Family Tree. Сьюзен Виггс

legal in the state of Vermont. Real maple syrup is pure. There is nothing added and nothing removed, except water.” Her legs felt clammy from the spilled sap, but she ignored the discomfort. There was work to be done and she loved having an audience. Besides, it was a way to shift gears away from the altercation with Degan. “This is where the real stuff is made,” she told them. “We boil down forty gallons of sap to get a gallon of maple syrup.” She showed them how the liquid flowed through the pans. “That’s how it gets sweeter by the minute,” she said.

      “Too bad you can’t use that technique on sisters,” said Gordy. “I have gnarly sisters.”

      Annie checked the clock on the wall. Nearly dinnertime already, and she’d probably miss out, because the work wasn’t done. “The sap has to be boiled while it’s fresh,” she told them. “That’s why we boil as fast as we can during the season. And that’s why my brother’s going to be ticked off when I tell him I fired three of his guys.”

      “He won’t be ticked off when you tell him why,” Gordy pointed out.

      She shrugged off the comment. Kyle had a family now; he’d married a woman with two kids. He was definitely more concerned with the bottom line than he was with high school bullies. “We’ll see.”

      She showed them how to check the rendered syrup, knowing when it coated the spatula in a certain way that the temperature had reached 219 degrees, ready to be drawn from the finishing pan into barrels. Holding up the grading rack with its four clear bottles, she showed them the four grades of syrup—golden, amber, dark, and very dark.

      “They all look good to me,” Fletcher said, but his attention was not on the rack.

      “Hey, how’s it going?” Kyle showed up, stomping the snow and mud from his boots on the front step of the sugarhouse. He nodded a greeting at Gordy and Fletcher.

      Kyle was eight years older than Annie, a guy’s guy, strong and big-shouldered, dark-haired and dark-eyed like Annie. He was quick to laugh, but sometimes quick to anger. His full-time job was with the Forest Service, but in addition to that, all the operations on Rush Mountain—the sugaring, the orchards and lumber operation—had been his responsibility since he’d turned eighteen and their father had left.

      “Things are going fine,” Annie told him. “I should be finished in an hour or so.”

      He craned his neck to look out the window. “Where’s the rest of the crew?”

      Annie shot a glance at Fletcher, then looked back at her brother. “I sent them packing. They were slackers.”

      “Damn it, Annie,” said Kyle, surveying the idle equipment outside. “We’re only halfway through the season. I need all hands on deck.”

      “You don’t need slackers,” she said with a sniff. “Hire a different crew.”

      “Every sugarbush in the area is shorthanded this year. Where am I going to find more help?” He ripped off his hat and threw it down. “You know what it costs to lose even a day of sugaring.”

      “Um, can I make a suggestion?” Gordy said.

      “What?” Kyle sounded exasperated.

      “My sisters could help out.”

      “Your sisters. You’re volunteering your sisters.”

      “Well, you’d have to pay them.”

      “You know what this work is like,” Kyle said. “Cold, dirty, and backbreaking. Not exactly women’s work.”

      Gordy rocked back on his heels. “You haven’t met my sisters.”

      Kyle looked skeptical, but he jerked his head toward the door. “Let’s go call them.”

      As they hiked up the hill to find a cell-phone signal, Annie went back to work. “Sorry about him,” she said to Fletcher. “He gets stressed out during the sugar season.”

      “Why didn’t you just tell him Degan was being a douche to you?”

      “I didn’t want—” She cut herself off. “Good question. I don’t know why. And speaking of those douche bags, aren’t you worried they’re going to retaliate?”

      He gave a short laugh. “It won’t keep me up at night.”

      “Well, thank you for stepping in.” She liked talking to him. He was … different. Not like the guys she’d come through school with.

      “Want a hand with anything else?”

      Yes. She tried to act cool. “Sure, that would be great.” She checked the density of the syrup with a hydrometer. Then she showed him how the sugar sand was removed by pushing it through a filter press. The clear, golden syrup was ready, flowing into the barrels. She caught a sample in a coffee cup and handed it to Fletcher. “Let that cool a bit and take a taste. You’ll never give that squeeze bottle another look.”

      He blew on the cup, his lips pursing as if in readiness for a kiss. She felt mesmerized, watching him. He took a taste, and a smile spread slowly across his face. “That flavor is amazing,” he said.

      They finished the chores together, working side by side as they talked. “You just moved to Switchback, right?” she asked. As if she didn’t know. When he’d enrolled in school a couple of weeks ago, a tidal wave had spread through the girls of the senior class. New guys were rare in this small town. New guys who were cool and good-looking and interesting created a major stir.

      “Yep.”

      “And?” she prompted.

      He gave her a slantwise grin, full of charm. “And what? Where’d I come from, what’s my family like, how’d I wind up in Switchback?”

      “At the risk of being nosy, yes.”

      “I can handle a nosy girl.” He helped her scrub out the equipment. “My dad’s a mechanic, specializes in foreign imports, but he can fix anything.”

      “I saw where he bought Crestfield’s garage in town.”

      Fletcher nodded. “He imports scooters from Italy, too. Fixes them up and sells them, mostly online.”

      “And your mom?”

      “It’s just my dad and me.”

      “Oh. So where’s your mom?”

      He shot her a look.

      “You said you could handle a nosy girl,” she pointed out.

      “I’ll tell you about her,” he said. “Just not today.”

      “Fair enough.” She felt bad for prying, and changed the subject. “My mother’s an artist. She draws and paints. Never studied it formally, but she’s really good. See the illustration on the maple syrup tin? And on our label?” She gestured at a storage shelf crammed with containers. “It’s from a painting by my mom. The kids in the picture are Kyle and me.”

      “Hey, that’s cool. What about your dad?”

      “Hmm. I’ll have to think about whether or not I want to tell you,” she said, lightly teasing.

      “It’s cool,” he said. “That way, we’ll have something to talk about next time.”

      Next time.

      “It’s no big secret. My father took off when I was ten,” Annie said. She wondered if the old fear and confusion and hurt still echoed in her voice. “I didn’t see it coming. Which is weird, because they fought a lot.”

      “You were just a kid.”

      “Mom says he was always dreaming of adventure somewhere else. Then, right after Kyle turned eighteen, Dad said he’d bought acreage on a beach in Costa Rica, and he was going to build a surf camp there.”

      “Costa Rica sounds amazing.”

      “I