Page 209 of Pumpkin Spice Promises

Cows.

Birds.

A tractor somewhere in the distance.

Blueberry chewing loudly enough to make it sound as though I’d personally starved her.

I leaned against the pasture fence and watched her tear another mouthful of grass from the ground. “You know you had approximately four hundred people telling you how beautiful you were this weekend.”

Blueberry didn’t look up.

“Not impressed?” Her tail flicked. “Figures.”

I folded my arms across the top rail. The opening weekend had gone better than any of us had dared hope. Saturday had been overwhelming. Sunday had somehow been busier.

Rosie had sent me the final numbers sometime after ten the night before, and I’d stared at the spreadsheet until the figures blurred because there was no version of reality in which Marigold Ranch should’ve earned that much money in two days.

Vendor fees.

Parking.

Pumpkin sales.

Hayrides.

Milk products.

A percentage from certain attractions.

None of it made us rich, but it did something infinitely more valuable.

It gave us time.

For years, every unexpected ranch expense had felt like somebody reaching into my chest and squeezing. A broken cooling system wasn’t simply a repair. It was another calculation. Another bill moved to the bottom of the pile. Another month of deciding which problem could survive being ignored the longest.

This weekend hadn’t solved everything.

But for the first time in a long time, I could look at the numbers and imagine repairing something before it completely broke.

I could buy feed without mentally subtracting it from something else.

I could breathe.

The strangest part was that the festival wasn’t over.

We would open again Friday afternoon for some of the evening activities, then Saturday and Sunday. The same thing the following weekends, all the way through October, with Halloween itself becoming the final full day.

When Rosie proposed it, I’d thought she had lost her mind. After this weekend, I wondered if she’d been right.

Blueberry finally raised her head. Her ears shifted toward me.

“Don’t start.” I slipped through the gate and crossed the pasture slowly. My body had survived the weekend considerably less gracefully than the ranch had. The irritated skin around my residual limb had improved after I’d finally listened to Meme and spent more time without my prosthetic, but everything else still ached. My lower back complained whenever I bent too quickly, my right leg felt as though it had done double-duty for two straight days, and there was a tightness through my hips that my physical therapist would’ve had several opinions about.

I had ignored all of them yesterday. Today, I was trying to be less stupid.

Trying, being the important word.

Blueberry met me halfway. I rubbed beneath her jaw. “At least you didn’t try eating anybody.” Her lips moved against my sleeve. “That’s not praise. Don’t get excited.”