An Accidental Woman (53 page)

“Star?” he called.

She kept going.

Swearing under his breath, unable to think of anything but that he was losing everything that mattered to him, he followed.

* * *

The first Poppy was aware of anyone else nearby was when Star leaned against her chair. “Oh! Star!”

Star wasn't looking at her. Those big, dark, solemn eyes were focused on Thea.

“Uh,” Thea said in surprise. “Okay.” She smiled and stuck out her hand toward Star. “Hi. I'm Thea. You're Star, aren't you?”

Star nodded.

“I saw your picture,” Thea explained. “You look just the same.”

“You look like Momma,” Star said.

Micah emerged from the crowd and was beside them in a few long strides. He stopped behind Star, with challenging eyes on Norman, and Poppy had a sudden fear that he would lash out. That would mean backtracking at a later point, making amends and mending rifts, because the fact was that Thea had been found. She was here. She was strong-willed. She wanted to connect with her roots.

Poppy gave his arm a squeeze through his flannel sleeve, then another until he looked at her. “The timing may be off,” she said quietly, “but the sentiment is right.” Still holding Micah's arm, she turned to Thea. “This is Micah. It's an emotional day for him, because we don't know when Heather will be getting back. So we're keeping ourselves busy by celebrating the sugar season. Micah has sap to boil. Maybe you'd like to watch?” When Micah's arm tensed, she tightened her grip.

Thea's eyes widened. She smiled at Micah and said softly, almost timidly, “I would really like that.”

Poppy looked up at Micah. This was his house, his land, his sap. Heather might be the one to decide whether she wanted an ongoing relationship with Thea, but he was the one to decide, here and now, whether the girl and her father stayed.

Before he could say anything, Star slipped out from in front of him. She moved around the wheelchair, looked up at Thea, and slowly, carefully, put a hand in hers. Seeming utterly sure of what she was doing, she raised her eyes to Micah.

* * *

He also loved Missy, and Missy was upset. Needing to see to her, he motioned the others on to the sugarhouse while he went back into the house. He found Missy in her bedroom with Maida, the two of them sitting side by side on the edge of the bed.

“We were just talking about things,” Maida said with a little smile. “Missy needs to vent.”

“She kept secrets,” Missy charged, scowling.

Micah squatted in front of her. “She had no choice.”

“She had another family.”

“No. Not really.”

“Then who's that out there? She didn't tell us about her. And if she didn't tell us about
her,
what
else
didn't she tell us about?”

Micah didn't know what to say. Missy had a point. But there was another side to all of the things Heather had kept to herself. The fact was, he hadn't asked about them. He hadn't wanted to know. He had built a
life with Heather and had gone right along with the idea that the past didn't matter. He had let it happen. So maybe he was at fault, too.

Feeling the weight of that knowledge, he pushed himself up. “We'll talk about it once she's back.”

“I don't want her back.”

“I do. I love her. We all make mistakes—you, me, Star. If Heather's made some, we have to forgive her.”

Missy's chin trembled. “I don't.”

“Then you lose her. Is that what you want?”

Missy didn't answer.

He went to the door. “We're doing sugar on snow. Don't you want some?”

That eased her pout a bit. “I don't know. Maybe.”

“Well, I'm going to go make it.” He held out a hand. When she simply stared at him, he dropped it. It struck him that she would be a handful when she got older, and that he needed Heather's help here, too. For now, he did his best, which was to be nonchalant, which was probably cowardly, because he was avoiding the issue, but the sap called. “Okay. Come over when you're ready.”

* * *

The first batch of sap quickly became syrup. Taking it from the finish pan, he poured it through the filter press. He filled pitchers directly from that and had no sooner put them on the canning table by a stack of paper cups when people started to pour and drink. Returning to the evaporator, he focused on the second batch of sap. This time, though, he didn't take it off when it reached the crucial seven degrees above boiling point
that would render it syrup. Rather, he let it boil, constantly stirring and scraping so that it wouldn't scorch as the temperature rose. Shortly before it reached the point where it would be high and dry enough to beat into granular sugar, he poured it off into buckets—two for him, two for Griffin. Leaving Billy and Amos at the evaporator, they went outside.

