Chapter 30 Maeve
MAEVE
We headed back toward the loft, except instead of pulling into the lot, Bram drove right past it toward the dead end on Main Street.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“I want to show you something,” he said. “If you’re up for it.”
“Is it something in your pants?” Reverting to humor was my coping mechanism for dealing with heavy stuff, and I was still processing everything Cassie had said at the coffee shop.
He grinned wickedly. “Maybe.”
I rolled my eyes as we crossed the railroad tracks at the end of Main, but his grin was enough to send a rush of heat between my thighs.
We drove along Preserve Road, a desolate strip of asphalt that ran parallel to the Blackwell Preserve, and a half mile later, Bran pulled into an empty gravel turnout.
It was quiet in this part of town, the dividing line between Southside and the parts of the preserve that tourists didn’t bother with.
Bram turned off the car, reached into the backseat for the picnic basket, and we got out of the car.
Snow still covered the ground from the last storm but not a ton of it.
Still, I was surprised when Bram started for an overgrown opening in the tree line.
There were countless hiking trails in the preserve, paths with signs and marks on trees that kept hikers from getting lost in the thick forest that surrounded Blackwell Falls.
But this wasn’t that. This felt like… I don’t know, the actual woods. A place with no signs or markings.
A place where you could get lost.
“Are you sure this is okay?” I was already following him, knew I’d follow him anywhere even if I did have questions along the way. “What if we get lost?”
“We’re not going to get lost.” He stepped into the woods, and for a few seconds, we were separated by an invisible boundary — Bram in the woods while I stood in the gravel lot. “I come here all the time. It’s where I found your Christmas tree.”
I already knew Bram had cut down the tree himself, but hearing about it was different than standing in the place where Bram had gotten out of the Hummer, ax in hand, to hike through the woods while looking for a tree to cut down and bring back to the loft.
I nodded. “Okay.”
Then I was on the other side of the tree line, taking Bram’s hand and walking with him into the woods.
“What is this place?” It was deathly quiet, even the birds and small animals silent, probably hunkering down for winter. Trees surrounded us on all sides, the path through the forest so narrow and meandering it seemed unintentional.
“It’s an old trail,” Bram said, his boots crushing what remained of the snow. “They took it off the map a long time ago.”
“Is that something they do?” I wasn’t a hiker. The Blackwell Preserve had just been a backdrop to my everyday life, a place for the tourists who invaded our town for hiking or skiing.
“Not a lot, but yeah. They keep track of the traffic on the mountain, delist the trails that require lots of maintenance but don’t get many visitors, take some off the map if they’re overrun with bears or mountain lions.”
I stopped walking. “There are bears and mountain lions here?”
He chuckled. “We’re in the mountains. There are bears and mountain lions all over the place.
” I was about to start dragging him back toward the parking lot when he continued.
“But that’s not why they shut this trail down.
It didn’t get a lot of traffic because the trailhead is on the south side of town. ”
I let him pull me forward when he resumed walking.
It made me sad to think that this place was abandoned because it was in Southside, and it made me even sadder to realize that even if I’d been a hiker, I probably wouldn’t have chosen a trail that started here either.
I’d been a snob. The realization hit me with a deep sense of shame.
All these years Southside had been a neighborhood rich with community like the people who stood outside the loft to make sure Ethan Todd didn’t come back, with small businesses like Marv’s and Screamin’ Syd’s and even with nature trails like the one Bram was showing me.
I’d ignored it — even feared it a little — because it had been different from what I was used to.
We’d been walking for about fifteen minutes when we started up a gentle rise. At the top we got a view of a partially frozen river, and halfway down the hill I caught the trickle of water, faint under sporadic sheets of ice between the rocks that jutted out of it.
Bram headed for one of the concrete blocks that supported a worn wood walking bridge spanning the river. “This is the place.”
He set the picnic basket on the low, wide concrete block. It had obviously been here for decades: the concrete was beginning to crumble from exposure to the wind and rain. But it looked sturdy enough.
“This is what place?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, looking around. “My thinking place, I guess.”
“You come here alone?”
He nodded. “Not as enlightened a practice as Poe’s meditation, but it’s quiet. Peaceful.”
Towering pines dusted with snow surrounded the river, the bare branches of oaks and maples rising like stark sculptures into the sunny winter sky, the air thick with the scent of balsam. It was a place made beautiful by its desolation, and I felt the noise of my mind go quiet.
“I see why you like it here,” I said.
“Want to sit?” he asked.
I looked around. “On the ground?”
The snow wasn’t deep but that didn’t mean I wanted to sit in it.
He took off his jacket and spread it on the concrete bridge support. Then, before I could object, he circled my waist with his giant hands and lifted me onto the jacket.
“You’ll freeze!” I said.
“I’m fine. It’s not even that cold.” He hopped up next to me and reached for the basket. “Besides, Cassie packed us hot chocolate.”
He removed a thermos and two mugs.
“You asked your sister to pack us hot chocolate?”
“I could have done it myself, but Cassie makes the best hot chocolate.” He took out a chunky square of wax paper tied with red twine. “Plus she has double chocolate chip cookies from the bakery in Blackwell Hollow. They’re not as good as yours, but you shouldn’t always have to eat your own food.”
He handed me the square package and pulled a mug from the box.
“Of course," he said, looking at the winter-themed mug in his hand. It featured a snowy tree and tiny woodland animals — a squirrel, a rabbit, a doe — gathered under its branches.
I stifled a laugh. I was beginning to understand the dynamic between Bram and Cassie and it was adorable. “It’s cute.”
“Is it?” He sounded skeptical, and I wished I could get away with taking a picture of Bram holding the kitschy coffee mug in his giant mitt of a hand.
He poured some of the hot chocolate into the mug and handed it to me.
Steam rose from the mug, and I wrapped my hands around it for warmth and inhaled the scent of rich chocolate laced with vanilla. “Hmmmm… this is nice.”
Bram poured hot chocolate into a second mug and unwrapped one of the cookies. “My sister likes you.”
“Thanks, but I think you're just being nice. We only just met.”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Cass has a killer bullshit detector.”
“She’s so nice,” I said, breaking off a piece of my cookie.
He laughed. “She is, but don’t let that fool you. She’ll knife you in a heartbeat if she thinks you’re up to no good.”
I finished chewing. “You must be really proud of her. She’s so accomplished for someone her age, my age.”
I didn’t know exactly how old Cassie was, but she seemed about my age.
He crumpled the wrapper, his cookie gone.
The man could demolish sweets like nobody I’d ever seen.
“I know there are people who would say she had everything handed to her since I bought her the building, but she still has to make the money work. She’s the one who developed her brand and designed the shop to be so inviting, and she’s the one who sought out smaller coffee farmers to negotiate a better price and a better product.
She’s trialed new products and partnered with the bakery that makes the cookies, and she reaches out to book clubs and other groups to offer up the shop as a meeting place. ”
“Which brings in more business,” I said.
“Exactly.”
“Smart.”
He nodded. “The coffee shop was profitable almost from its first month. That’s almost unheard of in such a small town.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised that Bram knew so much about small businesses — the Butchers were the silent hand behind everything in Blackwell Falls — but somehow I was. They continued to surprise me in every way.
I wrapped up the remaining half of my cookie and took another drink of the hot chocolate. “Thank you for introducing us. It…” I thought about the last time I’d seen Bram in the coffee shop with Cassie, the way he’d walked right past me, had pretended not to see me. “It means a lot to me.”
“I should have done it a long time ago.” He took my hand and looked into my eyes. “I should have done it the second I knew I was in love with you.”