As I approached the counter, all I could see were a pair of silver ballet flats crossed over at the end of slim ankles.
“Hello?”
The shoes dropped and a twenty-something girl sat upright. She had black bobbed hair, and thick bangs that accentuated her doe eyes. She smiled warmly, almost drowsily.
“Sorry,” she said, brushing her hair down, as if I’d caught her napping. “I was halfway through this chapter and I didn’t hear you.” She held up a book, a bare-chested hero embracing a woman in a glamorous green dress adorned the cover.
“It must be good,” I remarked, smiling. Imagine being able to loll away reading in the tranquility of the bookshop—what a wonderful life that would be.
“It is,” she said. “But then, they all are to me.” Sarah was softly spoken, and small, almost doll-like. “You’re looking for…” She took in my clothes, my scruffy old jeans, and thick parka. “Books about maple trees.”
“How did you know? Is everyone around here psychic?”
She laughed, and somehow managed to snort, which seemed at odds with her tiny frame. “Sorry, that always happens,” she said. “It’s my job to know books, but I had a phone call from a rather serious-sounding guy asking me to have a hunt through the store, so you wouldn’t waste time here.” She gave me a sheepish look. “But of course I told him finding good books cannot be rushed.”
“Clay called?” My mouth fell open.
She nodded. “He sure did. I told him he’s welcome here anytime, but he declined the offer, sadly.”
“That’s Clay.” I laughed. “I’ve just spent the last few hours trying to get a shovel deep into the frosty ground, and all I can hear is the twang it made each time it bounced back up. Farming is hard! A few stolen minutes to read will surely help.”
“Won’t be long and the ground will thaw out. That should make the work easier,” Sarah said, dragging me back to the present. She daintily stepped around books piled perilously atop one another, in columns taller than me.
I smiled in response.
“Follow me, lovely. I have a selection for you in the reading room. I thought you could sit there awhile and see which ones you liked. I’ll make you a pot of tea.”
In Ashford, no one hurried, they all made a person feel welcome. Sarah was more unassuming than the other girls, quieter, more like me. I felt at ease with her instantly. “Thank you.” I followed her through the labyrinth-like store, to a small room off to the side. It had floor-to-ceiling shelves, crammed with books, and a fire in between. It was furnished with old high-back chairs with matching footstools. It was as cozy as it was warm. If I sat there reading, it wouldn’t be long before I drifted off to sleep. The room had a languid atmosphere about it.
“Take as long as you like,” Sarah said pointing to a glass coffee table where a bunch of second-hand books were stacked. “There’s a few cookbooks about maple syrup, and also some about tree tapping, and the traditions behind it. I’ll bring you that tea.” She plumped up a cushion before retreating with a little wave.
The first book had a maple syrup farm on the cover. Almost as pretty as Clay’s farm, with the bare trees, and lush snowfall. I sat down to read. There were recipes for snow taffy made with maple syrup and fresh clumps of snow. There were pictures of children helping make the taffy, their cherubic faces gleeful. There were recipes for maple candies, in all sorts of shapes, but my favorites were the ones that looked like maple leaves.
I read all about the traditions of maple syrup tapping, and how it came about quite by chance. I hoped Clay wanted to tap the traditional way when I gazed at pictures of farms tapping the high-tech way. They showed big, modern properties, where the trees were fitted with brightly colored plastic pipes that ran from the tree trunks all the way down to their factories—it took the beauty away. The trees looked as though they were hooked up for medical treatment, like the life was being sucked from them.
Sarah pottered back in with a pot of lemon-scented tea, and sat in the chair opposite. “Anything take your fancy?”
“I’ll take them all,” I said, happily. “I see there’s a tradition for maple farms, a Sugaring-Off Festival. Once the season is over, and summertime rolls around they celebrate! Maple-syrup-flavored food, music, the whole kit and caboodle.”
“Wow, I didn’t know that,” Sarah said. “You guys should host a party at the farm! That’ll draw a huge crowd, I’m sure. We had a Chocolate Festival last year, at Easter time, and we were frantically busy. Brought a lot of new faces into the town, gave us all a much needed boost.”
Could we host a festival? My mind spun with ideas. If Clay consented to a festival, surely he’d sell the syrup he made. It would be good for everyone in town, too. “I missed a Chocolate Festival?”
Sarah laughed. “Afraid so. But here’s your chance to host your own party!”
Doubt crept in. “How would I even go about organizing something so big?”
Sarah fussed with a stack of books on a small table, their weight making the wood of the tabletop sag. “Well, we’d all help out. There’s nothing like a social event to get the town to rally.”
“Do you think Lil and Damon would cater it?” Lil had told me all about their catering business, and how quiet it had been lately.
“Of course! They’d love to do it. You could charge an entry fee, and that’ll cover costs. Maybe hire a band?”
“It would be a great way to help spread the word about the farm too. Clay could really build up a decent business…” But would he be keen? He was desperately private, but this would be an amazing opportunity for him going forward, I just hoped he wasn’t too stubborn to even consider it.
