Secrets At Maple Syrup Farm (2 page)

I took a shaky breath as my mind whirled with worry. “What, Mom? You’re scaring me.” It was bad news. I was sure of it.

She shook her head, and smiled. “I know you, Lucy, and I know you’re going to struggle with this, but it’s important to me, and you have to do it, no matter what your heart tells you.”

“I don’t like the sound of this.” I stood up, folding my arms, almost to protect myself from what she might say. I stared deeply into her eyes, looking for a sign, hoping against hope it wasn’t something that would hurt.

“Trust me.” Her face split into a grin. “I want you to take
one year
for yourself. To travel…” She held up a hand when I went to interrupt. “Hush, hear me out. Tell your boss tonight—you won’t be coming back. Then go home and pack a bag, go to the station, and get on the first bus you see. The
very first,
you hear me? Let fate decide. Find a job, any job, save as much money as you can. I thought you might apply for that scholarship you’ve dreamed about at the Van Gogh Institute. You can stay with Adele in Montmartre. She’s excited by the prospect.”

Shock made me gasp.
Take a year for myself
? The Van Gogh Institute? I couldn’t think. I couldn’t catch my breath.

There was no way. But all I could manage to say was: “You spoke to Adele about this?” Adele was my art teacher back in high school. We’d kept in touch all these years. She was a mentor to me, and the best painter I knew. I’d left school at just fifteen, and only Adele knew the reasons behind my hasty exit. I hadn’t been there long enough to make real friendships. She continued to teach me art on Saturday mornings, cooped up in our tiny apartment. I don’t know if she saw something in my work or felt just plain sorry for me.

For years she arrived punctually every weekend, until a friend offered her a spot in her gallery in Paris. Saying goodbye to her had been heart-wrenching, but we kept in contact. She badgered me to share my work, and I sidestepped her gentle nudging by asking her about Paris.

“Adele’s all for it,” Mom said. “And before you go saying no, she agrees you should apply for the scholarship. It’s time, Lucy. Your work is good enough.
You
just have to believe in yourself.”

The Van Gogh Institute was a prestigious art school, notorious for being selective about their students, and far too expensive for me to ever have considered. Each year the school was inundated with scholarship requests, and I’d never felt confident enough to try for a place. Besides, I couldn’t leave Mom. She needed me more, and whatever ambition I had with my art would have to wait.

“The deadline for entries this year is the last day of April,” Mom continued to urge me. “So you’ve got a few months to decide. Maybe you’ll paint something even more wonderful on your jaunts. You’ll be spoilt for choice about which ones to send for the submission process.” The room grew warm, as so many emotions flashed through me. The thought of sharing my work filled me with fear. I’d tried hard to be confident, but people staring at it, and judging me, made my heart plummet. I shook the idea firmly out of my mind before it took hold. Me leaving for a year? There were about a thousand reasons why it just couldn’t happen.

I narrowed my eyes. What Mom was suggesting was just plain crazy.

“Mom, seriously what are you thinking? I can’t leave! I don’t understand why you’d even suggest it.” I tried to mask the hurt in my voice, but it spilled out regardless. We were a team. Each day, we fought the good fight. It was us against the world, scrambling to pay bills, get medical treatment, live for the moment, those days where she felt good, and we pretended life was perfect.

She took a deep breath, trying to fill her lungs with the air she so desperately needed. “Honey, you’re twenty-eight years old, and all you’ve seen these last few years is the inside of a hospital room, or the long faces of the patrons in that god-awful diner. That isn’t right. You should be out with friends, or traipsing around the world painting as you go—not working yourself to the bone looking after me. I won’t have it. Take one year, that’s all I ask.” She gave me such a beseeching look I’m sure I heard the twang as my heart tore in two.

“It’s impossible.” I summoned a small smile. “Mom, I get what you’re saying, but I’m happy, truly I am. Any talk of leaving is silly.” She must see? Without my work at the diner there’d be no money coming in. Rent, bills, medical treatment, who’d pay for all of it? And worse still, there’d be no one to care for her. How could she survive without me? She couldn’t. And I doubted I could either.

