So why, now, did looking at it make her eyes sting?
She pushed open the door, hearing the jingle of the bell. “Maman?” she called, setting down her satchel and duffel bag.
“Celie!” Her mother hurried out from behind the cash register, petite and stylish with her hair in a chestnut-brown chignon. She pulled Celie into her arms. And finally, amidst the scents of ink and paper and age, Celie felt like she’d come home.
“Oh, I can’t believe you’re here,” her mother said, putting a hand to Celie’s cheek. “Why didn’t you call?”
“It was a spur-of-the-moment thing,” Celie evaded. She slung her duffel over her shoulder. “Is it all right if I stay for a week or two?”
“Of course.” Her mother frowned in concern. “Is everything all right?”
Celie took a deep breath to ward off the tension and summoned up a smile. “It will be.”
Jacob stood at the sugarhouse door watching Deke stop the tractor behind the holding tanks. He frowned. “What are you doing down here? That tank’s not more than three-quarters full.”
“We were close enough.” Deke defended, turning off the tractor and hopping down.
“A hundred gallons shy of full isn’t close enough.”
Deke gave him a sullen look. “We needed to use the john.”
“You’ve got the entire sugarbush at your disposal.”
“It wasn’t that kind of need.”
“I don’t want to know,” Jacob said wearily. “Go while it’s pumping and get back on that slope. We’re running out of daylight.”
As the week had gone on, Deke had gotten progressively sloppier. If he was this bad after four days, how was he going to be after four weeks? Jacob had a nasty feeling that one morning soon, Deke just wasn’t going to show up, and then he’d really be in trouble. Muriel’s nephews? Maybe. Hell, at this point, he’d happily take on a reliable kindergartner.
He turned to push open the sugarhouse door. There wasn’t time to think about it. He had to focus on the boils. All the sap in the world didn’t mean a thing if you couldn’t turn it into saleable product. Concentrating on making syrup would keep him from thinking about profitless subjects like how much he wished he had better help, how colossally exhausted he was, how worried he was that he was going to let something important slip.
And how, deep down inside, he suspected that he already had.
He moved his head to ward off the thought. He didn’t need to be brooding about Celie. The nonstop work might have kept his hands busy, but the repetitive tasks of sugar-making offered far too much time to think. So he struggled to keep her out of his head, to lose the memory of how the soft skin of her throat had tasted, to banish the thought of her laughter. To forget watching her sleep in the moonlight, of how he’d felt awestruck, as though he’d found himself entrusted with something very rare and precious.
And as he drew off syrup, he did his damnedest to forget how she’d looked walking out the door.
He’d done the only thing he could, he reminded himself, pouring the syrup into the filter. That was his mantra, the thing he repeated every time he hit one of his black-dog, howl-at-the-moon moments. He’d done what he had to. It was best for both of them. But it didn’t feel like the best thing. It felt like hell and it wasn’t getting any better.
He cursed. Ridiculous to go over this again. Profitless to think of what might have been. What was, was. And it was what he had to find a way to live with. Scowling, he pulled apart the firebox doors and stirred up the embers.
The door to the gift shop opened, and he heard the sounds of footsteps and voices.
“Seems cranky,” a male voice said.
“Are you surprised? He doesn’t exactly look like Mr. Personality,” said another.
“You know the saying,” replied the first voice. “Laugh and the world laughs with you….”
Jacob straightened. “But be a jackass and you’re a jackass alone.”
“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” Gabe said, smiling broadly.
“A wizard with words,” agreed Nick.
Jacob slammed the fire doors shut and crossed to where his brothers stood leaning against the door. “Hey.”
“You look like hell,” Gabe said cheerfully, thumping his shoulder.
Jacob shook hands with Nick and exhaled. “Yeah, well, it’s been that kind of week. What brings you two here? Did I know about this?”
“I don’t know, did he?” Gabe asked Nick.