“Read up on what they do at these festivals and let us know. We can help you hang up fliers, and start a Facebook page, that kind of thing. The sooner you start advertising the better.”
“You’d all help out, just like that?” I said, taken aback. It would be a monumental amount of work.
She smiled. “That’s what friends are for.”
These people, they were different to anyone I’d met. They’d offered their friendship, their trust, without a second thought. I’d always been wary about new people in my life. That same old barrier I put up to protect myself. I didn’t let anyone close enough to be able to hurt me. My father had left, as though I was as insubstantial as air. As a child, I’d struggled to come to terms with it. He’d been there every single day, and then he wasn’t. So what were we to him? A stopgap until something he determined as better came along? With the Aunt Margot feud, and subsequent alienation of the family, it felt as though people abandoned us like we were yesterday’s newspaper.
Could I fall into friendships with these girls, and then leave? Maybe it was time for me to stop worrying about anything other than living in the moment. I was missing out on so much, standing on the edge of life, waiting for something that might never happen.
“I’ll ask Clay and see what he makes of the Sugaring-Off Festival.” If I he said yes, then I’d be committing to staying until around June or July when the weather heated up. At that moment, that appealed to me. It dawned on me that I was genuinely happy here.
“You just let us know and I can knock up some designs for fliers on the computer for you.” She grinned.
“Thanks, that would be great. I can’t believe you had so many books on maple syrup. I expected you wouldn’t have any…”
She poured our tea and handed me a cup. “I’m a book hoarder by nature, so that comes in quite handy. I never throw books away. Their covers can be torn to oblivion, or the pages water damaged but they’re still redeemable.” She gave a fluttery little laugh. “Though not everyone would agree. But the books, well…they kind of speak to me.”
She had depth, such personality, even when sharing her foibles. “What do they say?” I asked curiously.
She held her cup aloft and winked. “Read me, usually.”
We both fell back into our chairs, laughing.
***
“Yeah, I don’t like the idea of that. It’s not how I imagined it would be. We’ll do it the traditional way. It’ll be more work, but it seems the right way somehow.”
We agreed on something. At last! “While we’re at it…” I flipped to the chapter about maple farm traditions. “In June or July, farms host a Sugaring-Off Festival, to celebrate a successful season, and sell some syrup! What do you think? Sarah said she’d help us organize it, and I thought Lil and Damon could cater…”
“No, no way,” he said abruptly.
I frowned. “Can you just think about it?”
He let out a long, impatient sigh. “Lucy, what if the syrup doesn’t work? We’ll have all these strangers here to celebrate my failure. No thank you.”
“What if it does work? We can always organize it after we’ve tasted the first batch.” There was something driving me to help Clay. Once I left I wanted to know he’d be OK. If people knew about the farm, and when the syrup was tapped, at least he’d have an income. I was so used to worrying about money after doing the math for Clay I knew he needed to sell every bottle of syrup he made, in order to last until the next season. The festival entry fee split with Lil and Damon would be another buffer for him. And then the maple syrup sales on top of that.
“I’ll think about it.”
For Clay, that was as close to a yes as I’d hoped for. I hid a smile. “Great. I’ll make a list of things we need to do, just in case.” His mouth opened to protest, so I quickly said, “A very small list.” And flashed him a cheesy grin.
He shook his head, like he couldn’t be bothered arguing with me. “What does it say about the fire pits?” he said, pointing to a passage underneath a picture of the vats of syrup bubbling away.
“There’s chapters of information about the fires, and the right temperatures to aim for. I’ll leave the books here. You can read them tonight.” Then he could sit down, and relax rather than tackle another huge project before I returned. As fit as he was, surely he needed downtime like the rest of us.
“No, you read it.” His voice was firm. With a slight incline of my eyebrows I read the piece about when to light the fire for the syrup, and how long it would take to boil down.
“Right, I’ll get those ready,” he said. “And what does it say about the spiles?”
Again, I read, half impatiently. He could have read his uncle’s journals, and seen the sketches, which had all the details about the farm and how to tap the trees. “Your uncle does explain it better, in layman’s terms. I’ll bring the journals back?”
“Just read these to me. I’m not interested in an old man’s musings.”
I let out an exasperated sigh. “How can you not be? He gave you this place! Does that mean nothing to you?”
“It means everything to me.” His face was dark. “But I don’t need to know his private thoughts. Not all of us are as meddlesome as you.”
“I’m not meddlesome! I’m interested. There’s a big difference.” Just when we were getting somewhere he had to throw in a comment like that. “You know people say they’ve seen your uncle at dusk walking the length of the maples, touching them, gazing up at them, like he used to do.”
Clay guffawed. “I don’t think so.”
“Isn’t it a beautiful idea though? Him being so connected here, that even in death, people still see him.”
“They couldn’t tell who they were seeing from the road. Idle gossip, another reason to stay away from town.”
I held in a sigh. “They’re good people, Clay. They respected your uncle, and his need for privacy. You’re a lot like him you know, except maybe he wasn’t as surly as you.”
