Page 22 of Pumpkin Spice and Promises

“Lost track of it,” I said instead, which was its own kind of true.

Something flickered across her face, quick and warm, there and filed away, and I recognized the move because I’d taught it to myself years ago—catch the real thing, put it somewhere safe, hand back something lighter. “Well,” she said. “Second place. Don’t let it go to your head. You’ve still got the costume round, and I’ve seen what this town does to a man in a costume.”

“You going to tell me what the costume is?”

“Absolutely not. The dread is part of the process.”

All I could do was laugh in response.

She started to turn, then stopped. Something had caught her eye, and instead of leaving she stepped back in close, close enough that I could smell the cold and the cider on her, and reached up. Her thumb brushed my brow, just above one eyebrow, smoothing away a smear of whipped cream the borrowed towel had missed. A small, easy, thoughtless touch. It went through me like a current.

“Missed a bit,” she said.

And I stood absolutely still under it, because I did not trust myself to do anything else. Her hand was warm, gone as quick as it came, and she looked up at me from that close for one more second, and the grin softened by one degree, just for me. “Hey. That was a good laugh, Matt. You should do that more.” And then, before I could do anything with it, she was gone, back into the crowd, leaving me at the spigot with cold water on my hands and my heart doing something it had no business doing over a woman wiping cream off my face, and the strangest feeling in my chest, light and unfamiliar and faintly terrifying, which I eventually identified, driving home with pie on my collar and my face aching from a morning of being used for its actual purpose, as happiness.

Chapter 9

Elizabeth

Days after the festival opened, with the rain settled in soft over the farm and the early dark already down, my mother put a second pot of coffee on at eight o’clock at night, which in our house has never once been about coffee.

“A second pot,” I said. “Bold.”

“It’s decaf.”

“It is not decaf. I watched you take the red bag out of the freezer. The red bag is for emergencies and Christmas morning.”

“Fine, it’s not decaf.” She set two mugs on the table, hip-checked the drawer shut, and sat down across from me with the whole rainy evening in front of us like it was something she’d ordered special. “I like the rain. I want to be awake for it.”

“You want to be awake,” I repeated. “For the rain.”

“It’s a good rain.”

“You think all rain has a personality.”

“All rain does have a personality. This is a nice slow one. It’s the golden retriever of rain.” She pushed the sugar at me before I asked, and sipped her coffee, eyes bright over the rim, and I knew the look, and I knew what was coming, and I drank my coffee and let it come anyway. “Donna tells me Officer Hartford’s been coming through the Stop & Go quite a bit lately. More than usual.”

“Donna needs a hobby.”

“Donna has a hobby. Her hobby is telling me things. She says he was in twice last week. Bought a candy bar and a bag of ice, Lizzie. Nobody needs ice this time of year.”

“Maybe he had a cooler situation.”

“Twice?”

“Maybe he has two coolers.”

“Mm.” She looked at me over her mug the way she looks at the sky when the forecast says clear, and she doesn’t believe it. “Donna says he doesn’t have a reason for half the crap he buys. Says he stands at that counter making small talk like a man who forgot what he came in for the second he saw who was working and ends up grabbing random things from the closest shelf. Put some of those expensive chocolates there, maybe we can make some extra cash.”

And my stomach did a slow, traitorous flip, because I’d noticed it too. Of course I’d noticed. I notice everything at that counter—it’s my job—and I’d clocked every one of those visits and filed them somewhere I wasn’t looking too hard at. The candy bar he didn’t eat. The ice. The way he’d stand there a beat too long, saying almost nothing, buying whatever his hand landed on, like the purchase was just the toll he paid to lean on my counter for five minutes. Is he coming in here to see me? The question sat right there, and something in me leaned toward it, wanting the answer to be yes so badly it embarrassed me. And then I did what I do, which was pick the whole thing up and put it back down, because this was Matt Hartford, the most deliberate man in the county, and deliberate men do not forget what they came in for over a cashier. He probably just liked the coffee.

“Mother! No. And as for Donna,” I added, “she’s deluded.”

“Donna has worked the Stop & Go longer than you’ve been alive and has never once been wrong about a customer,” my mother said, utterly serene, and lifted her mug, and I opened my mouth to fire back something devastating—I had it, it was loaded—and that was when she winced.

It was small. She’d have hidden it from anybody else on earth. Her fingers came up and pressed at her right temple, and she went still in the way I’ve learned to watch for, cup halfway down, eyes closing against the lamp.

“Headache,” I deduced. Not a question.