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life too.”
    “Yes,” she said, decisively. “I’m leaving in the morning. Probably before you’re up.”
    “All right. I’ll see you next time.”
    Jill stood there for a second, not sure if she should go for a hug or not. Sometimes her mother wanted one, sometimes she acted like she was being molested if you tried to touch her. Not wanting to screw up, Jill opted out. “Okay, then. See you.”
    There were no complaints as she went down the hall, so she’d made the right choice. Nearly forty years of guessing had to result in some successes, and she gladly took the win.
    As she closed the door to her room, she conceded that she’d fibbed a little with Lizzie. Her dad was still out trying to find female companionship most nights, but she’d told the truth about his increasing failure rate. At least, she assumed he was striking out more often. His snoring presence, before midnight on a Saturday, was a pretty recent phenomenon. Jill would never know if her mother liked his being home more or not. There was truly no way to tell.
     
    ***
     
    The poem said that April was the cruelest month, but Jill voted for February. It had been cold since November, and wouldn’t even begin to truly warm up until May—maybe even June if they didn’t get lucky.
    She sat with her defroster running, trying to decide where to go for breakfast. Back to town was the smart move, but that would put her close to the blacksmith’s shop, and she wasn’t sure she even wanted to see Mark. Why bother to invite her, then go out of his way to hide?
    Softening, she conceded that he’d always been a hider. His passiveness was one of the parts of his personality that she’d liked. Getting nothing but grief at home, it was nice to hang out with a kid who never pushed, never argued, never gave anyone a bit of trouble. Mark praised every decision she made, loved every musical group she favored, every book she read. Maybe Lizzie had been right. That might have been a crush. Poor guy! It’d be just like Mark to pick a clueless lesbian to crush out on.
    Making up her mind, Jill headed for town. If Mark didn’t have the guts to face her, he’d have to run from his own shop.
    The town was just waking up, with a few cars on the main road and a bunch of tourists driving around, probably looking for the cross-country ski trails. People from all over came to Sugar Hill to rent equipment and trek over the bucolic landscape. Or they might have simply been driving around, sightseeing.
    To her, it was just home. Home back to at least her paternal great-grandparents. Her mother’s side were newcomers, down from Canada around the early 1900s. But Sugar Hill was also a town captured in amber.
    In the sixties, an investment banker with local ties created a charitable entity dedicated to preserving small-town Vermont life. Over the years, the Foundation came to own most of the few businesses, along with a good portion of the land. A significant minority of the population worked for the Foundation and its businesses, the only thing keeping the town buoyant. Tourism was their lifeblood and, without complaint, they had to allow for slow-moving groups of hikers and bicyclists to stop and take pictures in front of one of the covered bridges. That was the only real downside of living in a picture-postcard, once-common way of life.
    The barn door of the shop was open a crack, and Jill could see Mark building a fire in the huge hearth. He must have been making a lot of noise, for he didn’t pick his head up when she closed her car door. When she crossed the threshold though, his head snapped up and she was pretty sure he was actually going to take off. Then he shuffled over to her, looking like a kid being sent to the principal’s office.
    The years hadn’t been unkind. Mark actually looked better than he had when they’d graduated from UVM. Work had made his shoulders broader and square, and his bare forearms rippled with muscle. He’d put on a little weight, but