned. Aww, dammit. She’d forgotten to call Eliot last night. She would have to call later.

  She slipped from her bed to stand at the window. Half a dozen hired hands were milling around the outbuildings already. Her gaze slid to the Daley farm. She could see Derek’s bedroom window—a small dark dot on the white house—right above the front entry. The amount of time she’d spent staring at that window in her misspent youth . . .

  I’m a different person now.

  Her stomach growled, reminding her to get going. Jess turned from the window, cleaned up, dressed, then plodded downstairs, where Zelda was frying bacon in the kitchen.

  Jess gave her a quick hug from behind. “I was going to cook breakfast.”

  Zelda wiped her hands on her red apron, then turned and hugged her back. “I like cookin’ breakfast. Wakes me up. Can’t have coffee now. Caffeine messes with my blood pressure. Can’t have sugar anymore either. At least my cholesterol is fine. Now I wake myself up with the smell of bacon every mornin’.” She shuffled to the fridge. “Eggs?”

  “Two, please.”

  “Scrambled?”

  “Boiled if it’s not too much trouble. Mind if I make coffee?”

  “Go ahead. Fancy new machine. Brews a cup at a time, if you believe it. Your mother got it from Vermont Sugar Works for Christmas. They’re pretty nice to their suppliers.”

  After Jess’s father’s death, her mother had begun selling the maple syrup wholesale to a large distributor. In one of their rare phone calls, Rose had explained to Jess that VSW was better at the packaging and marketing, experts in the new world of online advertising and Twitter and Instagram campaigns that Rose Taylor had no inclination to learn. Selling to a wholesaler cut the work down to a size that Rose could manage.

  Jess picked a coffee pod from the little wicker basket on the counter. “They pay well?”

  “Good enough. They love our syrup,” Zelda said with pride as she put the bacon and toast on the table.

  The eggs were ready in minutes. By then, Jess had her coffee mug in hand, feeling halfway to human, sucking in that lovely, life-giving coffee scent.

  Zelda came over to the table and sat. “Derek comin’ back to help you today?”

  “No.”

  “He didn’t offer? That’s unlike him. That boy asks me every single day if I or your mother need anythin’.”

  Did he? Jess didn’t want to have to feel grateful. She didn’t want to feel anything toward him. She escaped into her coffee mug for as long as she could before saying, “He asked. I don’t want him to help.”

  Zelda watched her with a troubled gaze. She opened her mouth, then closed it again. She just nodded and busied herself with eating her bacon.

  After breakfast, Jess walked over to the sugar shack where the sap was boiled down to Grade A maple syrup, but she hesitated before going in. Derek wouldn’t be here, would he? He’d said last night that he’d asked Chuck if he needed help with the sugaring. Derek seemed to be over here a lot. Would he think that her request not to come around only concerned the house and didn’t extend to the sugar shack?

  If he did, she’d just have to set him straight. Jess reached for the door and pulled it open.

  Derek wasn’t there. Relief rushed through Jess. At least, she told herself it was relief, even if it felt an awful lot like disappointment.

  The largest vat stood in the middle of the room, the filter on one side. Two other vats—smaller and older—stood in the back. Firewood and buckets and jugs gobbled up most of the space. Empty mason jars waited in crates. The sweet scent of maple syrup filled the air, drawing her in like a siren song.

  The only thing missing was her father, Burt Taylor, bending over the fire.

  Tears sprang to Jess’s eyes. She blinked them back as her gaze settled on Chuck Hernandez.

  The sugarhouse foreman—nearly as close to Jess as another father—had a shock of gray hair and a short beard. He wore a pair of old denim overalls and a denim shirt under that. Mud covered his Timberland boots. He’d probably been going in and out all morning.

  He looked as lean as ever, never had an extra ounce on him despite eating maple syrup with nearly everything, including his morning coffee. A hardworking man, when he wasn’t sugaring, he was putting roofs on houses. He’d been raising his granddaughter, Kaylee, from the time she’d been a toddler, ever since Chuck’s only son and daughter-in-law had died in a car accident.