“You’d think he would have,” Nick said. “I’m hurt.”
“Not that it wasn’t spontaneous,” Gabe pointed out.
“Spur-of-the-moment thing,” Nick agreed.
“A couple of months ago, anyway.”
Jacob scowled at them. “You two going to quit the Laurel and Hardy routine and tell me what’s up? Is this for Ma?”
“Nope,” Nick said. “It’s for you.”
“Meaning?”
“We’re here to help.”
Jacob blinked. “With the sap run?”
“What else?” Gabe asked.
“I don’t get this. You guys work.”
“I told you at Thanksgiving I’d take some time,” Nick reminded him.
“And I told you the same thing.” Gabe looked around the sugarhouse. “You’ve got Nick for two weeks now and I’ll be here for the weekends, then I’m here for two weeks and Nick comes up on weekends. Although we would have shown up a lot sooner if we’d realized you were desperate enough to send Deke out to run gathers,” he added, wandering over to the evaporator.
“Yeah well, you do what you’ve got to do.”
“Next time you might put picking up a phone and calling for help on that to-do list.” Nick flicked him a glance. “We’re in this together, you know?”
“I didn’t…”
“You didn’t what?”
Jacob shrugged uncomfortably. “I guess I figured you guys were just saying it.”
“We’re your brothers, Jacob,” Nick said, with a hint of an edge. “It’s the family business and it supports Ma. What would make you think that we wouldn’t take the time to come help?”
It was a reasonable question and it made him feel like an idiot. Which triggered his own flare of irritation. “It’s not that unreasonable. You don’t live here. You’ve got your own lives. Hell, Nick, you’re supposed to be planning a wedding.”
“Already done. Try another one.”
He didn’t need one more person giving him a hard time on this topic, he really didn’t. Jacob scowled. “Look, don’t start—”
“Hey guys,” Gabe broke in. “I know bitching at each other is your way of bonding but you might want to put it aside and pay attention to the boil. It’s been a couple of years but I’m pretty sure I remember giant bubbles are bad.”
Jacob and Nick stared at each other. The corner of Nick’s mouth twitched. Jacob tried to suppress his own smile and then they were grinning at each other. Jacob slung his arm around Nick’s shoulders. “Okay, for the record, I don’t care how it happened, I’m just glad to have you both here because you’re going to work your behinds off. I am dying for the help.”
It was uncanny how quickly Celie fell back into life in Montreal. It took less than a week for her French to come back. One minute, she was concentrating fiercely on interpreting the lightning-fast flow of syllables. The next, she was walking down the street behind a mother and daughter, amused at their strident battle over a navel-piercing only to realize that the entire discussion was taking place in French. Even her mental map reformed itself in her head, so that she again motored around the streets without a thought.
Not that she didn’t wind up spending much of her time in the Cité de L’Ile.
She stood in the back room of the store with her mother, helping unpack some new books while her father worked up front. “So where is Margaux again?”
“Visiting a university friend in Vancouver.” Her mother sliced open a box with an expert flick of the wrist.
“We just got done with inventory and the High Lights Festival is starting soon, so she wanted to take advantage of the window to get a break.”
Celie remembered doing inventory, all of them in the closed store, working until they were punchy. They’d played soccer in the aisles with balls of packing paper, she recalled with a smile. “I wish we’d ever been able to take a vacation. I think that was the thing I hated most growing up, that feeling we were always tied here.”
Her mother looked at her in surprise. “But we went on vacations, don’t you remember? Not often, but we took you kids to Toronto and Niagara Falls. We even rented a summer house on Prince Edward Island one year. You can’t have forgotten that. You got stung by the jellyfish, remember?”
“Prince Edward Island?” Celie asked. The words shook loose vague memories of sun-faded and briny days, and of sudden, burning pain and an iron-hard determination not to cry. Somehow, she’d placed it on the Saint Lawrence, although of course that was ridiculous.
