Secrets At Maple Syrup Farm Read Online Free

Instead, I’d held myself tight like a coil, and said I’d do my very best to enjoy myself. In an effort to lighten up a somber situation we played the “Remember When” game.
    Remember when we slept in the lighthouse that night? Remember when we swapped our homemade dream catchers for a crate of apples? Remember when…
    After that the Van Gogh Institute Scholarship came up about a hundred times, but I shrugged her off. I needed time. At this stage I didn’t know if I’d make it without her.
    “Where you from?” the woman asked, bringing me back to the present. She crossed her arms over her midsection, as we bounced softly along.
    With a smile, I said, “Detroit.” I pivoted a fraction to face her. She looked like the type who would chatter on regardless.
    “Ah,” she said, “the birthplace of Motown? Ain’t that something?”
    “It is.” I missed it already. It was home. Where my heart was.
    She studied my face intently. “Why the long face?”
    I shrugged. I wasn’t about to share my story with a stranger. Besides, there was no way I could say Mom’s name. I held on to the promise I made as though it was something tangible, my secret. “Just saying goodbye.” I tried hard to make it sound breezy and bit the inside of my cheek, willing myself to stay focused and not well up. Honestly, I was like a child going off to camp the first time. I knew Mom wanted me to “find myself” but I didn’t think I was lost. She did.
    With a raise of her eyebrows she said, “Goodbyes…surely are difficult. But sometimes, you gotta take the plunge. Life is for living.”
    “Yeah,” I mumbled. My mom had said something eerily similar when I’d visited the hospital to say my goodbyes.
    Snatching her purse from under the seat, she rifled around in it, before brandishing a brown paper bag full of something spicy-scented. “Here, eat. You as skinny as a rake.” She handed me a chocolate-dipped gingerbread man. “Ashford—where we goin’—is about the nicest place on earth. Problem is, once you visit it’s kinda hard to leave.”
    “That so?” I took a bite of the cookie, ravenous now I’d awoken. “I’m not staying for good,” I said. “Just stopping by for a while.”
    She hemmed and hawed. “That’s what they all say.”
    I smiled at the woman in thanks, all the while thinking maybe the bus simply slipped off the road because of a deer, and not because I’d made a bad decision walking away from my mom, when she needed me so badly.
    “Did you make this?” I asked, holding the remnants of the gingerbread man, just his little chocolate-dipped legs.
    “Why I most certainly did. I work at the Gingerbread Café. I’m CeeCee.” She held out her hand.
    “It’s delicious.” I shook her hand. “Lucy. Nice to meet you.” It wasn’t like me to chitchat so easily. Mom was the extrovert, the babbler; I took a while to warm up. Instead I people-watched, always lost inside my mind with how I’d paint the planes of their faces, or whether I could catch the question in their eyes, their own unique gaze.
    I guess it was a safety mechanism of sorts, my lack of involvement with people. We’d moved so often, it was easier not to make friends than risk losing them. But alone, maybe I’d have to change that.
    “We be seeing a lot more of each other, mark my words.” There was something comforting about the woman, the way she spoke, the warmth in her.
    ***
    After snatching some nap time, I awoke, squinting. The sky had lightened. The bus burbled along, making its way to Ashford. My sketchy plan was to find a job,
anything
. The money Mom had borrowed from Aunt Margot, I stubbornly refused to take. I used it to pay her rent a paltry few more weeks, and restocked her fridge and freezer—a surprise, for when she got home. All I had was the wages from the last few shifts at the diner to see me through, but I knew how to be frugal, and how to work hard.
    I had to find a job quickly, and hoped at the end of each