  Jess was suddenly holding her breath. What if Chuck was mad at her for staying away this long? What if he didn’t understand? Chuck lived for his family, and she’d left hers.

  But even as she thought that, and how much rejection would hurt, he looked up and broke into a smile that lit up the whole barn. He rushed to greet her, still as spry as he’d ever been, his arms held wide.

  “Thank God you’re here.” His arms closed around her. He held her for several seconds before letting her go to take a better look. “I was going to go up to the house to welcome you home.” He’d come from Mexico as a child, but didn’t have the slightest accent. “I popped in last night, but Zelda said you went to bed early.”

  He held Jess at arm’s length and grinned from ear to ear. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, you know that?”

  “You too.” An unexpected surge of God, it’s good to be home went through her and caught her off balance. It wasn’t a reaction she’d expected from herself. She gathered her wits.

  “How is Kaylee?”

  “Sassy. Seventeen. Driving now. Can you believe it? I have two rosaries hanging from the rearview mirror, and I might add a third.” He shook his head. “She borrowed my truck to go to town for some shopping. See all this gray hair?” He pointed to his head. “She gave me every strand.”

  “You were gray the last time I saw you.”

  Chuck grumbled. “You came back just to take her side and give me even more grief?”

  Jess grinned as she glanced around. “How is sugaring?”

  “As crazy as ever. But at five percent!” His face lit up as he pulled a hydrometer from his shirt pocket and waved it around.

  At 5 percent sugar content, they needed only about forty gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup.

  “The lightest, most beautiful amber you’ve ever seen,” he bragged.

  Jess might have been away for a while, but she still remembered that for maple syrup, the lighter the color, the better. Light golden amber was the Holy Grail.

  She felt herself caught up in the excitement, an involuntary reaction. Maybe sugaring was in her blood. “Hit the first run just right?”

  Chuck puffed out his chest. “We like to think we know what we’re doing around here.”

  In the fall, nutrients went from the trees’ crowns to the roots for the winter. In the spring, sugar-rich sap was sent from the roots to the new buds at the top of the branches. Tap the trees too early and the tree healed the hole before the sap began to truly flow. Tap the trees too late and the first sweet rush of sugar had already gone up to the leaves. Knowing when to tap was an art and a science.

  “What else is new?” she asked.

  He thought for a second; then his chest puffed out. “I’m president of the Versquatchers.”

  Versquatchers were what the local Sasquatch Club called Vermont Sasquatch enthusiasts to distinguish themselves from people who hunted Bigfoot in the Adirondacks and other places in the country.

  Jess grinned. She’d forgotten about the Versquatchers. “Congratulations!”

  Chuck gave a modest wave, but he bea
med all the same. “Most important thing is, you’re home. Zelda said you’re staying three weeks. Why not stay until the end of the season? We could use the help.”

  He wasn’t the kind of guy to take the first offer on anything without at least trying to negotiate.

  Jess shook her head. “You could run this operation blindfolded.”

  A sheepish grin turned up the corners of his mouth. “We want you here anyway.”

  “I have to go back to work.”

  His grin widened. “We watch all your movies.”

  “We, who?” She squinted at him with confusion.

  “Rose and Zelda and Kaylee and me. Sometimes Derek comes over. We do movie night. Zelda still makes a mean pizza.”

  Jess stared, feeling lost for a second. “I thought Mom hated my job.”

  “She worries that you might get hurt. But she’s proud of you as anything. We all are. And since we’re old friends and all . . .” He winked. “What do you say you set me up with that Angelina Jolie?”

  “I can’t believe you’d cheat on Zelda.” Jess feigned outrage.

  Chuck’s smile disappeared. “She won’t have me. She’s the most stubborn woman in three states.” He gazed toward the house as if he could see through walls. “Most beautiful too. Isn’t she?”

  “She sure is.”

