“Thanks, Mark,” I finally replied.
After heaving a sigh of epic proportions, I realized I’d need somewhere to put the three pallets of pumpkins. They were blocking the employee entrance to the Apple House where Mark and Joan brought in the apples for grading and washing. Shit. What was I going to do?
And like he’d read my mind, Mark smiled and said, “Now then. You want to learn how to drive a forklift?”
Owensby Acres wouldn’t take the pumpkins back.
But I came up with some solid plans to move the produce.
We would still be selling them in the Apple House throughout the month of October. I was currently working on setting up a mini pumpkin patch for kids. Complete with little wheelbarrows and tiny hay bales. Textbook adorable.
We were selling some of our squash at a discount to the local elementary school, thanks to Bonnie. She was going to do a pumpkin-painting project with all her students and had money in the budget to take over one hundred pumpkins off our hands. I’d kissed her on the forehead when she told me.
Mom and I were also taking orders for pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving. I was planning to help with those, and my mother was using it as an opportunity to turn me into a baker. Surprising the pumpkin spice right out of me, my brother volunteered to be on pie-making duty too. He said he was a natural and warned me not to get in his way in the kitchen. I fully planned on snapping him with a dish towel until he cried.
And, finally, now that the orchard had its liquor license, I was organizing a wine-and-pumpkin-decorating event for after hours in mid-October. That one was a small event for fifteen people, but it had already sold out. Honestly, I just really liked collaborating with Reggie and Aurora Holmes over at Lonely Mountain. They were wonderful people, and their wine was fantastic. We made a good team.
Despite the inauspicious beginnings of my pumpkin venture, I now felt confident that I could make this work. In the week following the delivery of the sugar pumpkins, I’d gotten the ball rolling on preparations for getting rid of them. All of them.
It was now Tuesday at the orchard—an off day from the public—and I was walking from the garage apartment over to my office in the Apple House. The early October morning was soft and gray, but I could tell it was going to be another stunning autumn day when the sun finally rose and burned away the low-lying cloud cover.
Following their harvest, the apple trees along the path were dotted with red and brown leaves, and the mountains in the distance were changing too. There was a patchwork of gold, orange, red, and maroon making a steady descent to lower elevations. It was a beauty to behold, and I couldn’t believe I’d lived without this fall magic for so long. But it was more than the weather or the foliage. It wassomething special about my family and this farm. It was a sense of peace and comfort that had reignited in me when my plane had touched down and I’d breathed in my hometown for the first time in seven long years.
I didn’t know if I could follow my six-step plan laid out in my trusty notebook and actually leave all this behind in three months. Maybe that was why I’d been dragging my feet on my job search. I hadn’t even updated my résumé to include the work I’d been doing for the orchard—step two of six.
The truth was...I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to interview for a new position in a big city, be it New York or Atlanta or Nashville. I didn’t want to pack my belongings and don my pantsuits and sit through budget meetings. I didn’t want to work on a team where I was undervalued and taken advantage of and talked down to because of my age and my gender and my accent.
I wanted to read on the porch with my mother every morning. I wanted to work at the orchard with my siblings. I wanted to sit in that farmers’ market booth until my butt went numb. I wanted to visit with my neighbors and get pizza at Apollo’s. I wanted to get the pumpkin patch right next year. And I wanted to start field trips and lead educational tours on the farm.
None of it made a lick of sense, but there it was.
I also wanted to reminisce with my former teachers without getting a stomach ache and feeling like a walking failure. I didn’t want to be one more high-performing child who failed to live up to their potential. Living and working in New York proved to my family and my town that I’d made something of myself.
Getting what I wanted, here in Kirby Falls, meant that all of the sacrifice and the schooling and the money and the quality education had been for nothing. That all my parents’ hopes and dreams for me would be tossed aside so I could be something as inconsequential as...happy.
I shook my head, did my best to get rid of these pointless thoughts, and kept walking.
When I turned the corner on the dirt path, the Apple House came into view, and with it, three figures gathered around the side.
Mark, Brady, and Joan appeared to be staring at the exterior wall, the one that was on the other side of my office and faced the incoming gravel drive from the highway.
Curious, I approached. “What are y’all looking at?”
Brady scoffed. “I think it’s obvious what it is.”
“It is not shaped like the letterM, you asshat,” Joan said in exasperation. It was the same tone she reserved for saying things she’d already damn well said. Ask me how I knew.
My eyes finally took in what I was seeing. The side of the Apple House was covered in little paint splatters. Vibrant reds, yellows, and blues stood out against the faded exterior of the whitewashed wood building.
I reached out to see if it was still wet, but Brady batted my hand away. “Don’t do that. It’s evidence. The sheriff’s office is on their way. And then they’ll likely make an arrest.”
“Arrest who?” I said in surprise.
“It’s obvious,” my brother replied, crossing his arms in front of his flannel-covered chest. “The perpetrator behind this blatant and heinous act of vandalism was none other than MacKenzie Clark.”
Mark groaned. “Come on, man. We’ve been over this.”
Joan sighed loudly.