“Your Aunt Margot is coming to stay. She’s going to help me out, so you don’t need to worry about a thing.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Aunt Margot? When’s the last time you two spoke?” Aunt Margot, Mom’s older sister, hadn’t struggled like my little family of two had. She’d married a rich banker type, and wiped us like we were dusty all those years ago after she tried unsuccessfully to curb Mom’s travel bug. Aunt Margot’s view was Mom should’ve put down roots, and settled down, the whole white picket fence, live in the ‘burbs lifestyle.

According to her, Mom traipsing around America with a child in tow, working wherever she could, was irresponsible. There were times we moved so often that Mom homeschooled me, and Aunt Margot couldn’t come to terms with it. If only Aunt Margot could see how much life on the road had broadened me. I’d learned so much and grown as a person, despite being reserved when it came to my art. We didn’t need the nine-to-five job, and the fancy car. We only needed each other.

A few years ago, Mom tried to reconnect with Aunt Margot, their fight festering too long, but she didn’t want anything to do with us nomads. Mom still didn’t know I overheard them arguing that frosty winter night. Aunt Margot screeched about Mom breaking a promise, and said she couldn’t forgive her. Mom countered with it was her promise to break—I still have no idea what they were talking about, and didn’t want to ask, or Mom would know I’d been eavesdropping. But it had always made me wonder what it could have been to make two sisters distance themselves from one another for so many years.

For Mom to reconnect with Aunt Margot now meant she was deadly serious. Somehow, I couldn’t imagine Aunt Margot living in our tiny one-bedroom apartment. She wouldn’t lower herself. I’d sort of cooled toward my once doting aunt, after hearing her spat with Mom. She’d been judgmental, and narrow-minded, for no good reason.

“We’ve been talking for a while now. We’ve really mended the bridges.” Mom tried to rearrange her expression, but it was farcical, her smile too bright to be believable.

I squinted at her. “Really? Now who’s messing with who?”

She threw her head back and laughed. “Well, we’re on speaking terms at least. And she offered to help so you could go away for a bit. So I don’t want to hear any more excuses. Got it?”

Stepping back to the bed, I hugged her small frame, resting my head on her shoulder so she wouldn’t see the tears pool in my eyes. How could I tell her I didn’t want to go? Leaving her would be like leaving my heart behind. Plus, accepting favors from Aunt Margot… We’d never hear the end of it.

Mom pushed me back and cupped my face. “I know you’re scared. I know you think it’s the worst idea ever. But, honey, I’ll be OK. Seeing you miss out on living, it’s too much. The young nurses here gossip about their weekends and all the fun things they manage to cram into each day, and then there’s you, the same age, wasting your life running round after me. Promise me,
one year
, that’s all. Can you just imagine what you’ll learn there with all those great teachers? Just the thought…just the thought…” Her eyes grew hazy as she rewrote my life in her dreams.

I knew to grow as an artist I needed proper training, but that was for people who had lives much more level than mine. My day-to-day life was like a rollercoaster, and we just held on tight for the downs, and celebrated the ups when they came. But Mom’s expression was fervent, her eyes ablaze with the thought. I didn’t know how to deny her. “Fine, Mom. I’ll start saving.” Maybe she’d forget all this crazy talk after a while.

“I’ve got some money for you, enough for a bus fare, and a few weeks’ accommodation, until you land a job. It’s not much, but it will start you off. You can go now, honey. Tomorrow.”

“Where’d you get the money, Mom?”

She rested her head deeper into the pillow, closing her eyes as fatigue got the better of her. “Never you mind.”

My stomach clenched. She’d really thought of everything. Aunt Margot must have loaned it to her. And I knew that would come at a price for Mom. There’d be so many strings attached to that money, it’d be almost a marionette. There was no one else she could have asked.

When I was in middle school my father had waltzed right out of our lives as soon as things got tough, and since then not a word, not a card, or phone call. Nothing. That coupled with our lack of communication with Aunt Margot, a woman who cared zero about anything other than matching her drapes to her lampshades, made life tough. But we’d survived fine on our own. We didn’t take handouts; we had pride. So for Mom to do this, borrow money, albeit a small amount, and have Aunt Margot come and rule her life, I knew it was important to her—more important than anything.

“I just… How can this work, Mom?” I folded my arms, and tried to halt the erratic beat of my heart.

