Page 231 of Pumpkin Spice Promises

“I’ll be your girlfriend.” She kissed me.

From the other bay, Jax started clapping, and I flipped him off without breaking the kiss.

By the third weekend, Marigold had stopped looking like a ranch hosting a festival and started looking as though the festival had always belonged there.

Dad had told me enough stories about James and Evelyn’s old festivals that I could almost picture them. What I hadn’t understood was how quickly the town would remember.

The parking pasture filled before noon Saturday. Sugar and Pine sold out of pumpkin muffins before one. Iris had moved an entire cart of fall romances from the bookstore and set it beneath one of the oaks with a handwritten sign promising stories containing, “better men than your ex-husband.”

Darlene bought two.

The hayrides ran continuously. Rosie’s haunted trail became so elaborate that she’d somehow convinced three high school theater kids to hide in the woods.

Yet the evenings had changed most.

Once the sun dropped, temperatures fell fast enough for jackets. Bonfire smoke hung low over the fields. Orange lights wound through branches that were gradually becoming thinner, glowing against leaves that looked almost copper after dark.

I’d lived in Willow Creek my entire life. I’d never thought much about the trees changing.

This year, I noticed each shade.

The first time I saw her riding without me, I nearly drove into a fence. It was a Thursday afternoon.

Carson sat on Blueberry’s back with no audience, no one to hold her reins, no one there to catch her if she fell.

Just Carson and Blueberry, moving at an easy walk beneath trees dropping yellow leaves across the pasture.

I stopped the truck before she saw me and enjoyed the moment because I knew just how much it meant to her to ride Blueberry without help.

The first time she’d climbed onto Blueberry with me there, every movement had been deliberate. Every breath mattered.

Now, Carson leaned forward and rubbed Blueberry’s neck while saying something I couldn’t hear. Blueberry flicked an ear toward her. They kept walking, and I just watched, giving Carson this moment.

October had disappeared faster than September had, even though in September the weeks had blurred because of festival preparations. Now we had date nights squeezed between festival weekends and repair orders.

There were mornings when Carson woke beside me and complained that I kept the house too hot.

There were evenings when I ate dinner at Marigold and Meme interrogated me about whether I’d checked Carson’s truck because apparently dating her granddaughter made me personally responsible for a thirty-seven-year-old Chevy.

Carson started keeping clothes at my house without acknowledging that she was doing it.

A sweater appeared over the back of my desk chair. Then jeans in the dresser. Then shampoo in the shower.

I didn’t mention any of it, I just bought another pack of hangers so she would have space to bring whatever she wanted.

Clover and Carson became their own thing somewhere along the way. One Sunday afternoon I discovered them sitting on Marigold’s porch drinking cider and discussing something that abruptly stopped when I approached.

“What are you talking about?”

“Nothing,” Clover said.

“Your personality,” Carson said.

Hunter laughed from the porch swing. I liked seeing Carson with them. Not because she needed my family. Because she’d spent most of her life with a family small enough to fit around one kitchen table.

Nobody announced that Carson belonged in our family, they just started behaving as if she did.

Halloween fell on a Saturday. It was officially the last festival day, and we were all excited for this month to be over.