“Yeah? I can’t see how they’re good people when they sit round jaws flapping about a dead man. Seems to me like they’re bored. And you’re no better if you’re joining in.” His eyes blazed in that special Clay way, but it seemed like bluster to me now. I was so used to it from him.
I lowered my voice to a more reasonable level. “They speak about him fondly, Clay. Almost as if by seeing his shadow, they’re keeping a part of him alive. I’ve only met a handful of people but they do care.”
“How is that caring though, Lucy? To me that’s gossiping.”
“What happened to you, to make you so closed up?” I faced him. Trying to read the look in his eyes as they darkened.
He sucked in a breath, like he was losing his patience. “Lots of things, Lucy, and number one was confiding in people. OK? Telling them your weakness, so they can exploit you quick as look at you!” He clenched his teeth against whatever memory his words brought back.
“Your weakness?” I asked surprised, and hoped he’d confide in me. Clay, all six foot, tough-muscled, intensely gorgeous, didn’t appear to have any weaknesses, unless you counted his attitude.
He ran a hand through his hair. “Forget it. It’s in the past, and the past can stay buried.” His voice lost the steely edge.
Breezily, I said, “OK, it’s forgotten.” I flipped the book closed. “But there’s no need to shut out the rest of the world. I’m telling you, you’ll need the town behind you if you want to succeed here.”
“Would you stop with trying to buddy me up with people? I’m not interested. I can’t see how having people know my business can help me. And that’s all they want, to know every little thing about a person, so they’ve got something to talk about other than the weather.”
“That’s not true!” My voice rose, hearing him talk about the town so blithely when he’d never given them a chance. It rankled me.
“You’ve been here six weeks, Lucy. How can you know them well enough to say?”
I stammered, trying to think of a way to convince him. “When one of their friend’s got sick they all took turns running his store. And they all had their own businesses to tend to. They did so well, they went and sold every stick of furniture he had! But they haven’t quit there, the poor man lost his wife, and is grieving, so they’re trying to work out how to produce an income for him when there’s no furniture left to sell. That’s just what they’re like.”
“I bet they’re not all like that.” He sighed. “What are they going to do to help him?”
I shrugged. “No idea. They’re still trying to formulate a plan. He made furniture out of the wood of old boats. Everything handcrafted in his workshop at home.”
And just like that he turned away. “Right.” I swallowed a sigh. “When do you think the season starts?”
“Monday.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I surely hope I’m right. I know it’s all about the timing.” His eyes went wide and for the first time I realized Clay cared. His ambiguity about the trees and how to go about tapping them stemmed from the fact he was worried he’d do it wrong. I was giddy with the thought of being part of a process, a natural wonder, and something I’d never done before. It was only Thursday; the next few days would lag until we could attempt the very first batch of maple syrup!
***
“Monday? You have to tell me in detail how the heck it works, getting the fluid from those lovely trees and somehow turning it into syrup… I mean, I can’t even think how that works.”
I wandered around the small bedroom, phone cradled against my shoulder. “It’s all about the way you boil it down. I hope it works. What if we burn it? Clay won’t show it but he’ll be devastated, Mom.”
“You just take your time, when it comes to the important part. From what you’ve said about Clay he’s not one to rush, anyway. Do I detect a little softening of your heart when it comes to the love god?” she teased.
I went into the bathroom, put the plug in the bath, and turned the hot water on full. “As if,” I said. “Well, actually, there’s something about him, I must admit. A hot guy is no big deal to me,
but I’m getting to know him, and he’s a lot sweeter than he makes out to be, but he takes great pains to hide it.”
“Honey, he sounds like a great guy. I’ve got a feeling about him, I don’t know why.” Her voice trailed off, no doubt she was planning the wedding or something.
I threw a handful of Epsom salts into the steamy water, and laughed. “Oh, please, you sound like CeeCee! She can ‘see’ everything too.”
Mom cackled, loud and high. When she composed herself she said, “You know what? I am going to meet these people one day. I need to give them all great big hugs, for looking after you so great. I haven’t heard you this sparkly in a long time. I can’t tell you how happy that makes me, honey. I’m grinning like a fool.”
I sat on the edge of the bed, smiling, as it struck me how animated I was here, how different I’d become, learning about me, by myself, in a new place. “You will have to visit here, Mom. We’ll work out a way to make it happen.”
“We sure will,” she said, as if she’d already planned it. “I can hear that bath running— you go jump in the tub, and we’ll talk soon.”
***
I know I was one of the lucky ones. Not everyone has a love affair like we did. Real, heart-stopping, once-in-a-lifetime love. I’ll never forgot the moment I saw her. I wanted to paint her, so I’d have her forever. My mouth must’ve hung open, like a guppy; it was like I was drinking her in. My fingers pulsed, wanting to rush home and pick up a brush, so no detail would be lost, but I couldn’t leave, not while she was there. In case I never saw her again. My heart skipped a beat, at the very thought, so I approached her, and told her I loved her, and I couldn’t live without her, not caring about the consequences of such an action.
Secrets At Maple Syrup Farm Page 12
