Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Her brow furrowed as she turned around, her attention down on the sealed glass jar full of rice in her hand. “Rice wouldn’t go bad, right?”
“Probably not,” Lucas agreed.
Delaney peeked up at him. “Is it against the rules to put potatoes and rice in a soup together?”
“It’s your soup, sweetheart.”
“Yeah, so?”
“You make all the rules,” Lucas clarified.
Her lips split with the sweetest grin. “Yeah, I guess so. Okay.”
With that, she spun back around.
Back at her work, it didn’t take Delaney long to have a saucepan of boiling water on the stove defrosting the pound of hamburger they’d picked up earlier. On the only other burner, she had started another pot of water that she added spices to as the water came to a slow boil. At the island, she put Lucas to task with a bowl of potatoes to peel once she had moved onto her own bowl of carrots.
“I haven’t been home—here, but there,” she muttered with a tilt of her head toward the direction where they had traveled to visit her friend. “In the area, I guess, but specifically The Valley, in two years,” Delaney said without warning that their work peeling vegetables would turn into a conversation.
Lucas didn’t mind.
He let her talk.
“Oh?”
“Yeah,” she said on a big exhale. “Coming back with you, when I didn’t really plan to, makes it easier to be here. I’d made it into this big thing in my head about not being able to come home because I let it scare me. As if a town, or something, was a real thing that could hurt me just by being. Mostly, I just miss it here. Empty back roads and trees for days. Walking down the street and seeing people I recognize who actually wave at me. I miss those things.”
Amongst others, he imagined.
Lucas kept those thoughts to himself, though.
“But even if the place doesn’t hurt me, things happened here that did,” Delaney said. “A lot.”
Lucas, too practiced with a knife to let his gaze slip away from the blade in his hand while he peeled off the white potato skin, stopped so he could look at the woman who stared across at him. “Malachi told me something interesting when he took me out to the shop to show me around.”
“Did he?”
An easy shrug feel from Lucas’ broad shoulders. “I might have mentioned the area would be a decent place to settle down—asked if there was anything I should know.”
“And what did he say?”
“Stay out of the mountain,” Lucas said, the first and most important thing Malachi had verbalized about the tiny slice of the province along the Acadian Peninsula. “Montgomery Mountain, of course. Is that even its real name?”
“No, but if you so much as take a tree that’s fallen into the ditch off that mountain—”
“They’ll burn your house down,” Lucas interjected, smiling tightly. Really, who did that type of shit? “Yeah, he said that, too. Just like that. I wasn’t ready for it, let me say. I take it that’s happened before? Is it not an empty threat?”
“Among other things,” Delaney replied dryly. “All I ever got told about the mountain is certain people don’t like to be bothered, and they don’t have a problem letting you know. Otherwise, there are people in town who swear up and down the Montgomery family would do anything for you if you needed and asked. I’ve never needed something, and never had to ask, so.”
That’s what counted, Lucas supposed.
Lucas went back to peeling the potato as he said, “And the other thing he mentioned, well, apparently there’s a church around that doesn’t like to be bothered, either. He called it a cult, actually—is there a watch list for that sort of thing?”
“Probably. And they’re probably on it, too.” Delaney sighed, but the rhythmic grate of her utensil along the carrot shaft picked up again. “Let me guess, you wondered if the church he mentioned might be related to the overly religious parents I told you about?”
“I considered that could be possible,” Lucas hedged, letting her take the bait if she wanted.
“Did he tell you that he grew up in it, too?” she asked quietly. “The church, I mean?”
Hurt colored her tone.
Accusation, too.
Lucas, not expecting those things from Delaney, couldn’t quell the helpless feeling compounding in his chest when the woman across the island jumped down from the stool and headed for the stove. She worked in silence to chunk up the hamburger before draining the extra grease and water off into a bowl she placed off to the side of the counter. He managed to get through the few large potatoes she wanted him to peel and cube by the time she had added the ground beef and the can of tomato soup to the large boiling pot for the soup.
“To be fair, he didn’t tell me anything about you, or whatever, if any, connection you have to the church,” Lucas told Delaney as she rounded the island to take the colander full of raw, cubed potatoes he’d readied.