by Dana Marton
Peaceful.
All the activity was happening in the outbuildings. The sugar shack—which, far from being a shack, was a pretty large barn—would have the vats going, the sap cooking. The familiar sweet scent that filled the air threw Jess for another emotional loop, bringing back a fresh wave of memories: all the time she’d spent in that sugar shack with her father, watching the syrup thicken, listening to the stories of how her great-great-grandfather had settled on this land.
She lifted her gaze to her old bedroom window. Same old curtains—innocent white lace. She used to sit in that window with the piles of comic books Derek had lent her, looking out at the sugar bush now and then as she daydreamed about the boy next door.
The very last person I’m going to think about while I’m back here.
Instead, Jess thought about her studio apartment back in LA that overlooked a busy shopping street, a row of palm trees edging the sidewalk. Southern California was as different from Vermont as possible. She couldn’t wait to be back.
She stepped away from the car. I can do this.
She was here only temporarily. Derek was probably halfway around the world doing research for one of his international thrillers. She had no idea where he lived. New York City was her best guess, the publishing capital of the world. Wasn’t that where all the big-name authors lived?
The front door opening cut off her thoughts. Light poured out, and Zelda the housekeeper appeared—grayer, rounder, but with the same warm smile on her face that Jess remembered. Joy flooded Jess’s heart.
“Jess!” Zelda, past seventy, scrambled down the stone steps with a speed that belied her age. She wore a faded red apron over a blue housedress, her thick hair in a bun. Tears filled her eyes.
“Slow down.” Jess hurried toward her. They didn’t need another broken hip.
God, it felt good to be in Zelda’s arms. How could Jess have forgotten this?
Zelda didn’t even pretend she wasn’t crying. “You don’t know how long and hard I’ve been prayin’ to see you, child.”
Jess hugged her back, and for a moment she felt nothing but the purest love, until shame washed in, guilt that when she’d rejected her past, she’d also rejected Zelda with it—Zelda and everyone else.
“You haven’t aged a day.” Jess gave the old woman another squeeze. Her throat tightened as emotions choked her. “Has Chuck asked you to marry him lately?”
Zelda rolled her eyes, laughing. “That fool. Refuses to accept that I’m an old woman. Doesn’t have the brains God gave a sugar mule.”
Zelda had been with the family for as long as Jess could remember. When Jess had been a child, Zelda used to watch her. Zelda helped around the house and with the cooking. She even cooked for the crew during sugaring season.
“I can’t believe you’re still working here.”
“Not workin’.” Zelda gave a watery smile. “Too shaky to do much. Just keepin’ your mother company. People I rented from in town died, and their kids sold the house. Your mother had me move out here. She said it’d be all right if I stayed here in my retirement. I hope you don’t mind. I don’t contribute much these days.”
“Of course you’re staying. This is your home.”
After Jess grabbed her duffel bag from the back seat, Zelda linked arms with her and tugged her toward the house. “Come on, then. How long are you stayin’?”
A couple of days, Jess wanted to say. Except, after the hospital visit with her mother, and after that little episode on the side of the road earlier, she understood now that she might need more time. She needed resolution, and what she’d left behind could not be resolved in a couple of days.
“I don’t know.” She nearly groaned with pain as she let go of the fantasy of endless days on Venice Beach with Eliot. “No more than three weeks. That’s all the break I have between movies.”
Zelda’s face lit up. “Three weeks is a start. And then you’ll come back again.”
“Three weeks at the very most.” Jess wasn’t ready to commit.
“You can’t come and then leave immediately.” Zelda looped her arms around Jess’s. “You’ve been gone too long, child. You have to let my poor heart have its fill.”
Jess nodded. She knew when she was sunk.
They walked through the front door together. The inside of the house had changed little. The yellow living room was the same, down to the old flowery curtains. All the old clutter remained.
Her father, Burt Taylor, rescued and repaired antique furniture between sugaring seasons. More, he hung on to all of it, as if the pieces were adopted rescue kittens. But the overall look wasn’t cute. The ancient pieces made the house look like it was drowning in the past.
Back in the day, Jess had barely noticed the congestion. Now she thought, Fire hazard. In an emergency, her mother and Zelda couldn’t even get out of this place.
She dropped her duffel by the couch and took stock, a good excuse to disguise that she wasn’t ready to go farther in. She knew most of the pieces—the sideboards, the sofa tables, the blanket chest—while others were new, like the rolltop secretaire. Many more antiques than the room needed.
Keeping an eye on sugaring wasn’t the only thing she’d have to do during her stay. “If you don’t mind,” she told Zelda, “I’m going to try and make the house livable for Mom while I’m here. She’ll have to use a walker for weeks if not months to come.”
“That’d be good.” Zelda headed to the kitchen, looking over her shoulder in invitation. “I just made myself a cup of tea. Water’s still hot.”
“Thanks.” Jess followed, scanning the space as she went.
Here too nearly everything remained the same, save for the updated appliances. Right now, in this moment, she felt as if no time had passed at all, as if she’d only been gone a week. As if she’d just dreamed LA.
