Page 5 of Threat of Danger
She was going where the devil lived.
Chapter Two
Friday
JESS’S ONLY PLANfor the visit home was to remain emotionally detached. Thank God she wouldn’t have to deal with Derek, because her mother was more than she could handle.
Rose Taylor was a lot frailer than Jess remembered, broken and pale as she lay in the hospital bed at the UVM Medical Center. The fine lines around her eyes had deepened into crow’s-feet. She shifted on the bed, her powder-blue nightgown revealing bony shoulders that used to be a lot rounder.
“Thank you for coming back.”
Jess wasn’t sure what to say in response, because she wasn’t entirely sure of her motivations.
Rose lay still, as if afraid any movement might scare Jess away. Her gaze roamed her daughter, returning over and over to Jess’s face. “I can’t believe you came.”
“That makes two of us.” A wave of guilt rose. Jess held her breath until the wave crested. She hadnotabandoned her parents! Her parents had abandonedher. Not something she wanted to talk about. Ever.
She cracked her shoulders, still a little sore from the harness.Two days here. Three at most.Then back to LA and Eliot.The sooner the better.
“No matter what, I’m glad you’re home.” Her mother’s voice remained tentative.
Me too, Jess should have said, but she wasn’t glad, and lies were not what they needed. “Are you in pain?”
The pain was in the present, so a safe topic. The past wasn’t. The past needed to stay in the past. She wouldn’t bring it up. She would definitely not ask about Derek. He’d joined the navy, then somehow became a bestselling thriller author, a minor celebrity. He probably didn’t come home any more often than she did.Good.
“I’m fine now.” Rose’s tone held forced cheer.
She wasn’t a complainer. Partially, because shewasa tough Vermont woman, and also because she disliked acknowledging difficulties. She was the type who’d much rather ignore problems than solve them.
“They’re giving me the good drugs,” she added, as if sensing that Jess didn’t believe her.
“How did you fall?”
“Lifting a bucket, tripping over a hose I didn’t see.”
Jess wanted to tell her to cut back, not to work so hard on the farm. Yet it wasn’t as if Jess would stay to take up the slack, as the new generation always had taken over when the previous one grew old—two hundred years of Taylor tradition.
An awkward silence stretched between them, too many unsaid things hanging in the air like little particles of water, creating a fog that made it difficult for them to truly see each other, even though they sat only three feet apart.
Rose Taylor sat up a few inches higher against the pillows. “If I knew you were coming, I would have gotten your room ready.”
“I’ll stay at a hotel.” The words rushed out. And Jess thought,I should have said that right away.She didn’t want to raise false expectations. She didn’t want to hurt anyone.
Too late. Hurt trembled in Rose’s voice. “Couldn’t you stay at the house?”
Jess rubbed circles over her knees with her thumbs. “You’re not there anyway.”
“It’s sugaring season.”
Sugaring.The almighty maple syrup around which everything revolved. The almighty trees. The almighty land.
Jess used to wish she mattered half as much to her parents. She welcomed the resentment that came flooding back. She could handle indignation better than the sticky muck of guilt.
“I’m sure Chuck can run the sugaring.”
Chuck Hernandez had been her father’s right hand for as far back as Jess could remember. Since her father’s death two years ago, Chuck had become the foreman for the whole operation.
“Chuck is sixty-five.” Rose’s pale-blue eyes turned pleading. “His arthritis is starting to get the better of him. Just be there, in case something comes up. Maybe you could organize the meals for the crews.”
