Page 42 of Pumpkin Spice Promises

“Oh.” I handed it across. She made vanilla pudding to go with the pie because Pops had always insisted the two belonged together. Nobody else I knew ate apple pie with pudding, but Pops had done it for more than forty years, and Meme had never stopped making it.

She spooned some onto her plate. For one painful second, I could hear him.

Love your puddin’. Soothes my throat somethin’ special, Ma.

He had called Meme Ma for as long as I could remember. She’d pretend to hate it, then blush every single time.

My eyes moved toward the empty chair at the end of the table.

Five years.

We had never moved it.

Never changed his place.

His chair remained slightly farther from the table than the others because Pops had always leaned back after dinner, one hand over his stomach while he announced he’d eaten enough to last until Christmas.

“Staring at that chair isn’t going to make him appear, baby girl.”

I looked toward Meme. Evelyn Rome was seventy-three and somehow still prettier than most women half her age. Her long white hair was twisted into a claw clip at the back of her head, though several wisps had escaped around her face. She wore a pale yellow dress beneath an apron covered in tiny lemons, and there was still pink gloss on her lips despite it being nearly eight at night.

She always looked put together. Even when she spent the morning feeding calves. Even after Pops died.

I’d asked her once why she bothered putting on lipstick when she wasn’t leaving the ranch. She’d told me looking nice wasn’t something a woman did for other people. Then she disappeared upstairs and returned wearing earrings.

I wished I’d inherited more of that confidence.

“What has you so lost in thought?” she asked.

“The truck.”

Lie.

Not entirely.

But close enough.

“I should’ve taken better care of it. Pops would be disappointed.”

Meme reached across the table and covered my hand with hers. “Your Pops drove that thing until it begged for mercy at least once a month.”

I smiled faintly. “He would’ve fixed it himself.”

“After swearing at it for three hours.”

“He called it troubleshooting.”

“I called it language unsuitable for church.”

That earned a real laugh from me.

Meme squeezed my fingers. “He wouldn’t be disappointed in you.”

My throat tightened. She didn’t know how often I wondered that. Whether Pops would look at Marigold Ranch now and recognize what he’d built. Whether he’d see the empty stalls, patched fences, overdue maintenance, and shrinking accounts and wonder why he’d trusted me with any of it.

“Besides,” Meme’s eyes sharpened, “I don’t think that truck is what has you distracted.”

I swallowed a groan. I should have known.