Читать книгу Vermont Valentine - Kristin Hardy - Страница 11

Painted maple leaves in a blaze of autumn colors adorned the white sign at the side of the road. “Trask Family Farm and Sugarhouse,” read the forest-green letters. The long, low clapboard building beyond was presumably the gift shop; at the far end, the shingled roof jumped up abruptly to the sugarhouse vent.

Celie turned into the parking lot, navigating the mixture of rolled gravel and snow to nose her truck against the post-and-rail perimeter fence. She’d come on a whim, driven by the impulse to see Jacob Trask again. And Celie generally went with her impulses. Granted, it was a Saturday morning, a time most people took off, but she had a feeling Jacob Trask didn’t.

She already knew he wasn’t like most people.

At the start of the gravel path that led from parking lot to gift shop stood a tall, thick post with a galvanized sap bucket hanging from it, a little peaked hood snapped in place. Smart people, the Trasks. A person could make a living from selling maple syrup purely to distributors but a business that catered to both the wholesale and retail trade benefited from higher margins and greater diversity. Little touches like the bucket gave the feel of sap collecting. People would stop out of curiosity, stop for the novelty. They’d stay around to buy.

Besides, it was charming.

She climbed the steps to the broad veranda that ran along the front of the building. Of course, the incongruous part of the setup was the idea of gruff Jacob Trask at a cash register selling maple syrup in little metal log-cabin-shaped containers. Or serving up maple ice cream, she thought with a smile as she glanced at the cone-shaped sign beside the door.

Then she stepped inside and all she could think was that it was a shame she hadn’t been in the store a few weeks before when she’d been feverishly trying to finish her Christmas shopping. Her mother would have loved the quilted potholders and matching dish towels. Her sister the gourmet would have been even happier with the jars of lemon curd. She could have given her little nephew a plush stuffed moose and her father the illustrated history of the Green Mountains. And maybe bought one of the gilded maple leaf Christmas ornaments for herself.

The shop itself was a delight with walls and shelves of pine, floors of wide-planked hardwood, polished until they gleamed. Through an archway, Celie could see a bright room furnished with picnic tables. There, presumably, the currently absent staff served up maple ice cream and other snacks.

A hollow-sounding thump had her jumping. She turned to look around the deserted shop. “Hello?” She stepped forward and glanced into the café. Nope, no one there, either. Which was strange. Granted, it was just opening time and hers was the only car in the lot, but still…

The thump sounded again, this time, closer at hand. Scanning the shop, Celie suddenly saw what looked like a closet door shake in time with another thump. Before her astounded eyes, the doorknob rattled and rotated just a bit. It was either a poltergeist or…

A very human voice spat out a succinct curse. “Where the hell is a third hand when you need one?” someone demanded.

Fighting a smile, Celie reached out for the handle.

And opened the door, only to see a stack of teetering cardboard boxes, and stairs leading down into what was, presumably, a basement. “Bless your heart,” a voice said from behind the stack and stepped forward.

The cardboard ziggurat wavered, in imminent peril of falling. Celie reached out a hand. “If you don’t stop, you’re going to lose them.” Reaching out, she took the top two cases—foam cups and paper napkins, if the labels were to be believed—and like magic, the head and shoulders of a silver-haired woman appeared from behind them. A woman with a vaguely familiar face.

“Just set them on the floor there,” she directed.

“No way. Let’s just take them in where they go. The café?”

“Good guess.”

Celie headed across the gift shop and under the arch to the cheerful café with its red-and-white-covered picnic tables. At the entrance to the ice-cream counter, she set down her load. “Here all right?”

“More than. You’re a dear.” The woman set down the boxes. “I’m Molly Trask,” she said, holding out her hand.

Of course. Celie could see the resemblance now that she looked, the high cheekbones, the arch of the eyes. Instead of black, Molly Trask’s hair was silver, a chin-length bob that curved along her jaw and made her eyes look even bluer.

“Celie Favreau, at your service.”

“More than you know. One of these days I’m going to get that door fixed. It was supposed to stay ajar.”

“It probably got sucked shut when I came in,” Celie said apologetically.

“Not your fault. I should learn to take more than one trip. I just hate taking the time.”

Celie winked. “I’m the same way. You know those plastic grocery bags with the looped handles? I’ve been known to hang five or six of them on each hand just to get everything in the house all at once.”

Molly laughed. “Separated at birth?”

“Could be.”

They grinned at each other.

“Can I help you with anything?” Molly asked.

“Actually, that was going to be my question to you. Need anything else brought up?”