  “Got her a new ring last week.” Hope crept into Chuck’s tone. “Used the last one for the last three proposals. Jamison Jewelers in town trades them right in. I’ve been going to them for decades.”

  “That long?” The question slipped out before Jess could stop herself. Decades. What would being loved like that feel like? A love that never stopped, never even slowed for obstacles, but just kept going.

  “Not long enough.” Chuck gave a frustrated grunt. “Fell in love with her the first time I saw her. We had a summer. Happiest summer of my life. Then I got scared and I ran. She was a single mother. I was stupid as shit, I don’t mind admitting.”

  A rugged, manly sigh that ached with regret escaped him. “Peter, her son, was the terror of the high seas. He was five and screamed at the top of his lungs every time I went near his mother. I was twenty. I didn’t think I was ready to be a father. I ran all the way to Burlington, got a job in the city for the summer. I came back, but by then it was too late. Zelda didn’t trust me. She thought I was the kind that’d up and run away.”

  Zelda’s son, Peter, had died in a snowmobile accident while in high school. The accident had happened before Jess was born, but she knew the story. Zelda never had another child. She never married. Even though Chuck had spent years and years—after his own brief, failed marriage—proving that he was the kind who’d stick by her through thick and thin.

  A rumbly truck pulled up outside. A few seconds later, Kaylee burst in. Wow.

  Jess opened her arms. “Oh my God, look at you!”

  Kaylee flew into the hug, all bouncing red curls and madly twitching freckles, two feet taller than the last time they’d seen each other. “Jess!”

  Jess used to babysit her, back in the day. She loved the girl. Why hadn’t she stayed in touch? What must Kaylee have thought of her? She’d been too young to fully understand why Jess would suddenly disappear.

  “You’re back! Oh my God, did everybody know you were coming? Nobody told me! Is this a surprise? Best surprise ever!” She didn’t take a breath, and was clearly not holding a grudge. “Are you staying? Please stay. Can you do my makeup for the spring dance?”

  Years ago, Jess must have put makeup on her a thousand times. At age seven, Kaylee had loved playing the diva.

  “You look so beautiful! I brag about you at school all the time. You’re in all the movies!” Kaylee danced around Jess, squealing like a cheerleader with her pompoms on fire.

  She had a bag hanging from her arm, and Chuck said, “Let’s see what you bought.”

  Kaylee stopped long enough to pull out a stunning pair of pumps—fire-engine red.

  Chuck frowned, not nearly as impressed as Jess was. “Stripper shoes for a school dance?” He clucked his tongue. “Five-inch heels?”

  Kaylee bit her lip as she tried to come up with something that would make her grandfather not order her to return the shoes. She cast a begging look at Jess, but Jess shook her head. The kid would have to get out of trouble on her own like any other teenager. Didn’t feel right for Jess to stick her nose into family business.

  Kaylee blurted out, her tone desperate, “They lift me closer to Jesus?”

  Jess bit back a laugh.

  Chuck shook his head. “You can keep the shoes. Creativity ought to be rewarded.” His expression turned serious then. “But don’t you take the Lord’s name in vain again, young lady. We don’t cotton to that kind of talk around here.”

  Kaylee ducked her head. “Yes, sir.”

  “Homework done? Chores done?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Better head home, then.”

  Kaylee dropped a kiss on his leathery cheek. Then she hugged Jess again, her mile-wide smile back. “I’ll come see you tomorrow after church.”

  “I don’t remember you being that strict,” Jess told Chuck after the girl left.

  “She’s seventeen,” he mumbled, as if that was all the explanation needed. Then he sighed. “You wouldn’t believe how the boys come around. I’m scared to death I’ll lose all control any day now. I don’t have any idea what I’m doing here.”

  “Looks like you’re doing a good job. She’s a great kid.”

  Chuck nodded and went back to his default setting: smiling. “You going to Burlington to see Rose this morning?”

  “I’m heading out right now. Just wanted to check on things and say hi.”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny bottle, stoppered with old-fashioned cork instead of a screw top. The syrup inside had the color of antique gold.

