Page 188 of Pumpkin Spice Promises

J + B + C

Carson stared. She traced the letters with her fingertips, still smiling. “Why did you carve it?”

The memory came back more clearly than I expected after all this time. Clover had sat on the porch steps, crying hard enough she could barely explain herself. Jax had been twelve and talking about how he was going to leave Willow Creek the second he turned eighteen.

I’d probably said I’d go with him. Clover had probably heard.

“She thought we were going to leave her?” Carson’s smile softened when she looked at me. “Because Jax wanted out?”

“Jax always wanted out when he was twelve.”

“Did you?”

I shrugged one shoulder. “I wanted whatever Jax wanted.” I looked at the carving. “Dad brought us here after Clover spent half the night crying. Told her people grow up, but that doesn’t mean they stop belonging to each other.”

Carson didn’t say anything for a moment. Then her fingers tightened around mine. “And none of you left.”

“No.”

“Do you regret that?”

I looked toward Main Street through the hanging branches. At the orange lights in the distance. The shop a few blocks away. My parents’ house beyond that. Marigold Ranch farther out. “No.”

Carson continued around the tree.

I let her hand go so she could explore. She read dates aloud occasionally, laughing at ridiculous declarations and stopping over names that had nearly disappeared into the bark.

Then she went still. “Gerald.”

I came around beside her. Her fingers rested against two faded initials.

G + J

“He told me about this the other night.”

“Jinny?”

She nodded. “They met at the Harvest Festival.” There was affection in her voice. She traced the carving once before continuing. A few feet farther around the trunk, she stopped again. This time there was no laugh. No surprised sound. Just absolute stillness.

I followed her gaze.

J + E

The letters were old enough that the tree had almost swallowed them. Carson lifted one hand. Her fingertip touched the J. “That’s Pops,” she whispered.

I looked at her. “You’re sure?”

A small smile appeared despite the tears that threatened to fall from her glassy eyes. “He made his J like that.” Her finger followed the crooked line. “Meme used to complain about his handwriting all the time. Said he wrote like someone was chasing him.”

I simply stood beside her while she discovered that long before James Rome had been Pops, he’d been a young man standing beneath this same tree with the woman he loved.

“I wonder how old they were.” She kept looking at the initials, then leaned her shoulder against mine. “They had forty-three years together.”

“That’s a lot.”

“It wasn’t enough.”

“No,” I agreed, wondering how any amount of time with the person you love is ever enough.