Page 37 of Pumpkin Spice and Promises

They came in waves. The after-dinner families first, parents with headlamps and kids vibrating on cider doughnuts, a toddler in a pumpkin costume who fell asleep against his father’s shoulder before they’d even reached the entrance. Then the teenagers, in packs, boys shoving each other deeper into the maze to prove they weren’t scared, girls shrieking with varying degrees of sincerity, and more than a few of the girls proving considerably braver than the boys, everyone secretly hoping to get lost in the dark with the right person. Then the couples, the old ones, Ben and Dahlia Barrett at the head of them, Levi and Jude’s parents, who’d walked this maze every year for forty years and didn’t need the map and went in holding hands as if they had nowhere in the world to be but next to each other.

Ben had been my chief, back when I was twenty-three and working doubles I didn’t need to work because the alternative was going home to an empty house. He’d taught me how to write a clean report and how to talk a drunk out of a bad idea and, though I didn’t notice him doing it at the time, how to be a person someone could count on. He retired since, and Cade took the job.

He stopped now, at the gate, and looked at me a long moment in the lantern light. “Well,” he said. “There he is.”

“Ben. Good to see you.”

“I worked beside you for years, son, and I don’t believe I ever once saw you off the clock.” He nodded out at the field, at the maze. “And here you are.” He was smiling, but his eyes had gone soft in a way that made my throat tight without warning. “Took you long enough, Matt.”

“It’s for the festival,” I said. “The farm’s having a hard year.”

“Sure it is.” He clapped me on the shoulder, his hand warm and heavy and certain. He glanced across the field, to where Elizabeth was lighting up the dark with her clipboard and her grin, and then back at me, and he didn’t say anything else about it, because Ben never did. “Suits you, all of it,” he said. “I mean that.”

And Dahlia took his arm and towed him into the maze before I could find anything to say back, which was a mercy, because I didn’t have anything. I just watched the man who’d guided me into the job walk into the corn beside the wife he’d loved, and I felt the desire to have everything he had go through me like cold water.

My people came through too. Becca and Levi first, my sister tucked under her husband’s arm against the cold. Becca handed me her ticket and didn’t let go of it, so we were both holding it. She looked at me, looked across the field to Elizabeth, looked back, and raised one eyebrow clear up into her hairline.

“So,” she said, far too sweetly. “What are you up to lately, big brother?”

“Taking tickets.”

“Mm-hmm.” She let go of the ticket. “Taking tickets. In a costume. On your night off. At Elizabeth’s farm.” She kissed my cheek before I could mount a defense. “I’m thrilled for you, and I’m going to be unbearable about it, just so you can plan.”

And Levi, grinning, towed her into the maze before I could get a single word out, which was lucky for me, because my sister had read the whole thing off my face in under five seconds and we both knew it.

Then Jude, still in his Paul Bunyan flannel, the foam ox abandoned somewhere up by the gazebo, with Bella riding high on his shoulders so she could see out over the tops of the corn. Harper walked alongside with one hand hovering to catch her, though Jude had a grip on both her ankles like he’d done it a hundred times.

“Officer Hartford, you won,” Bella informed me from her great height, as though I might not have heard.

“I did.”

“Jude got beat by your pot.”

“Bella,” Harper said.

“It’s true though.” Bella patted the top of Jude’s head consolingly. “I’m just telling the truth.”

“This is your influence,” Jude said to Harper. “You raised her to be honest and now look. No loyalty. None.”

“She’s loyal,” Harper said. “She’s also right.” She reached up to steady Bella out of reflex. “The pot was funnier than the ox. I’m sorry. It’s a fair loss.”

“I’m surrounded,” Jude announced to the night sky. “Fair and square, Hartford. I respect the game. I’m not going to say the pot was better craftsmanship, because there’s a child present and I won’t lie to her, but you won the crowd, and the crowd is what matters.”

“That’s very gracious.”

“I’m a gracious man. Ask Bella.”

“He’s not that gracious,” Bella said.

“Bella.”

And she shrieked with laughter and nearly went over backward doing it, twisting around to wave at me as Harper reached up fast to steady them.

“BYE OFFICER HARTFORD,” she shouted.

I waved and watched the three of them disappear laughing into the corn, Jude’s hands locked around her ankles, Harper’s hand at the small of his back to keep them all upright.

And something rose up in my chest I still hadn’t built a fence around—a kind of ache that wasn’t quite an ache, the feeling of a door standing open in a house that had been shut a long time.