“Nothing I can’t get later.”

Celie shook her head. “Separated at birth, remember?”

“Customers aren’t supposed to help out.”

“Well, here’s the thing. I’m not a customer. I actually work for the government, so I really work for you.”

“Ah, so you’re the one.”

The one? “What do you mean?”

“The one who spoke at the meeting last night. Jacob filled me in a little. He left a few things out, though,” she said, looking Celie up and down.

Celie stared at her, nonplussed. Somehow, she had a feeling Molly wasn’t talking about the maple borer. “Well, I don’t…I’d be happy to send you some information.”

“Clearly I’m missing out on all kinds of interesting information at these meetings,” Molly said, with what might just have been speculative amusement.

Before Celie could decide, the door to the sugarhouse opened abruptly and she heard Jacob’s voice. “Hey Ma, did you still want me to bring up—” He stopped short, staring at Celie.

He wore jeans and a blue plaid shirt hanging open over a gray T-shirt. His hair was tousled, as though he’d had his hands in it, his jaw dark with the previous day’s growth of beard.

Jesus, he was a gorgeous man.

Celie smiled at him. “Hello.”

Jacob didn’t like being caught flatfooted. He liked things to be predictable, consistent. So why was it that the first emotion he felt after surprise at seeing Celie was pleasure? That, and the desire to be able one of these days to look his fill at her. “What brings you here?”

Celie rummaged in her pocket. “Is that dog of yours around?”

“Murph?”

“The Shetland pony.”

Molly smothered a snort of laughter.

“He’s at my house. We don’t let him in the sugarhouse, and it’s too cold for him to be out back this time of year.”

Celie looked disappointed. “I brought him some cookies.”

“Cookies?”

“Doggy biscuits. I stopped by Ray’s this morning and he was running a special.”

“Well, you’ve just earned Murphy’s lifetime devotion,” Molly observed.

It was a small thing, a goofy thing, but Jacob found himself charmed. They always said the first way to a woman’s heart was through her children. What did it say about him that he was so ridiculously tickled at her kindness to his dog?

“Why don’t you take her back to the house so she can give them to Murphy herself?” Molly asked casually.

Jacob blinked. “What about those boxes?”

“Oh, I got the important ones. Celie helped me.”

He shouldn’t have been surprised. She had that way about her. Two seconds after ‘hello,’ she somehow seemed to become everyone’s best friend.

The front door opened and a trio of women came in, chattering and unbuttoning their coats. “Okay, out.” Molly made shooing motions. “I’ve got customers. Take Celie to see the Shetland pony. Unless you want to start giving tours,” she added.

One of the women turned to him. “Oh! You offer tours?”

“Let’s go say hi to Murph,” Jacob said hastily.

“I was wondering how you fitted into the gift-shop thing,” Celie said as they stepped out into the crisp January air.

“I don’t. That’s Ma’s territory. My job is sugar-making.”

“Selling potholders not your thing?”

Jacob slipped on his buckskin jacket. “Buddying up to anyone who walks through the door isn’t my thing.”

“Ah. Doesn’t work with your image.”

He gave her a narrow-eyed glance. “I don’t have an image.”

“Sure you do. Town curmudgeon, everybody tells me. I think you like it. Of course, you’re not very good at staying in character, it seems to me. So I’m thinking maybe it’s actually all just a put-on for the gullible.”

He glowered at her. “Maybe I should just take those biscuits myself.”

“No way.” She shoved the bag deep into her pocket. “I bought them, I get the doggy devotion. So where’s your house?”

“Oh, a half mile or so away, down that road.” He gestured toward a curving path that led through the trees. “Close enough to walk, if you don’t mind the cold.”

Celie slipped on her gloves. “I like being outside. Besides, I get to look at trees.”

“For signs of the scarlet-horned maple borer?”

“No, I just like looking at trees.”

“Do you ever stop?”

She gave him a sidelong glance. “No. Do you?”

“Got me there,” he admitted.

The dry snow squeaked under their boots as they walked. There was something timeless and calm about the columns of the trees rising around them, sugar maples, red maples, the occasional ash, birch or beech. A light dusting of snow the night before had frosted all the branches so that the whole world felt wrapped in a white muffler.

“So why do you live out on your own in the woods instead of in that big farmhouse? Does your aversion to people extend to your mother?” She gestured at the three-story white clapboard house with its curving porch and carved posts.

“That’s the Trask family house.”

“Home to millions of Trasks everywhere?”

“Enough of them,” he said shortly.