  He held the sample out for Jess. “Here. Take this to her. She’ll want a taste.”

  When Jess took the bottle, Chuck picked up a spoon from the table next to him and dipped it into an open mason jar of maple syrup that sat on the middle of the table. He held the spoon out to Jess. “You try it too.”

  The sweet maple flavor instantly spread on her tongue, bringing back a new wave of memories, a hundred tastings, dripping hot syrup in the snow in funny shapes to freeze, making maple candy with Zelda in the kitchen, maple cookies, maple cake.

  She moaned. “It might be the best ever.”

  Chuck beamed, as proud as if he’d personally put all that sweetness into the sap. “Isn’t it?”

  “Any progress on the sugar sand project?”

  Sugar sand was impurities that they filtered from the syrup, a by-product they threw away. Chuck had been trying, for as long as Jess had known him, to come up with a use for it, without success.

  “Not yet. But I’m on it.”

  “Anything new?”

  He shrugged. “Bags.” He pulled a blue plastic bag from a cardboard box from the floor and held it out to her. “A couple of people already switched. I’m thinking about it.”

  “To replace buckets?”

  “We could see how full the bags are from far away, no need to walk up to each and every tree like we do now with the buckets. It’d save a lot of time.”

  Yet he didn’t seem all that excited, so Jess asked, “But?”

  “Damn squirrels get thirsty and chew holes in the bags. Then the sap drips away.”

  They talked some more about that before Jess finally left, with a promise that she’d go out to the trees with Chuck after she returned from the hospital. Where she was finally going to talk her mother into moving from the farm.

  Chapter Seven

  SUGARING WAS OBVIOUSLY going well without Rose Taylor having to be on the premises. Both Rose and Zelda needed a house without all those steps, a shower they could easily get in and out of instead of the high-sided tub. They needed bingo during the long evenings in winter, not being locked up inside for months at a time because
outside everything was frozen and dangerously slippery.

  Jess gathered a list of supporting arguments as she drove through Taylorville. She stopped only to run into the coffee shop next to the gas station for her second cup of the morning.

  She tried to see through the window in between poster ads, then gave up and stepped in so she wouldn’t look like a weirdo, spying through the glass. She couldn’t avoid every place for the next three weeks where Derek might be.

  The tantalizing scent of coffee and baked goods hit her. She glanced around. No Derek. Relief, she told herself. She felt relief and nothing else. Not disappointment.

  A dozen or so people sat at the tables, but Jess turned toward the counter without looking at them for more than a split second, preferring not to be recognized. She didn’t want to be tied up in conversations for the next hour here.

  “Jess?”

  She winced. Then, when she realized the voice was familiar, she spun around as excitement leaped in her blood. “Pam?”

  The woman rising from one of the tables had her back to Jess a second ago. Now she was grinning like crazy as she launched into motion, an unexpected blast from the past.

  “Pam!” Then Jess was knocked back by a hug that had a running start. And because neither of them was willing to let go just yet, she ordered her coffee over Pam’s shoulder.

  “Sorry. Still overexcitable.” Pam Novak released her, as exuberant as ever, black pixie hair standing nearly on end. She wore yoga pants with a fitted hoodie, neon-pink sneakers on her feet.

  Jess couldn’t stop smiling. “You look great.”

  Pam’s eyes danced, and so did the rest of her body. She hadn’t been president of the high school pep squad for nothing. “When did you get back? Oh, your mom broke her hip, that’s why. She must be so happy that you came. How is she? I need to go see her.”

  “She’s doing well so far. I got here yesterday.”

  “I’m so glad you came!” Pam jumped. Her feet actually left the ground. “Oh my God! Derek is back too. Did you know?”

  This was what she needed, Jess thought, a true friend who gave her the vital information first. She should have met up with Pam as soon as she arrived in town. Then Derek’s sudden appearance wouldn’t have caught her off guard.