She made herself a cup of Earl Grey, then sat at the table with Zelda, not because she wanted tea, but because she needed a moment to settle into the idea that she was back at the farm.
She sipped. “How are you?”
Zelda gave a resigned sigh. “Not gettin’ any younger, that’s for sure. Knees givin’ me trouble. Blood pressure’s havin’ a fit. Borderline diabetic, doc says.” She grumbled at her cup. “Can’t even have sugar in my tea anymore.” She sighed. But then the smile popped right back on her face. Her good humor never stayed away long. “Other than that, I can’t complain.”
“How’s sugaring?”
“Chuck says we’re havin’ a good season. Already sold to the last gallon. All goes to Vermont Sugar Works.”
They discussed the maple trees and the business as they drank their tea. The price of syrup was going up, to the great relief of everyone in the industry. Folks around town tracked the exchanges as closely as OPEC tracked crude oil.
They talked about that until both cups sat empty.
Jess stifled a yawn.
“You wanna go to bed early and get some rest?” Zelda asked. “You look exhausted. Or would you like to eat somethin’ first? What can I get you?”
Jess glanced at the clock on the microwave—a little after eight o’clock. By the time she showered and settled in, it’d be close to nine. She was tired. But no way could she fall asleep as early as that. She was a night owl, always had been.
“Let me look around down here first.” She washed both her mug and Zelda’s, turned them upside down in the dish drain, then walked back into the living room. “It’s even more crowded than I remember. I don’t think Mom will be able to move around with a walker.”
Zelda came up next to her. “Rose won’t be able to go up the stairs either. I can barely do it when my arthritis acts up.”
Jess glanced toward a closed door next to the TV. Her heart twisted. “We could turn Dad’s old office into a bedroom for you down here.”
Zelda waved that off with an expression of Don’t you start fussing over me. But then she turned thoughtful, glancing at the door and back at Jess again. “We should do tha
t for Rose. When she heals and doesn’t need to be down here anymore, maybe I could take over.”
“We could set up the dining room for Mom. Anybody ever eat there?”
“We eat like we always ate. In the kitchen. Workers eat in the barn. We have that catered now. Angie from the diner delivers the food.”
Jess absorbed the information that her mother didn’t really need help with cooking, but didn’t get worked up over the small white lie. Her mother wanted her to stay, and Jess took the maneuver in that spirit.
She’d have other work to do: a living room to declutter and two rooms to repurpose. She didn’t mind some heavy lifting. If she were to stay, she wanted to stay busy. While she was here, she didn’t want more time to think than she could handle. She wanted something to do, preferably every minute of every day, so she could fall exhausted into dreamless sleep every night. That way, maybe she could survive the visit.
I can do this.
“Are you goin’ to take your old room?” Zelda steered around the nineteenth-century Dutch blanket chest that sat in her way.
The living room was like an obstacle course—difficult to believe that Rose Taylor had tripped outside and not in here.
“Is my room available?” Jess had a sudden vision of old furniture piled to the ceiling.
“Exactly as you left it.”
Jess wasn’t ready to see that just yet. She looked around again. “Where can I move what I take out of here?”
Zelda pondered the question with a squint. “The garage has room. Rose gifted your father’s truck to Chuck.”
“Did she? Good.”
The garage had potential. Rose’s car was probably in there, but half of the large garage would be enough for furniture storage. If needed, Jess could stack pieces on top of each other.
She was buzzing with nervous energy, too wired to sit and chat with Zelda. Jess had always been an active person, had trouble sitting in the first place. She’d already sat too much on the plane, then at the hospital, then in the car on the way to the farm. She needed to move.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll get started. Maybe we can have another cup of tea afterward and you could catch me up on everybody?”
“You sure you don’t want to rest first?” Zelda fussed. “Eat something? I have beef stew in the fridge. Made it yesterday in the slow cooker. I don’t do much these days, but I can still do that.”
“I want to get some work done. But I’d love some stew later. Thanks.” Jess’s stomach woke up at the thought of Zelda’s famous beef stew. “I missed your cooking.”
Zelda’s expression turned openly doubtful as she looked Jess over. “Don’t look like you eat much.”
“You have no idea how skinny actresses are these days. I have to keep my weight down if I’m to play their stunt double.” Jess raised a warning eyebrow. “So lay off the butter while I’m here.”
“What butter?” Zelda’s face held nothing but pure innocence.
“Says the patron saint of the Vermont dairy industry.”
Zelda grinned, not the least displeased with the title. Then she said, “No matter what, you need to be testin’ the syrup.”
Right. Sugar rush, here we come. But Jess was a Taylor. This was Taylor’s Sugar House. She was home. If she didn’t go and test the syrup a dozen times a day and discuss the sugar content endlessly with every person she ran into, they’d probably run her out of town on a rail.
Goodbye, careful diet. By the time she flew back to LA, the only thing she’d be good for was as a counterweight for the pulley that made a skinnier stuntwoman soar into action. All the more reason to start moving and keep moving. And, as an added bonus, while she was thinking about how to rearrange furniture, she wouldn’t be thinking about the past. “I’d better get started.”
Understanding glinted in Zelda’s warm eyes. “Wish I could help, but I don’t think my back could handle the weight.”