“Relax, I was only teasing.” She pushed at his shoulder a little. “I think it sounds nice.”

“It’s where I grew up but I wanted my own space. Ma’s the only one living there now.”

“So what do you have, a hermit’s cave in the woods?”

He gave her an amused look. “See? My reputation’s useful.”

“Like I said, I think your reputation is a pose. You’ve got everyone fooled into thinking you’re this crusty fellow, when all you really want is not to be bugged by boring people. Isn’t that right? Not that I blame you, of course.”

He blinked at her. “Shouldn’t I be on the couch for this, doctor?”

Celie laughed. “Sorry. I talk too much sometimes. And it’s not always what people want to hear.”

“It’s easy to tell people what they want to hear. Being straight takes something more.”

“I’m so glad you approve.” Her lips twitched. “So you don’t live in a hermit’s hut. Just where do you live?”

“There’s another place out here. My great grandfather’s brother wanted to get away from the family house, too. He built a home of his own.”

Celie stared at him. “Your great grandfather’s brother? How long have you people owned this place, anyway?”

“Since 1870. My great-great-grandfather, Hiram Trask, bought it when he came home from the Civil War.”

“What did he do, pick up a few souvenirs on his way home?”

“He went to war in the place of a mill-owner’s son from Burlington. In trade, he got a nice chunk of change. He’d planned to go to Europe on it, or maybe South America.”

“But he didn’t.”

“Little jaunts like Antietam kind of take it out of a man. Hiram came home, bought up as many acres of maples as he could and just hunkered down. I guess he figured he’d seen as much of the outside world as he needed.”

“So you come by it honestly,” she commented, straying to the edge of the road to brush her fingers over the smooth, bright trunk of a birch.

“I suppose. In every generation there’s been a Trask who keeps to himself.”

“And in every generation has there been a Trask who’s known as the town grump?”

His lips twitched. “Maybe.”

“Then I guess you fit right in. So how do you know so much about them?”

“We’ve got all their journals in the main house. I went through them the year I was sixteen.”

“Summer reading project?”

He shrugged. “I thought I should know more about where I came from.”

She could imagine them coming to life on pages covered in painstaking copperplate. Not distant ancestors but sons and brothers, fathers and uncles, real men with real desires and torments. Somehow, it didn’t seem stifling the way her family’s dusty history did. It felt warm, grounded. Maybe it was part of what made Jacob seem so sure of who he was. “So was the land already in sugar maples when Hiram bought the place?”

“Some. He bought sections of two or three different sugarbushes and tied them all together with open land that he planted himself. He kind of made a life’s work of it.”

She could imagine him, coming back from chaos and carnage to patiently build an ordered retreat from the world, a place of safety and security, a place where knowledge and planning could take the place of luck and survival.

“The trees look like they were laid out by someone who knew what he was doing.”

“Hiram had a whole journal just on maple-farming techniques. Pages of it. He read everything he could get his hands on. Sent his son, Ethan, to school for it.”

“The one who built your house?”

“No, that was his brother, Isaac, who stayed on the farm.”

“By choice or because he had to?”

“A little of both. Education wasn’t cheap back then but his journals sound like he was happiest keeping to himself. He courted a woman for years but she wound up marrying a guy from Boston. Didn’t like the idea of living out in the middle of nowhere, I guess.”

“I imagine it’s an acquired taste,” Celie agreed.

He turned to look at her and his deep-blue gaze jolted her system. “I don’t know that you can acquire the ability to be happy in yourself. You’ve either got it or you don’t.” They rounded a curve and started into a long avenue of oak trees that led to Jacob’s home.

And Celie caught her breath.

She’d expected a small clapboard farmhouse, not this three story Victorian edifice, all gables and gingerbread and carved pillars and railings. The paint job alone was a work of art, a half dozen tones of umber and green and gold that both stood out and melded with the landscape around it. “My God, he built this himself?”

Jacob nodded. “It took him eight years, working on it every minute he wasn’t in the sugarbush. He built it for the woman he hoped would be his wife. She was from Montpelier.” They started down the tree-lined drive.

Celie’s brow furrowed. “Montpelier? That was a long way to go back then. How did they meet?”

“She came to a maple-sugar-on-snow party at the farm. Isaac fell for her hard. Sarah Jane Embree. I think she was fifteen, he was twenty-four. Her father was a lawyer, big in the Montpelier social set.”

The oaks rose to either side, the bare branches curving over their heads. In summer, she thought, they would make a full canopy, leafy-green and glorious. “How could he have courted her? I’d think the father would have kept a farmer as far away from his daughter as possible.”