“You were young for some of them. It was harder to manage when the three of you grew older. Your father always thought it was important to get away from the store, though.”
“He was right about that. I grew up hating this place.”
“Do tell,” her mother said dryly.
“That bad?”
She rolled her eyes. “Let’s just say you weren’t very subtle about it. But then, teenagers never are.”
“It’s just that we were always here, every day, every weekend. Everyone I knew was outside doing stuff and I was in here mildewing with the books, it seemed like. It was miserable.”
“You didn’t always feel that way. I remember when you were still little, you loved being down in the cashier booth with me. You’d sit on your stool with a picture book and babble away to yourself. We called you our mascot.”
“I remember that.” Celie smiled.
“So it wasn’t all a misery, was it?”
“No,” she said slowly, “not then.” And somehow this time around, the routines were almost comforting, though she was happy to escape for a few hours each day. It was the nearest thing to a safe haven she had, at a time when she really needed one.
“When are you going to tell me why you’re here?” Her mother’s voice was gentle.
Celie looked at her with eyes full of misery. The crash she’d been staving off for days was suddenly far too close and she’d run out of strength to fight it. “Oh, Maman,” she began, her throat tightening. “Everything’s a mess.”
And as she leaned against her mother, the tears finally came.
“So you haven’t heard from him since?” her mother asked, pouring them coffee in the kitchen upstairs. “Not even a message?”
“I won’t,” Celie said. “That’s not his way. Jacob picks a course and then sticks with it.” She felt exhausted from crying but the awful tension she’d been carrying around had finally abated. If only the tearing sadness hidden behind it had gone as well.
“You’ll get through this,” her mother said fiercely. “All of it. You’re a fighter and you’ll show them all. Remember the jellyfish? You were such a brave little girl. You wouldn’t cry. You insisted on going right back into the water. And you’ll do the same thing here. You’ll—”
A burbling sound interrupted her. It was Celie’s cell phone. Celie pulled it out and stared at the area code.
“Aren’t you going to answer it?” her mother asked.
She sighed. “I don’t feel like talking to anyone.”
“What if it’s him?”
“I definitely don’t feel like talking to him.”
“I do,” her mother said tartly and plucked the phone out of her hand. “Celie Favreau’s line. Yes? Uh-huh. Just a minute.” She put the phone aside. “Bob Ford?”
“Bob Ford?” Celie repeated, perplexed, and reached for the phone. “Hi, Bob.”
“Celie. It’s good to hear your voice.”
“Yours too. How’s Marce?”
“At loose ends without you, I think, but she’s surviving. How about you?”
Remember the trees we fed into that chipper, Bob? “I’m hanging in there.”
“I missed you when you left last week. I’m sorry for what happened, Celie. I can’t tell you how sorry.”
“That’s all right, I…” Her throat closed up and for a moment she couldn’t speak.
“Look, it’s okay. You don’t have to talk. I have an idea what this means to you. For the record, I think you did the right thing.”
Just hearing the simple vote of confidence meant the world to her. If only Gavin had backed her that way.
Ford cleared his throat. “I don’t know what your plans are right now, but I wanted to throw out an idea. I’ve had an open requisition for a research staffer for the last ten months. I haven’t been able to find someone I wanted so I’ve been stalling, hoping a good candidate would show up. I’d bring you on board here in a heartbeat, if you’re interested.”
Celie blinked. “You want to hire me on at the Institute?”
“It would mean swimming in a smaller pond than you’re used to,” he cautioned, “but we’d give you a chance to do whatever kind of research you wanted. You could build on your previous work with the maple borer. Get involved with the state Division of Forestry. I know, I know,” he forestalled her protest, “but Rumson’s a political appointee and his buddy the governor’s leaving office soon. He’ll be gone after that.”