How not to feel good then? Most everyone he cared about was here—Poppy and Lily and John, Cassie and her family, Charlie and Annette and those of their kids who weren't at the store, Camille, the Winslows, Heather's friends—Sigrid, Marianne, Leila Higgins—along with folks from the other side of the lake and from the Ridge, even Willie Jake, who had laid low after his role in Heather's arrest. Micah felt no animosity toward him, nor toward Norman Anderson, who was being shown proper Lake Henry hospitality by Maida, who looked charmed.

The midafternoon sun made everything golden, from jackets and hats that would have otherwise looked late-in-the-season shabby, to eager faces, to the hillside itself. Nearby, a long table held boxes of doughnuts, a barrel of sour pickles, and paper plates, napkins, and forks.

Micah had barely set down his buckets when he was surrounded by children, each holding a container of snow. Taking one at a time, he ladled hot syrup on the snow in a swirling design, handed the container back, and went on to the next. He didn't have to watch to know what happened then. When the syrup hit the snow, it cooled instantly and became chewy enough to be picked up with fingers or a fork. “Maple wax” was its earliest name, but “sugar on snow” was prettier. Eaten alone, it was delicious. Eaten between bites of doughnut and pickle, it was
the
best.

Sugar on snow was one of a few happy childhood memories he had. Caught up in it, he found himself drizzling first-name initials with his ladle just to see the children smile. Star giggled when he put an elaborate “S” on her snow. When she produced a second dish and then shot a sudden, adorably questioning look back at Thea, who was waiting off at the side, he took pity and drew a swirling “T” with the sap. Star rewarded him with a big kiss.

When she started to run off, he caught the back of her jacket. “Where's your sister?”

“I dunno.” Clearly, she didn't care. She was in love with this person who was part of Heather.

Griffin, who was ladling syrup beside him, said, “She came by my pail with Rose Winslow's daughters. They're over on the hillside.”

Micah checked. Missy was sitting on the snow with Emma, Ruth, and a handful of other little girls. She was picking at the things on her plate, and seemed happy enough.

Relieved by that, he went back to work. Once the children had their fill, the adults came by, and then there were seconds until his buckets ran dry. He was thinking that he ought to go back inside when, far down the drive, a Lake Henry police cruiser appeared.

He set the buckets down. He told himself it would be Pete stopping by to see how things were going, but he felt a chill on the back of his neck—a premonition—much as he had that morning more than three weeks before. He figured it wasn't just him, because around him the laughter seemed to fade and the crowd quieted.

He started forward. Cassie appeared in his periphery, but he kept walking. The cruiser slowed suddenly, though it was still a distance from the house. It had barely come to a halt when the passenger door opened.

Micah did stop then, but only until he saw Heather round the front of the car, pause for a single heart-stopping instant, then break into a run. Her coat flapped open; her hair flew to both sides. Even from the distance, he could see that she was crying, but her eyes were a sparkling silver, her face alive with happiness—and she was coming to him,
running
to him. Suddenly, he had no doubts. He didn't know why he ever had. What he and Heather shared didn't just go away. The mesh of their daily lives, the fit of their personalities, the passion—it hadn't been one-sided, and it
didn't
just go away.

He started to run, faster the closer she came, and then she was in his arms, sobbing his name, holding his neck so tightly that another man might have been strangled to death. Micah? After struggling with it for so many days, he could finally breathe.

“I love you,” she whispered. She drew back, hesitant at the last moment. “Can I come back? I want to come back.”

He wiped the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs and kissed her
with all his strength, all his passion. Then he crushed her to him, closed his eyes to enjoy the pleasure of it, lifted her right off the ground and around. He felt dizzy, but it was part of the transition—that life to this. Good things were going to happen. He could feel it.

When he set her down, he couldn't stop smiling. Nor could she, with that badge-of-honor scar at the corner of her mouth, not even when she whispered that she wanted a shower, wanted to smell like herself, wanted shampoo and honeysuckle soap—and him. She touched his cheek in the gentle way she had, the way that said he meant more to her than anyone else in the world. Then she whispered, “I need to see my girls.”

Incredibly, her eyes held his, asking permission.

He glanced back at the crowd to see Star slipping through legs. She ran to Heather, who caught her up off the ground and hugged her nearly as hard as she had hugged Micah.

“Where's Missy?” Heather asked Star, who looked back toward the crowd. Missy was there on its edge, looking as though she could as easily run, stay, or cry.

Come over here this minute,
Micah wanted to scold, but caught himself. Those were his father's words, first scolding, then demanding, finally punishing if his will wasn't met. Micah had always wanted to be different from Dale. Heather had helped him.