“Don’t forget, though, Isaac had half of a very prosperous farm coming to him. Embree hedged his bets. He told Isaac he could court Sarah Jane with the intention of marriage, but that her husband had to be able to keep her in the style she deserved as an Embree. Isaac underlined that part in his journal. The style she deserved. The best of everything.”

“Including a mansion.”

Jacob nodded. “That didn’t stop Isaac, though. He just put his head down and started building. Spent every penny he had on materials—marble sinks, crystal door knobs, Tiffany stained-glass windows. He even sold off some of his part of the sugarbush to finance it. He figured if he just worked hard enough, just persisted, he’d win her hand.”

“It didn’t work, though.”

“No. He had it just about finished by 1906—mahogany furniture, running water, even electrical power from a generator out back. She’d gotten engaged by then to her brother’s school friend. No way a house in the woods could compete with Beacon Hill. I still have the ring he bought her.”

“It must have shattered him,” Celie murmured, looking up at the house, lonely even in its splendor.

“He never got over it. Never looked at another woman.”

“She didn’t care for him at all, did she?”

Jacob shook his head. “Isaac thought they had an understanding. The Embrees were just hedging their bets. I tracked down their papers the summer I read the journals. Edwin didn’t even mention Isaac. Sarah Jane’s had a few entries, mostly about how he was always pestering her with plans for the house when all she cared about was the social scene. I don’t think she ever even saw the place.”

“It was a quest. Slay the dragon and you get the maiden.”

“Kind of like that. But when he completed his task, the maiden was gone. Not even his family knew what he was building out here. He kept it a secret.”

“He was obsessed.”

“He was in love,” Jacob said simply.

It seemed unbearably sad to her. “She wasn’t for him.”

“Didn’t matter. He really believed if he just worked hard enough, offered her enough, he could win her.”

“But a house can’t do that. Things can’t do that. All it takes is the right person, if they really love you.” She glanced at Jacob. And she felt a sudden dizziness, as though the world had tilted on its axis. Their gazes met and tangled and then his eyes were all she could see, endlessly blue, endlessly deep, like pools she might fall into, sinking forever into him.

A furious barking broke the spell. With a shake of her head, Celie turned to see Murphy barreling toward them down the aisle of trees. She fell upon him in relief, the strange moment ended. “Who’s this? Who’s this? Who’s this doggie?” she asked, ruffling his neck fur while he leapt around her deliriously.

“Down, Murph,” Jacob said and Murphy subsided, tail wagging so furiously his whole body shook with it.

“Look, Murph, it’s a cookie. I’ve brought you a cookie.” Celie brought the baggie of dog biscuits out of her pocket. “Here’s a cookie for you, here’s a cookie for this good dog.” She held it up. “Do you think if I give it to you your dad will let me look at the inside of the house?”

Murphy barked.

Celie looked at Jacob, laughter in her eyes. “I’d say that’s a yes. What do you say, daddio?”

And he, this generation’s Trask loner, merely nodded.

Isaac Trask had been far more than just a maple-sugar-maker, Celie thought in the glorious entrance hall of the house. He’d had an architect’s sense of design combined with a builder’s meticulousness. The golden oak floors gleamed, the ceilings soared a good ten feet overhead. Sunlight streamed in through the beveled glass oval that lay in the center of the front door.

“My God, this is gorgeous,” she murmured.

“Isaac went ahead and lived in it even without Sarah Jane. He died pretty young—basically drank himself to death.”

How could something so beautiful come from tragedy? “It’s incredible, like something you’d see in Newport, Rhode Island. Tell me it didn’t just stay vacant.”

“Oh, different people from the family lived in it for a few years here and there. Never for long, though.”

“Bad karma?” she asked, but it didn’t feel forbidding. It seemed like a house that would welcome life and warmth.

“It was too remote, I think, even when we tried to rent it. Hard to find people who want to be so isolated.”

“So what happened?” She trailed her fingers over the antique wallpaper and turned to him. “Did it just sit empty?”

“More or less. My dad and my grandfather did enough to keep it from falling apart, anyway. You know, replacing windows and that. When I read Isaac’s journals, it really got to me. After that, I did some stuff here and there when I got the chance. I started in earnest when I moved in.”

“When was that?”

“About seventeen years ago. My parents wouldn’t let me until I’d turned eighteen, and then I wound up spending about a year working on major structural stuff first. Some of the subflooring had rotted out, and the porch pillars. Once I got that out of the way, it just came down to a lot of interior detail work.”

