Vermont Valentine. Kristin Hardy

“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