Page 237 of Pumpkin Spice Promises

Margaret sat beside her with cider. Walter occupied the porch railing despite Meme having told him three times there were chairs. Hunter stood near the steps talking to one of the vendors while Clover rearranged a tray of cookies on the outdoor table for no reason besides being physically incapable of leaving baked goods alone.

Beau tugged me along as Clover noticed and called, “Carson! Don’t forget we need to talk about bridesmaid colors!”

I kept walking. “I forgot.”

“You can’t forget when she reminds you every forty minutes,” Beau teased.

“I can try.”

We left the noise behind gradually. The new path cut along the southern pasture, past a section of fencing Beau and Jax had replaced during spring. At the top of the rise, our home came into view. I still wasn’t used to the idea that we had built a house just for us, a place we would start our family.

Our house.

Not Meme’s.

Not Pops’s.

Not Marigold’s original farmhouse.

Ours.

The idea had started as a conversation sometime after Christmas. I couldn’t even remember who’d said it first.

Maybe Beau.

Maybe me.

We’d been lying in his bed one night talking about marriage in the vague, careful way people did when neither had proposed yet but both had clearly stopped pretending they weren’t headed there.

Beau had asked where I pictured living eventually. I’d said Marigold before he’d finished the question. I knew he wanted to live there too, he’d shared his dreams with me enough times.

Then I’d thought about the farmhouse I’d grown up in, the good and bad memories that filled the walls.

About Meme.

About Pops.

About every room holding some version of my childhood.

The pencil marks inside the pantry door where Pops measured me until I was sixteen and threatened to keep doing until I got taller.

The chair Meme still refused to move from his side of the kitchen table.

The bedroom where I’d slept after my parents disappeared from my life.

The hallway I’d learned to walk through again after losing my leg.

The porch where I’d waited for Pops to come home even after I knew he never would.

I loved that house.

That was exactly why I didn’t want it someday. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life walking through rooms where everyone I loved eventually became a memory.

It had taken me years to understand that leaving something untouched wasn’t the same as loving it. So, we’d picked a spot on Marigold where the pasture rose just enough to see the original farmhouse in the distance.

The house was finished now, except for landscaping, several light fixtures Beau insisted he could install himself, and one bathroom drawer that refused to close correctly and had somehow become a personal insult to him.

It was a picture-perfect farmhouse, white with a dark roof and a wide porch that we knew would be filled with little footsteps and Adirondack chairs. My favorite part was the big windows that overlooked the pasture.