“Which you excel at,” she murmured, trailing her fingers over the gleaming moldings around the French doors leading to the living room. “May I?” she asked, tipping her head.

“Sure.”

The carpet was Persian and swirled in a complicated pattern of geometric wines and blues. An ornate plaster ceiling medallion surrounded the chain that held up the bronze-and-crystal light fixture. And the walls were almost entirely lined in bookshelves, bookshelves groaning with books. Some were leather-bound and perhaps dated back to Isaac’s time; mostly, the shelves were filled with the splashy color of paperbacks. She’d understood from Ray that Jacob read; she’d had no idea how much.

“Were the bookshelves Isaac’s idea?”

Jacob shifted his feet a little. “No, those were mine.”

“A house like this ought to have a library.”

“Yeah, but I like my books close at hand.”

Actually, the room felt like a library with its shelves and green lamps and its leather couches and chairs. And then she was surprised again, because next to the chair that faced the fireplace and sat under a brass floor lamp, the chair that was obviously Jacob’s favorite sat…

“You play guitar?” She sat down to admire the satiny wood of the well-worn and perfectly cared for acoustic.

He looked suddenly trapped. “Yeah, some.”

“How long have you played?”

“Oh, I don’t know, since I was about eleven, I think.”

She looked at him in amusement. “A little, he says? Twenty-five years? What do you play?”

“Oh, different stuff,” he said, drifting toward the door. “Old Creedence, roots music, some classical, some blues.”

He was uncomfortable, she realized. Solid, certain Jacob Trask was embarrassed. There was something about it that tugged at her heart. “Well, don’t walk away, play something for me.”

He stopped and stared at her. “I don’t play for people.”

“You must have played for your family, at least.”

He shifted uneasily. “It’s mostly just for me.”

“So Murph’s the only one who’s gotten a concert?”

Hearing his name, Murphy raised his head and rose from his cushion in the corner.

Jacob played with the dog’s ears absently. “Playing for other people turns it into something else. It’s not about impressing people for me. It’s just something I like to do.”

“How about if I promise not to be impressed?” Celie offered.

That had him fighting a smile. “Later,” he said, walking to the door.

“Is there going to be a later?”

His glance brought warmth to her cheeks. “We’ll see.”

The light was fading to dusk. The living room was empty but for Jacob and Murphy. The soft and somehow plaintive strains of an Appalachian finger-picking piece he’d found sounded through the room. He stopped and frowned. Play for me, she’d said. It was absurd for him to feel bashful at the idea. He’d probably sounded more than a little eccentric when he’d told her he hadn’t even played for his family. Not that he should care what Celie Favreau thought of him.

But he was lying to himself if he tried to pretend he didn’t.

Only two days had passed since he’d found her crouched at the base of one of his maples. Only two days that she’d been lurking in his mind, dancing through his thoughts. Somehow it felt as though it had been much longer. It wasn’t as though he’d never been with a woman. He knew what it was to want, he knew what it was to bury himself in the warmth and softness of a woman he cared about.

And he knew what it was to watch them leave. There was little to keep a woman in Eastmont. Most of them wanted more, most of them wanted more of him than he was willing to give. Somehow, he was never ready, perhaps because he always saw them walking away, just as Sarah Jane had walked away from Isaac.

Idly, he began playing a slow blues riff.

It was the tag end of January and the pace of his life was beginning to pick up. Winter might be the dormant season for most, but for a sugar-maker, it was when things got exciting. Suddenly, there was more work to be done than hours to do it. He didn’t have time for a bright-eyed woman with a disconcerting tendency to get him talking. So what if she made him laugh? So what if she crept into his dreams?

He knew how it went, get involved, see a woman a few times and suddenly there were obligations. Suddenly he’d find himself defending the way he lived, defending who he was. Living with Murph, he didn’t have that problem. Alone was the way he was comfortable. Alone was the way he wanted to be.

Especially this year, of all years, when it felt as if everything was piled high on his shoulders. He’d always figured he was strong enough to take on anything that came along, but he was beginning to wonder. There was so much at stake, so much to lose if he screwed up. And now with this maple borer thing, who knew what the future might look like?

Without realizing it, he slipped into a slow, mournful gospel song. When the phone rang, he let it. The answering machine clicked and he heard himself. “It’s me. Leave a message.”

“It’s Gabe. Pick up the phone.” He heard his youngest brother’s voice. “Don’t think I don’t know you’re there. Hey Murph, you there?” Murphy gave a low whine. “Pick up the phone, will ya?”

