Page 228 of Pumpkin Spice Promises

“It’s coffee. Not melted ice cream.”

“Then why did you buy the good creamer?”

“For you.”

The words came out without thought. Carson’s eyes met mine over the rim of the coffee she was still drinking, despite it not being the good creamer. I was beginning to understand that the things Carson found hardest to trust weren’t the big promises.

It was the ordinary stuff.

She handed me the cup. “Come on.”

“Where?”

“We have a pumpkin emergency.”

I stared at her. “What the hell is a pumpkin emergency?”

“You’ll see.”

The pumpkin emergency involved gravity, a hill, and thirty-two people who apparently had nothing better to do on a Saturday morning.

Rosie stood at the top of the slope behind the west pasture with a megaphone. “THIS IS NOT A RACE!” she screamed.

A dozen children holding pumpkins immediately began screaming that it was a race.

Rosie lowered the megaphone. “It’s absolutely a race,” she told me.

“Obviously.”

Carson stood beside a hand-painted sign that read: FIRST ANNUAL WILLOW CREEK PUMPKIN ROLL.

“First annual?” I asked.

“Apparently.”

“You know annual implies you’re doing this again.”

“Don’t remind me.”

The premise was simple. Roll a pumpkin down the hill. Closest to the painted line won.

The execution was not. The first pumpkin veered left and destroyed a decorative hay bale. The second split open halfway down. The third somehow went backward.

Across the hill, my mom was laughing so hard she had to hold Clover’s shoulder. Hunter stood beside them with the expression of a man who had survived an explosion overseas only to find himself judging competitive produce in Georgia.

Then Rosie yelled, “Jax!”

My brother looked up from where he was fixing a section of temporary fencing.

“I need you.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“The launch ramp is crooked.”

“There shouldn’t be a launch ramp.”

“There is now.”