Page 68 of Keepsakes and Kismet

Tessa lets out a loud sigh. “Finally. I thought one of the woodland creatures went rogue and ate you up. We’re already halfway done painting the pumpkins.”

“We’re sorry to have missed—” Daniel appraises her pumpkin, which is a grayish color with a visible eyeball on it— “whatever that is.”

“Watch it,” Giovanni warns. “Tessa worked hard on this.”

“Grazie, amore.” She pecks him on the cheek.

Daniel moves onto Grace’s pumpkin, which is covered in various shades of muddy brown stripes. “Now this, on the other hand. It’s art. It’s perfect, just like you, Gracie girl.”

Grace blinks. “Oh yeah? What is it?”

Alarm flashes in Daniel’s eyes. Unless he’s guessing abstract rows of mulch, there’s zero chance he knows what it is.

“It’s… uh…” He scratches his neck. “It’s obviously a—hm. It’s obviously the best one here.”

“Valiant effort.” Grace rolls her eyes. “It’s a bee. But the stripes are all wiggly, and the yellow is mixing with the black. It’s objectively the worst one here.”

“A brown-belted bumble bee then. Plenty of those in the Midwest.” He kisses her on the crown of her head.

I open the bag of donuts and walk down the line to pass them out. Everyone but me reaches in to grab one. My stomach is still roiling from earlier. I can barely stand the smell.

“You don’t want a donut?” Peyton asks, standing up to greet me.

“I already ate one on the way here,” I fib. I don’t feel good about lying to Peyton, but I’ve never seen her so happy. Her eyes are bright, her cheeks flushed. She’s even bouncing a little on her toes, like she can’t contain her excited energy.

Tessa takes a giant bite of her donut and moans. “That’s it. I’m moving here.”

Little grains of sugar fall from Peyton’s lips. “Oh my God. This tastes even better than the funnel cakes we had at the fall festival in Coney Island.”

Tessa snorts. “You’re the only one who has positive memories attached to those funnel cakes, Peyton. The rest of us were throwing them up after the Whirl-A-Twirl.”

I turn toward Peyton. “Stomach of steel?”

She shakes her head. “Can’t do rollercoasters.”

“Are you guys talking about Whirl-A-Twirl Gate? I still get tagged in fan pictures of me hurling into a trash can whenever the Mustangs lose. Fuck.” Daniel starts handing out cider sippers. The bottles are shaped like pumpkins, with green flip-top stems and rounded orange bottoms.

“The Mustangs lose a lot,” Tessa mutters.

“Well, that’s because they don’t have the best current athlete who used to play for them on their team anymore,” Grace adds with a wink.

Daniel rolls his eyes. “Nice save, Gracie.”

“I don’t know what ‘save’ you’re talking about. It’s a fact, not a feeling,” she replies with a smile.

“Gio, do you want a cider sipper?” Tessa turns her head. “Where did he go?”

“I’m down here,” he responds from a squatting position at her back, zeroing in on the bottom of her wool coat. “You have a fraying hem.”

She turns around to caress his cheek. “Loose threads aside, do you want a cider sipper?”

“What’s a cider sipper?” Giovanni asks.

Everyone groans except for me and Giovanni as Tessa launches into a lengthy explanation for her husband.

After Giovanni has been thoroughly educated on cider sipper lore and the pumpkins have been painted—a finished bumblebee for Daniel and Grace, some sort of gray feathery pattern for Tessa and Giovanni I don’t quite understand, and, much to my chagrin, a mechanical-bull-cowprint for ours—we all watch the pig race. Giovanni gets selected by the announcer to ring the starting cowbell. He looks less than enthused but grins when Tessa whoops and hollers from the bleachers. Grace’s pig wins, we all celebrate with caramel apples, and then it’s time for the Thompson crew to head out.

Tessa hugs Peyton. “I’m gonna miss you, girl. I wish we’d planned for more than a day, but I think Mom’ll kill me if we spend any more of our trip away from home.”