Murphy barked and with a grin, Jacob reached out for the receiver. “What do you want?”

“I knew you were there.”

“So why are you bugging me?”

“I didn’t have anything better to do.”

“You get in a fight with Hadley?”

“Naw, she adores me. Can’t stop hanging all over me an—ow,” he complained to someone in the background. “That hurt.”

“Sounds like some pretty energetic hanging,” Jacob observed.

“Don’t let it fool you, she’s crazy about me,” Gabe confided. “So what’s going on out there? You left a message?”

Jacob’s grin faded. “Some things you ought to know about. We might have trouble.”

“Trouble how?” Gabe asked sharply.

“Some USDA plant health people are poking around looking for a bug that targets maple trees.”

“Targets as in kills them?”

“Yep. Hides in the bark, girdles them and transmits a fungus so that if the chewing doesn’t kill them, the fungus will. Reproduces quickly.”

“Sounds like a nasty customer.”

Jacob reached for his coffee. “It is.”

“Has it got any of ours?”

“They don’t know. They’ll be looking.” And Celie popped immediately to mind. He frowned. “If they find it, they could wind up taking down a lot of trees.”

“How many, a lot?”

“Like acres.”

Gabe digested this for a moment. “That would suck. What would that do to your income?”

“Do the math. We’ve got a hundred acres right now, forty-five-hundred-some-odd taps. Knock that down by ten percent, it’s going to hurt.”

“Will you and Ma still be okay?”

“I assume so.” Though the uncertainty had been a constant, nagging worry ever since the maple borer situation had turned serious. “It’ll cut the shares for you and Nick, though.”

Gabe snorted. “Like we care. I’ve got a job, Jacob, and so does Nick. You’re the one working your ass off on the farm. You’re the one who should get any money, you and Ma.”

“But it’s your land, too.” And he felt the responsibility every single day.

“As long as I can come and go to the farm as I please, I’ve got what I want. So with this bug thing, you worried?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure what to think yet.”

There was a pause. “You feeling all right?”

“Yeah, fine. Why?”

“Because you’ve never in your life been short of an opinion. I thought maybe you were sick or something.”

“You’re a regular laugh riot, you know that?”

“Yeah,” Gabe said modestly. “Seriously, though, what’s up?”

“Don’t know yet. Celie’s coming out on Monday with her team to look the place over. I assume we’ll know more once we see what they find.”

“And then you’ll know if you’re going to lose trees?”

“I’ll know if we’re going to lose trees. They belong to all of us, Gabe. I don’t forget that.”

“And we appreciate it,” Gabe said. “So how’s Ma taking all this?”

“She seems okay. I haven’t gone into huge detail just because we don’t know enough yet and I don’t see the point in getting panicked. Anyway, I think she’s distracted right now.”

“Yeah,” Gabe said quietly. “We’re getting close to a year.”

“Month after next.” This time a year before, Adam Trask had still been around, striding through the maples with his rogue’s grin. This time a year before, Jacob had still had a father and business partner, and Molly had had a husband. And then one morning, out in the sugarbush, everything had changed….

“How’s she doing?”

“A little rocky, when she thinks no one’s looking.” He stared moodily at his coffee. “I caught her crying one day.”

“Crying?” Gabe echoed uneasily.

“Yeah.” Easily one of the most unsettling experiences of his life. “You know Ma, she was fine two minutes later but things are hard for her right now.”

“She needs us around,” Gabe said, in answer to his brother’s unspoken comment.

“Yeah.”

“Listen, I’ve got business in Montpelier next week. I figured I’d drop in at the end of the day, maybe for dinner.”

Trust Gabe to come through. “I think she’d like that. Bring Hadley, if you can.”

“She won’t be around. She’s got to go to New York for the week to close on some corporate business and see about her condo.”

“Oh yeah? She selling?”

“The place in New York, anyway. She’s got a flat out here in the manager’s house at the hotel.”

“The same manager’s house you live in?” Jacob asked innocently.

“Might be.”

“So what’s hotel ownership going to say to the two of you shacking up together?”

“Considering she’s hotel ownership, not a whole lot. Besides, we’re not shacking up.”

“No?”

“Nope. She’s still got her flat, I’ve still got mine.”

Jacob stretched, amused. “You losing your moves, little brother?”

“I’ve learned to be patient. When it’s right, we’ll know.”

“Good luck on that.”

“Yeah.” Gabe paused a moment. “So who’s this Celie?”