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)
Lucas heard what the man didn’t ask.
Sometimes, the things people didn’t say were more important than what they did, and knowledge was power, after all.
Delaney squeezed Lucas’ fingers, woven with her own. Her kind smile helped him to verbalize the truth about Jacob that he’d been keeping inside as a way of protecting his brother. Even if he didn’t need that from Lucas anymore.
“Yeah,” Lucas responded to Mack, “he still struggled up until the end. I guess I hadn’t noticed it the way I used to when Jacob found trouble.”
Or perhaps, his brother had gotten better at hiding it.
Either way …
“There’s no struggle for him now,” Lucas said quietly.
He said it for himself.
And the others in the sleigh who were listening, too. If they needed to hear it like he did, so be it.
Everyone seemed to understand.
Lucas doubted returning to Saint John in a couple of days where he would be expected to return to work amidst the service that would also be held for his brother—surrounded by people who knew Jacob, including those that didn’t deserve to, in his opinion, like his parents—would be easy. Certainly not like delivering the news of his brother’s passing to long-time friends who were intimately aware of the demons that had haunted Jacob for a good portion of his life.
He didn’t look forward to his inevitable return to the city, and what would be his new normal with Jacob gone, and he wouldn’t pretend to.
He only cared to enjoy the moment because those were the seconds that counted most to Lucas right now. His brother’s life might not have played out the way it could have or should have, but Lucas wouldn’t allow his to end as a consequence of Jacob’s choices.
They only had one life to live, after all. He desperately wanted to fill his with happiness and all the things that made living on this earth worth it.
Jacob would want that for Lucas, too.
*
The maple camp—a shack, really—sat on the highest crest of the land overlooking the rest of the ridge. Surrounded by towering maple trees with blue lines running between each and taps dripping cold syrup into steel buckets hanging from every thick trunk, the stillness of the forest seemed to welcome the noise that accompanied the Smiths, their guests, and the large, galloping horses.
By the time Lucas had exited the sleigh and offered a hand to help Delaney down, Mack had begun tying off the horses to the railing of the warming shack while the man’s wife packed up their blankets and headed for the rickety steps leading to the cozy indoors. The boys, one handling firewood to bring inside and the other heading off for a harvest to bring back, went straight to work without prompting from their parents.
Everybody had a job to do.
Except for him and Delaney, apparently.
“Let’s get warm, sweets,” he urged, coaxing her toward the shack.
Delaney didn’t need a lot of encouragement to go. “Did I hear someone say something about hot chocolate?”
“I even keep rum to spike it if you’re feeling up to it,” Mack said at their backs.
“That’ll definitely make you feel warm in the chest,” Lucas told her on their way inside.
Sure enough, the shack—a twenty-foot by twenty-foot camp with a big wood stove and handmade shelves and stools lining the four walls—greeted them with warmth and the smell of fire pumping out of the wood chief in the very middle. It didn’t take Delaney long to shed her coat and mittens, but she kept her toque on her head as she hung her garments from a free hook on the wall next to the front door.
For the moment, Lucas kept his winter clothing on.
Mack might need help outside with something, not that the man would ever ask a guest he brought along to do any hard work. He wasn’t the type.
In fact, Lucas found himself wandering the small shack with Delaney, overlooking the many items and trinkets that hung from the rafters overhead and sat atop dusty shelves. All the while, the Smiths moved around them, coming in and out of the shack, without a word of expectation for them to help while they hauled in snow to melt in a pot on the wood stove and Kenzie, the youngest boy, hauled in an armful of wood for his mother to stock the fire.
“We’ll make some fresh syrup, and roll some out on the snow to eat for a treat—how’s that sound?” Theresa asked the two as she tossed another log into the front of the wood stove.
“I’ve never done that before,” Delaney admitted. “What’s it do—freeze the syrup instantly?”
“Makes it tacky,” Mack explained as he finally entered the cabin with a shuffle of his boots at the door to clean them off of any remaining snow. “We’ll clean off a couple of sticks, roll it along the syrup as it chills in the snow, and make popsicles.”