Three Days in Town, and the Barista Already Knew My Order novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Sugarhouse

Etienne's POV

I did not write the question on a cup.

I wrote the date, on Friday morning, in the smallest capitals I own: Ask me when you're twenty-five. June, three years.

Maura read it at the counter with her mouth pressed shut.

"That's 2029," she said.

"I did the math."

"You're going to write it on a cup every morning until then."

"Only if you stop me," I said.

She did not stop me.

The sap ran on the second Saturday in March.

It had warmed up in the day, and froze at night, which is the weather that makes a maple run.

My uncle had been boiling since noon.

By ten o'clock the sugarhouse was empty of everyone but the evaporator, a long steel pan the size of a pool table on a brick arch, with a fire roaring under it and the steam coming off the surface so thick that the bulbs hung in it as smears of yellow.

The smell was sweet and wet and burnt, and the whole shed was hot.

My uncle had gone to bed at nine.

"Somebody has to feed the arch till two," he'd said, and looked at the ceiling, and gone out.

I had volunteered, and Maura had come with me, and I pretended not to know why.

She stood by the arch in my canvas coat with nothing under it.

I knew because she'd told me, in the truck, in the dark, with her hand on my knee.

I'd driven the last mile with my knuckles white.

"It's hot in here," she said now.

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