Page 66 of Pumpkin Spice and Promises

Elizabeth stood at the edge of the flagstone with her arms wrapped around herself against the cold and looked out at it a long time.

“You bought a fixer-upper for the view,” she said.

“I bought a disaster for the view. The fixing was extra.”

“It’s gorgeous, Matt. How long did it take?”

“Two years, give or take. I did most of it myself, nights and weekends, whatever I could afford whenever I could afford it.” I came up beside her and put my arm around her, pulling her in out of the wind. “Nobody helped me pick it out. Nobody told me it was crazy, either, which was probably for the best, because it was crazy. I just wanted it enough to be patient about it.”

She looked at me sideways in the dark. “That’s really something. Buying a wreck because you could see what it’d become, and then just... doing the work. Yourself. For two years.”

“It’s not much, really. I just knew what I wanted, and I was willing to wait for it.”

She bumped her shoulder into mine, easy, and went back to looking at the lights. “I like that you didn’t just want the view. You worked for it. Waited for it properly instead of taking the shortcut.” A beat, quieter. “I don’t know a lot of people who do that. Wait for what they actually want instead of grabbing whatever’s close.”

“You waited a long time for a lot of things too,” I said. “You’re just usually too busy running everything to notice you’re doing it.”

She didn’t answer right away. Below us, the valley had gone from blue to black while neither of us was watching, one window light at a time, and a gust came up off the drop and moved through the big maple at the property line, dry and papery, taking another dozen leaves down into the dark with it. She watched them go. I felt her go quiet against my side, turning something over, and when she finally spoke her voice had dropped whatever performance usually rides in it.

“Look at that tree. Half bare already.” She tipped her chin at it instead of pointing. “You know why I love fall?”

“Tell me.”

“Everybody thinks it’s sad. All the dying. Leaves going down, gardens going under, the light leaving earlier every day.” She turned a slow circle, arms coming loose from around herself, face tipped up at a sky gone fully dark and thick with stars. “But it’s the most beautiful the whole world ever gets. Right at the end. Right when it’s letting go of everything.” She stopped and looked at me. “That’s what you just said, without knowing it. Waiting for the right ending instead of grabbing the first one. That’s the whole trick of fall, I think. Letting go isn’t the opposite of glory. Sometimes letting go is the glory. The bravest way for anything to end is on its own time, instead of getting rushed or ripped away.”

“That’s the most beautiful way to describe it I’ve ever heard,” I said, and it wasn’t smooth, but it was true, and her eyes went bright in the dark, and she looked away toward the valley to let it pass.

“Tell me about the Harvest Ball,” I said, mostly to give her a minute, because I could see what it cost her to say something that honest out loud, and I wanted to hand her back a lighter subject. “Everybody talks about it like it’s a coronation. What actually happens?”

She snorted. “It is deeply unglamorous once you know how the sausage gets made. It’s a barn dance, Matt. A very good barn dance, with better lighting than it deserves and a caterer, but structurally it is a barn dance, same as every fall dance this town has ever thrown, and I will fight anyone who calls it a gala.”

“June calls it a gala.”

“June wants everything to be fancy. She called the pie eating round a gastronomic tournament. I love her; she’s wrong.” She glanced toward the dark shape of the farm behind us, invisible now over the ridge. “It’s mostly in the barn, honestly, because it’s late October and I’m not putting a crowd and a dessert table at the mercy of an Oregon sky. Some of it spills outside if the weather’s kind to us. That’s really the whole plan.” Something crossed her face too fast to read. “That roof’s going to have a lot riding on it this year, one way or another.”

“It’ll hold.”

“It better. I’ve got a lot riding on a tarp and some very optimistic engineering.” She said it light, a joke with a small hard center to it, and something in me heard the hard center and flinched away from asking what was under it. I may have the answer already, in the form of a grant application, sitting in a folder in the truck. But I let the opportunity to tell her about it go by.

“Hey.” I turned her by the shoulders. “Come here.”

She came. I got both her hands in mine, cold from the night air, and held them against my chest where she could feel exactly what she did to my heart rate, which was nothing short of a public safety concern.

“Promise me something,” she said, before I could say anything at all.

“Anything.”

“Promise me this is real.” Her hands tightened in mine. “I know I turn everything into a punchline—the contract, don’t fall in love with me, Officer, all of it. I know what I do. But I need one promise. I need to know this isn’t something I invented out of loneliness and seasonal optimism. That you’re not going to—” Her voice caught, and she pushed through it, chin up, braver right then than I have ever once managed to be with anything that scared me. “That this doesn’t end. That it’s real, and it stays real, even after the season’s over and there’s nothing left to plan.”

“Elizabeth. Look at me.” She looked at me, out there on the edge of the world with the valley lights spread out under us and the stars enormous overhead. “Nothing in my life has ever felt as real as this does,” I said. “I have never once wanted anyone the way I want you. I’m not going anywhere. Not after the season. Not when you’re impossible. Not when I go quiet, and you can’t read me, and you think the worst—especially not then. You didn’t invent this. This is real. I promise you, and I intend to spend a long time proving it.”

She made a small sound, not quite a laugh, and put her forehead against my chest, and I felt her breathe out something she’d been holding for a while.

“Okay,” she said, muffled, into my shirt. “Okay. Good. That’s—okay.”

She stayed there against my chest a moment longer, and when she spoke again it was so quiet I almost missed it. “I believe you. That’s the part that scares me. I actually believe you.”

“Good,” I said, and kissed the top of her head. “Be scared with me, then. I’ll be scared right back.”