The Sugar House. Christine Flynn

least vindicate the urgency she’d felt to get to the phone with her news. Or perhaps something she could share with whoever happened to walk in next to the only place for miles where a person could get everything from sporting gear to butter and eggs.

      Like almost everyone in the rural and isolated community of Maple Mountain, Vermont, Agnes had a good heart. And like everyone else who lived on the outlying farms and in the rolling, wooded hills, she wasn’t terribly tolerant of anyone who tried to change their ways or their attitudes or who threatened one of their own. For all their independence, they looked out for each other. And for many, like Agnes, minding everyone’s business wasn’t regarded so much as a sport as it was a sacred duty.

      “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what he has in mind,” Emmy finally replied, practical as always. “But I can’t imagine he’d feel welcome here, either.”

      Like Agnes, she couldn’t imagine why he had bought the property adjacent to hers. The tree-dense parcel had passed from one out-of-state owner to another over the past fifteen years. Some investor or professional couple from down country would buy it with grandiose plans for its development, then figure out how impractical those plans were, leave it as it was, and put it back on the market. Invariably, the property sat for sale for a couple of years before someone else would come along and start the cycle all over again.

      Jack Travers wasn’t like those other buyers, though. He’d been familiar with that land. He knew its rolling terrain. He had to know exactly what he’d bought. As a teenager he’d worked it with her father.

      Trying to ignore the odd sense of apprehension the conversation brought, she pulled on her jacket while holding the phone between her shoulder and chin. As she did, Rudy, her fifty-pounds of energetic retriever mixed with mutt leaped from his bed under her desk and planted his golden-haired body by the door. He sat there vibrating, dark eyes bright.

      “I’m sorry, Agnes.” Now that her parka was on, she reached for her gray fleece cap. “I’m going to have to run. I was just on my way to the house to bring something back for supper before my next batch of sap starts to boil.” She moved toward the receiver on the desk at the back of the room, pulling gloves from her jacket pocket on the way. She didn’t know when she’d have another break before darkness fell. She didn’t mind making the trip to the house in the dark. It was just easier with daylight. “Before I forget,” she hurried to say, “you mentioned that you’d helped Mary with her groceries. Did she say how Charlie is doing?”

      “His gout is about the same.” If Agnes was disappointed by her lack of verbal reaction to Jack’s presence, she didn’t let on. Emmy knew she’d been concerned about Charlie, too. “He still can’t get on a boot.”

      “He’s probably going stir crazy not being able to get out of the house.”

      Agnes gave an unladylike snort. “Don’t know about him. But he’s sure making Mary that way.”

      A faint smile entered Emmy’s voice. “I imagine he is.” As cantankerous as her old friend and part-time employee could be on a good day, he’d be like a bear with a tooth-ache on a bad one. “Thanks for calling, Agnes. I really appreciate it. You take care. Okay?”

      Emmy didn’t want to be rude. But she really didn’t have long before she had to get back to work. Boiling maple sap into syrup sounded simple enough, but the chores involved would keep her there until midnight.

      Agnes took no offense at all at being rushed off the phone. Like every other local, she knew that when sugar season came, the flow of the sap dictated the course of the day for anyone with a sugaring operation. Since Agnes also knew that Emmy was working alone because Charlie, her only help, was temporarily out of commission, she was off the phone in the time it took her to tell Emmy she’d let her know if she heard anything about Jack that Emmy needed to be concerned about.

      Emmy had barely replaced the receiver of the old black dial phone when Rudy started turning circles by the door, anxious to get out.

      It was such a little thing, but at that moment, Emmy could have hugged him for his predictability. Had he not just started spinning, she would have. So much about her life had been unexpected. So many things had happened that she hadn’t been able to see coming. Having been blindsided so often, she’d grown to love routine, thought of change as a four-letter word, and adored anything predictable. If Rudy was anything, he was a creature of habit, and she loved him for that.

      Pulling her hat over her stick-straight auburn ponytail, she smiled at the blur of circling fur and opened the door of the small weather-grayed building before he could make himself dizzy.

      Cold air rushed into the warm, sweet-smelling space as Rudy bolted out. With his nose to the foot-deep snow, he ran, sniffing, to see what sort of critter had invaded his turf since he’d last patrolled his domain.

      Emmy followed more slowly, taking the path through the trees that led to her yard, her snow-covered garden and her back porch. Depending on how much snow the front predicted to move in tomorrow brought, in another few weeks, she might even see bare ground. That meant mud and rain, but it also meant crocus and daffodils and buds on the trees.

      Trying to think of simple, ordinary things, things she loved and looked forward to, wasn’t working.

      The sense of foreboding wouldn’t go away.

      She couldn’t imagine why Jack had come back. It was beyond her comprehension why any Travers would want anything at all to do with a place where the mere mention of their family name conjured tales of disloyalty, greed and poor Stan Larkin and his little family.

      Poor Stan Larkin. Poor Emmy. Her poor mother.

      She mentally cringed every time she heard the word that labeled them all so unfortunate and pitiable. Being the subject of talk had always made her uneasy. Being the subject of pity made her even more so. She was equally uncomfortable with the sympathetic looks and the well-intentioned comments she’d heard lately about how well she was taking “the news.” But she hadn’t dealt with the news as well as she’d let on.

      Snow crunched beneath her feet as she watched Rudy eye an unsuspecting squirrel. It had taken her forever to get past the feeling that at any moment the bottom could fall out of her world. As many times as it had, she felt as if she’d spent years holding her breath, waiting for it to happen all over again.

      She felt that way now, as if she were holding her breath. She’d worked hard to ignore the old feelings of helplessness and insecurity the talk resurrected. But because of Ed Travers’s son those feelings were there once more, hovering beneath the surface, threatening to rise up at any moment and resurrect the memories she had worked so hard to bury.

      She wasn’t helpless. It had taken a while, but she’d learned to manage well enough on her own. She was content with what she had. And heaven knew she was busy enough. The sense-of-security part was more of a work in progress, but in the past couple of years, she’d made headway there, too.

      Or so she was telling herself as the low drone of a car engine filtered through the cold March air.

      Emmy froze in her tracks. From where she had just emerged from the woods, she could see the BMW with New York plates slow as it approached the white, two-story house with its wide, welcoming front porch and the Wedgwood-blue trim she’d painted last summer.

      Continuing past the house toward the stable she’d converted into a garage, the car crunched to a stop beneath the skeletal branches of a sycamore tree.

      A low growl came from near her knee.

      Only now noticing that Rudy had stopped chasing the squirrel he’d terrorized only moments ago and planted himself at her side, she touched the top of his big head.

      “It’s okay, boy,” she murmured, reassured by his loyal presence. “We’ll just see what he wants.”

      Across the blanket of white, she watched a tall, dark-haired man emerge from the car. The door closed with a crack that sounded like a gunshot a moment before she saw Jack Travers glance toward the house.

      She