Page 7 of Pumpkin Spice and Promises

“Did you settle the Hendersons’ fender thing? Donna says it goes back to a boat in the nineties.”

“Beccaaaa,” I repeated, drawing it out so she’d know I was serious.

“Okay.” She took a breath, and the mischief on her face shifted into something steadier underneath, which worried me more, because the mischief I could handle. “Matt. The Harvest Festival is in October.”

“I’m aware. I work the traffic every year. It gets bad.”

“You do,” she said. “You work it. You work the parade, you work the Fourth, you worked my entire wedding—don’t argue, Levi counted, you checked the side gate eleven times—” I made a note to discuss confidentiality with Levi “—and the last time you did something in this town that wasn’t working it, gas was cheaper. So.” She slid the folder across the desk. “I entered you in the Mr. Pumpkin contest.”

There was a moment where I genuinely believed I’d misheard her. The station was loud—Trevor Hale was on the phone two desks over, and had been for an hour, walking the county sheriff’s office through the case he’d been building all month. So between his call and the radio’s static, I thought she had said something else, and my brain had assembled her words wrong.

I opened the folder. It was a copy. SWEETBRIAR HARVEST FESTIVAL—MR. PUMPKIN OFFICIAL CONTESTANT ENTRY. My name. My actual name, printed in my sister’s handwriting, with a checkmark in a box that said the contestant agrees to participate in all five rounds, rain or shine.

“Pie eating,” I read out loud. “Costume showcase. Pumpkin carving. Talent—” I stopped, and I knew my face had screwed up in disgust. “Talent,” I repeated, wincing as my voice cracked on the word.

“Mm-hm.”

“Rebecca Lynn Hartford.” I huffed. “Shit. I meant Barrett. What the hell?”

“Don’t full-name me; it’s filed.” She said it the way I’d announce a road closure—regretfully, but the road is closed, and there was nothing to do about it. “It’s official, it’s public, it’s on the list at the Stop & Go, and Jude saw the list, so if you withdraw, you’ll be withdrawing from Jude, and he will bring it up at every event you both attend for the rest of your natural lives.”

“Jude entered?”

“Jude’s training. He asked Elizabeth about regulation pies.”

“There’s a regulation pie?” Trevor said from two desks over, his hand flat over the receiver, in the exact tone he used for inconsistencies in a suspect’s timeline. And, oh yeah, Trevor was married to Levi’s sister Rose. So yeah, I was surrounded by Becca’s brand new family.

“Work your case, Hale,” I shot back.

I sat back in my chair. Around us the station went on—phones, radio, Trevor’s voice gone low and patient in the way it did when something was finally coming together—and I looked at my little sister, who’d planned this the way I’d taught her to plan things, with the exits covered and the timeline already run out.

“I’m not doing a pageant, Becca.”

“Why not?”

“Because—” and the sentence just stood there. Because I work. Because somebody has to watch the perimeter. Because the last time this town saw me do anything, I was wearing a vest or walking you down an aisle, and both of those were jobs, and I don’t know what I am when I’m not on one. None of that was leaving my mouth at a desk in the middle of the station, so what I said was, “Because it’s not me. I don’t do things like this.”

And Becca, who has never once in her life let me get away with anything, leaned forward and put her hand on the folder.

“You spent years making sure I had a good life,” she said quietly, so it stayed between us and the desk. “Best big brother ever. Locks locked, curfews monitored, pepper spray as a birthday present, the patrol car at the campground—all of it, Matt, every year of it, and I will never be able to pay that back, and I’ve stopped trying. But here’s what I know that you don’t. I’m okay now. I’m so okay it’s embarrassing. And you—” her voice caught, one degree, and she leveled it “—you’re still standing post. So this is me asking. When’s the last time you had fun? Actual fun. Not working a party. Not watching a door. Fun.”

The radio muttered. Trevor hung up his phone and developed a sudden, diplomatic interest in his paperwork. Somewhere in the back, the ancient coffee maker that the whole department refuses to replace finished a pot with a sound like a small surrender.

I didn’t have an answer. That was twice now that somebody had pointed a question at me, and I’d come up empty—same caliber, different shooter—and the first one had walked away into a wedding before I could reload, and this one was sitting in my station with her chin set, waiting me out, exactly the way I’d taught her.

“There was a barbecue in 2019,” I protested weakly.

“You ran the grill the whole time and confiscated my fireworks.”

“They were illegal in three states,” I pointed out.

“It was a barbecue, Matt. It was supposed to be fun. We were on the river and—ugh, okay, so you were right about the fireworks,” she conceded. “But that’s not the point.”

I closed the folder. Five rounds, rain or shine, talent competition. There was no way.

“I’ll think about it,” I said, which we both knew was not a yes, and we both also knew was not the no I’d wanted to say.

Becca stood, kissed the top of my head like I was the younger one, and took her victory to the door before I could revise my answer. She stopped with her hand on the frame.