Two weeks before, it would have been the answer to her dreams. Now? “Bob.” She took a breath. “Look, I appreciate the offer but—”
“Hear me out, all right? I know you’re used to dealing with issues on a federal and a global level, so maybe this is too small-time for you, but it doesn’t sound like life’s going to be a whole lot of fun for the next while. I’m just saying you don’t need to waste your talents. You’ve got options.”
Options, she thought. Take the job instead of letting Gavin bury her alive. In a town the size of Eastmont, though, there was no way she could avoid running into Jacob or hearing about him at every turn. And she just didn’t think she could handle it.
Celie sighed. “Bob, you have no idea what this means to me. All of it, everything you just said. And it’s a great opportunity, but I really think I need to get my head straight before I make any sudden changes.”
“I understand but will you do me a favor? Don’t make a decision now. I can stall another two months before the slot has to be filled. Take the transfer, try it out for a few weeks. If you can live with it, then I’ll go to plan B. If you can’t, well, you’ve got a home here.”
But Eastmont wasn’t her home any more.
She wasn’t sure anywhere was.
The problem, Jacob thought as he lay in bed staring up at the ceiling, was that he needed more sap. Never mind that it was the best sugaring season they’d had in four years. Nick’s team was bringing in more than five thousand gallons of sap a day and Jacob was manning the evaporator for eighteen hours at a stretch.
The problem was the other six hours. Oh sure, he could keep himself scrambling well into the night, but somewhere around two or three in the morning he ran dry. And then he was faced with heading back to the house and trying to sleep.
Alone.
Sometimes, he could drift off. More often, he woke after just a few hours. When he did sleep, he dreamed of Celie; when he didn’t, it was a constant battle to banish her from his thoughts.
And at times like now, he just didn’t have what it took to manage it. If he could have gathered sap in the darkness, he would have, but he was sane enough to realize that even he couldn’t drive his body twenty-four hours a day. So he lay there trying to fall back to sleep and they bombarded him: the images, the tactile memories, the sights and sounds and scents and sighs, they came at him until he wanted to pound something because it was unbearable and impossible and unthinkable that he’d let her go.
With a curse, Jacob dragged himself out of bed and downstairs, Murphy padding
sleepily after him. He was too tired to read and the television was for crop reports, not passing the time. Instead, he picked up his guitar, because it had been the thing that had always been there for him in the past, engaging his hands and mind, giving him a place to drift away to.
Except that every place he drifted away to Celie was there.
Always before, he’d concentrated on the fret work and fingerpicking, on coaxing the clearest tone from the instrument. Now, he could only think of Celie’s face as she’d watched him play, of the absolute concentration with which she’d listened. Song after song he started, only to stop partway in and begin another. Concentration was impossible; when he sang, he only remembered the Appalachian ballad he’d played for Celie.
And finally he fell silent, setting the guitar aside. On the floor, Murphy gave a low whine. Jacob sighed. “Sorry, boy, it’s not the same anymore.”
Why didn’t he say what he meant? It wasn’t the same without Celie. Nothing was. He could do his damnedest to fill his life up with the farm and sugar-making and his family, but there was no ignoring the ache of emptiness that waited for him every time he let his guard down.
He’d been full of it that day in the sugarhouse. He needed her, needed her more than breath, and he’d been worse than a fool for letting her go. He’d been a coward, so afraid of losing her that he’d pushed her away.
If you’re looking for guarantees in life, you’ll be disappointed.
Something cold nosed against his hand and he heard Murphy’s whine. “I know, boy,” Jacob said, rubbing the dog’s ears. “I miss her, too.
“And I’m going to do everything I can to get her back.”
Chapter Eighteen
Marce stepped out into the morning, pulling on her fleece-lined gloves. It might have been March, but the air smelled of snow. Which was just fine with her. The sugar-makers weren’t going to like it, but she’d be happy to have one more good storm out of the year. All this bare ground and mud that was appearing bugged her.
Vermont Valentine (Holiday Hearts #3) Page 21