Just then a nurse wandered in, grabbed the chart from the basket at the end of the bed, and penned something on it. “Everything OK?” she asked Mom, putting the chart back and tucking the blanket back in.

“Fine, everything’s fine, Katie. My baby is setting off for an adventure and we’re excited.”

Katie was one of our regular nurses—she knew us well. “That’s the best news I’ve heard in a long time, Crystal!” She turned to me. “And, Lucy, you make sure you write us, and make us jealous, you hear?”

I forced myself to smile, and nodded, not trusting my voice to speak without breaking.

Katie checked Mom’s drip, fussing with the half-empty fluid bag. “We’ll take good care of your mom, don’t you worry about a thing.”

“Thanks, Katie. I appreciate that,” I finally said. She gave us a backward wave, and said over her shoulder, “Buzz me if you need anything.” Mom nodded in thanks.

We waited for the door to click closed.

“What you’re asking me to do is pretty huge, Mom.” My chest tightened even as I considering leaving. What if Aunt Margot didn’t care for Mom right? What if she upped and left after a squabble? How was Mom going to afford all of this? Did Aunt Margot understand what she was committing to? So many questions tumbled around my mind, each making my posture that little bit more rigid.

“It has to be now, Lucy. You have to do it now; there’s no more time.”

My heart seized. “What? There’s no more time!” I said. “What does that mean? Have the doctors said something?” I wouldn’t put it past Mom to keep secrets about her health. She’d try anything to spare me. Maybe the pain was worse than she let on? My hands clammed up. Had the doctors given her some bad news?

“No, no! Nothing like that.” She tried valiantly to relax her features. “But there’ll come a time when I’ll be moved into a facility. And I won’t have you waste your life sitting in some dreary room with me.”

My face fell. We’d both known that was the eventual prognosis. Mom would need round-the-clock care. But the lucky ones lasted decades before that eventuated, and Mom was going to be one of them. I just knew she was. With enough love and support from me, we’d beat it for as long as we could. Her talk, as though it was sooner rather than later, chilled me to the core. There was no way, while I still had air in my lungs, that I would allow my mother to be moved to a home. I’d die before I ever allowed that to happen. When the time came, and she needed extra help, I’d give up sleep if I had to, to keep her safe with me. In
our
home, under
my
care. Going away would halt any plans of saving for the future, even though most weeks, I was lucky to have a buck spare once all the bills were paid, and a paltry amount of food sat on the table.

“You stop that frowning or you’ll get old before your time. I’ve got things covered,” she said throwing me a winning smile. “I’ll be just fine, and Margot’s going to come as soon as I’m out of here. Don’t you worry. Go and find the life you want. Paint that beauty you find and I’ll be right here when you get back. Please…promise me you’ll go?”

I gave her a tiny nod, gripped by the unknown. I always tried to hold myself together for Mom’s sake, but the promise had me close to breaking. Dread coursed through me at the thought of leaving Mom, the overwhelming worry something would happen to her while I was gone.

But getting back on the open road, a new start, a new city, just like we used to do, did excite some small part of me. We used to flatten a map and hold it fast against a brick wall. I’d close my eyes and point, the pad of my finger deciding our fate, the place we’d visit next. That kind of buzz, a new beginning, had been addictive, but would it feel the same without my mom?

Chapter Two

The bus careered with a squeal and skidded off the road, startling me from slumber. Instinctively, I clutched hands with the woman beside me. Before shock fully registered the driver hit the brakes hard and we pitched forward in our seats. A shriek caught in my throat as we slid sideways toward a metal fence. I dropped the woman’s hand and braced myself as the bus leaned so far to the left dusty-colored ground screamed into view.

“Glory be!” the woman beside me said, her voice edged with worry.

The bus driver swerved and stopped dead just before we hit the shiny gleam of the fence. The commuters let out a collective sigh of relief. My heartbeat thrummed in my ears, as I surveyed the pitch-black night, wondering where we were, and if our journey would stop here, on some lonely forgotten road. I took a gulp of air deep into my lungs, trying to gather myself.

“Sorry, folks,” the bus driver said sheepishly, making eye contact with me in the rearview mirror. “Damn deer trotted on past without a care in the world. Everyone OK?”

I turned in my seat to check. People sat, eyes wide, mouths in an O, but no one seemed hurt in any way, just stunned awake by fright.