Page 117 of The Sugar Maple Inn

She stepped forward, heart thudding. The wooden steps creaked under her boots as she followed him down into the cellar. The air was cool, still smelling faintly of earth and time. Reese knelt beside a patch of uneven stones, pried one up and together they brushed away years of dust.

Inside was a huge iron chest. Old, rusted, but intact.

The crowd above erupted in cheers as Luke and Jake came down, helping Reese lift the chest carefully out and set it on the ground. Reese met Grace’s eyes, green and bright in the dim light.

“You ready?” she whispered to him.

He smiled. “Always.”

The latch gave after a little effort, the lid creaking open to reveal—

Packets of sugar. Scores of them. Old paper wrappers stamped with curling letters and faded red print: Maple Sugar Co. 1857. Some were torn, spilling golden crystals that had hardened into amber lumps over time.

Reese blinked. “Sugar?”

Grace laughed, the sound bubbling up through the hush. “Looks like your ancestors had serious sweet tooths.”

Reese picked up a packet, brushing dirt from the ink. It was bundled tight in crumbling waxed paper. Through a tear in the wax, he could see amber-hued crystals spilling out and clumping in the damp earth, sweetened relics turned to stone. “Sugar like this, it was trade back then,” he murmured. “Power. Especially maple sugar, before cane became king. It kept towns alive through winters. Got shipped east for a premium. This was what my family was trying to keep hidden. What Odette’s family, the Lavoies, wanted to get their hands on.”

“Not exactly the gold your dad was expecting,” Grace said. She turned a packet over in her hands, an idea sparking bright and unstoppable. “But still, it’s perfect.”

Reese frowned, amused. “Perfect for what? Making cakes? Sweetening tea?”

She looked up at him, smile wide and sure. “The Sugar Maple Inn,” she said. “That’s what we’ll call this place.”

The name hung in the air between them, as sweet and certain as the amber crystals scattered at their feet. Reese stared at her for a beat, then that slow grin spread across his face. The one that still did inconvenient things to her pulse.

“The Sugar Maple Inn?” he said.

Grace nodded. “It honors both families, the Spencers’ hidden treasure, the maples outside, everything this place was meant to be. Plus, it’s got a better ring to it than ‘The Place Where Grace Almost Bankrupted Herself.’ ”

He laughed, the sound echoing off the earthen walls. “Grace Sullivan, you’re brilliant.”

“You’re only just figuring that out now?”

Above them, the crowd had gone suspiciously quiet. Grace could practically feel them straining to eavesdrop. Luke’s voice drifted down: “Well? What’d you find?”

“Sugar!” he called up. “Maple sugar from the 1850s. A whole merchant’s stockpile worth a small fortune in its day.”

Three seconds of dead silence. Then Ella’s voice rang out: “Well, that’s going to make one hell of a display case at the museum.”

Laughter erupted above them. Grace felt Reese’s hand find hers in the half-dark, his fingers threading through hers with a familiarity that still caught her off guard sometimes. She squeezed his hand, then let go to brush dust off her jeans. “Come on. We should probably get back up there before everyone decides to come down and see for themselves.”

But she lingered a moment longer, looking around the earthen cellar that had kept its secret for over a century. The Sugar Maple Inn. It felt right…a name that wove together all the tangled threads of their story into something sweet and whole.

“Grace?” Reese was already halfway up the stairs, silhouetted against the light. “You coming?”

She smiled and followed him up, toward the warmth and noise and celebration waiting above.

Caleb rolled his eyes. “So you’re telling me I just helped dig up a root cellar full of glorified pancake topping?”

“Extremely valuable glorified pancake topping,” Reese corrected. “Back in the 1800s, anyway.”

“And it gave us the perfect name for the inn,” Grace said, raising her voice to be heard over the murmurs. “We’re calling it the Sugar Maple Inn.”

Silence fell. Then Mabel let out a delighted cackle. “Oh, that’s perfect. Sweet enough to give you cavities, just like young love.”

“I think it’s romantic,” Sophie sighed, clasping her hands together. “Like something out of a storybook. The Sugar Maple Inn. It sounds cozy and historic and—”