Page 6 of Threat of Danger
Jess had helped her mother with the meals before. The workers earned their hot lunches. Lifting and carrying heavy buckets was hard work. And they got cold, spending the day out in the woods.
Colorful images of a dozen sugaring seasons swirled in Jess’s head, the sweet smells and cheerful sounds, the sheer excitement and joy of the maple harvest. She hadn’t thought about sugaring in a long time. She’d locked away the good memories along with the bad.
Taylors had “maple syrup running in their veins instead of blood” was the saying around town. Once, long ago, Jess had been proud of that.
Then she’d run.
Now she said, “I don’t have to stay at the house to help. I’ll just go over during the day.”
Her mother wilted against the pillows. “If you think that’s best.”
Jess hated the acquiescence. She wanted ... what? A fight? Definitely not. She hoped she was more mature than that.
She rolled her shoulders. After the New York shoot, she’d been beat physically, but now, back in Vermont, she felt emotionally beat too.
She felt ... She didn’t know how to feel, and maybe that was the problem. A wild mix of emotions clamored for her attention: anger, resentment, regret, anxiety, and a reluctant acknowledgment that she’d missed her mother.
Pain drew lines on Rose’s forehead.
Yet another new wave of guilt crept in, slowly like the tide, licking Jess’s toes first, then her ankles, then her knees, and soon she was hip-deep. “I’ll stay at the house tonight, and we’ll go from there.”
As she committed to the cause, a cold shiver ran up her spine.Fear? No.She’d banished fear from her life long ago. She had to, or fear would have consumed her.Restate and reframe.
She wasn’t scared. She just wished she didn’t have to be here. She wanted to be with Eliot in LA. Eliot was soft-spoken, nonjudgmental, easygoing, kind, and caring—everything she wanted in a man.
Her phone pinged on her lap. She glanced down, a smile turning up her lips.Eliot.As if he somehow knew she was thinking about him.
The text message said,Need help? I could come up to Vermont instead of flying home to LA.
“Boyfriend?” her mother asked from the bed.
Jess looked up. Once again, her gaze caught on all the gray in her mother’s hair. When had she stopped coloring it? After Dad’s death?
Their rare phone calls were brief, so they rarely veered into trivialities like hair. They certainly weren’t close enough to discuss boyfriends. But Jess was here. They would have to talk about more than maple syrup.
She told her mother the truth. “I don’t know yet.” She filled her lungs. “Hopefully, things are going in the boyfriend direction. We have a lot in common. Have the same interests, live in the same world, like a lot of the same things.” Then she added, “His name is Eliot. He wants to come up from New York.”
A confused blink from the bed. “Were you in New York? I thought you were in California.”
“We’ve been shooting in New York for the last two weeks.”
“I’m sorry if I interrupted something important.”
“I was done.”
She didn’t realize until after she said the words that they sounded as if she wouldn’t have come if she still had work, as if her mother wasn’t important enough to come and see, no matter what. But Jess didn’t rephrase. She didn’t correct.
It is what it is.
“I can help with the medical expenses,” she said instead.There, an olive branch.
“Medicaid will take care of most of it.” Rose sounded neither offended by the “I was done” comment nor touched by the offer of financial help. “I have a little set by. Sold two acres by the river to Harold Crane.”
“Principal Crane?”
God, it’d been a long time since Jess had thought about high school. She didn’t think about Taylorville at all, if she could help herself.
Crane hadn’t been bad, for a principal. He’d been generous with snow days and stingy with detentions. Most of the kids liked him.