“You put your feet up and think about all the juicy town gossip. That’s what I want to hear first.” Jess eyed the heavy oak secretaire next to her, too wide for the hallway. “Actually, let’s start with, where’s the dolly?”
“In the back of the garage. Right where your father always kept it.”
Jess picked up the rickety caned chair right in front of her. No sense in wasting a trip. She looked back from the front door. “Is the garage open?”
“This ain’t the city, child. Things might have changed since you left, but they ain’t so bad that we’d have to start lockin’ up.”
Jess didn’t point out that the worst thing that had ever happened to her had happened right here, in innocent, safe little Taylorville. She just headed outside with the chair.
I can do this.
She was crossing the driveway to the garage on the other side when a white pickup pulled up. The porch light reflected off the windshield, so she couldn’t see who sat behind the wheel.
As Jess watched, the pickup’s door opened, and the driver jumped to the ground. The man stared at her, his jaw, his entire body, tight, his expression dark and harsh. He was a head taller than she was and wider than she remembered. He had a fighter’s body. The dark glint in his eyes also said that he was ready to charge into battle.
The stupid caned chair fell at Jess’s feet with a clatter. The air left her lungs in a painful whoosh. Her stomach rolled. Black dots danced in her vision. She smelled blood, even as she knew it wasn’t real, just a memory. Her stomach rolled harder.
Oh God, I’m going to be sick.
“You can’t come back!” the man shouted.
Jess’s fight-or-flight response broke. She stood there, frozen to the spot.
I can’t do this.
She could barely even breathe. Sweat popped out on her forehead. Her skin tingled. A wave of dizziness washed over her.
She hadn’t had a panic attack in years. She no longer even carried pills. Should have asked for a prescription before coming here. Hindsight, meet twenty-twenty.
The man strode toward her, even his stride angry.
The man who had witnessed her pain, her humiliation, her bloody torture. The man who was tied so tightly to her unbearable past that she couldn’t separate him from the events. The man she’d only seen, for the past decade, in her nightmares.
“What are you doing here?” Jess whispered as he reached her and grabbed her by the shoulders.
Derek Daley. Boy next door. Star of her teenage dreams. Witness to her darkest hell.
Chapter Four
JESS NEEDED TO make him leave.
Don’t let him get to you.
Too late. He already did, just by breathing.
Please go. You can’t be here. I can’t handle it.
Her past was going to rise up and swallow her. And if she somehow survived that, the sheer awkwardness of having to face Derek would probably be enough to kill her. He’d seen her at her worst. He’d seen everything. Derek Daley knew all the sordid details.
“I drove past you at the stop sign.” His voice was deeper than at eighteen and rumbly. He let go of her, blinking as if he hadn’t realized that he’d grabbed her. “I convinced myself it wasn’t you. Drove halfway to the farm store before I turned around.”
High school Derek had been tantalizing. College Derek had been a walking Ralph Lauren commercial. Adult Derek was devastating—in more ways than one, even when wearing scuffed work boots, worn denim, and a plain plaid flannel shirt.
His slate-colored eyes were harder. His entire presence was harder, really. He’d always had more than his fair share of muscles—he’d been on the rugby team both in high school and college—but now he was built like an armored tank, like he could break through a brick wall, no trouble.
The way he exuded dominance and control made Jess bristle.
She liked to have the control in any given situation. The extreme control was one of the reasons why she loved her job. Sure, stunts were dangerous. But they were choreographed and strictly controlled. She knew what to expect, wh
at was going to happen, every single second.
“Are you back for a visit too?” she asked, so she wouldn’t just stand there, staring silently at him like an idiot. Please say you’re leaving tonight.
“I moved back last year. It’s a quiet place to work.” His gaze raked her body, then fastened on her face. His expression tightened. With displeasure? Damned if she knew.
He said, “I’m an author. I write books.”
She knew, but she didn’t want to tell him, didn’t want him to think she’d been following his career. She’d never read any of his books, but didn’t want to say that either, didn’t want to sound spiteful. Instead, she said the next thing that popped into her mind.
“Your parents?”
There, a good neutral topic. Except then she thought, Why am I trying to make polite conversation?
“Pops got out of sugaring. He’s leasing to a guy from up north. I can’t believe your mother is still working the business. I heard she broke her hip.” His tone softened, but only just. “How is she?”
“The surgery went well. Hopefully, she’ll have an easy recovery.”
“I was planning on visiting her tomorrow, take Mom too. I already asked Chuck this morning if he needed help. He says he has everything in hand.”
“I haven’t even seen him yet.” She picked up the chair and turned from him. “Good to see you,” she lied. “Sorry, but I have a lot to get done tonight.”
He stepped around her and blocked her path.
“How long are you staying?” His tone suggested he would prefer to drive her to Burlington right now and put her on a plane.
“Three weeks.” A brand-new decision Jess was regretting already.
Derek frowned and shook his head—as if that timing didn’t work for him.
His reaction baffled her. Why does he care?
“What are you doing with that chair?” His question was abrupt and off topic. Everything about him was unwelcoming, as if his first burst of anger still simmered invisibly under his skin.