Page 74 of Pumpkin Spice Promises

I swallowed hard and Meme looked toward the whiteboard.

“Your Pops loved this place because it gave people somewhere to belong.”

“I know.”

“He loved that ranch because he thought it could do the same.”

I followed her gaze. Rosie had added MARIGOLD? beneath the location heading.

The question mark somehow made it worse.

“We don’t have to say yes.” Meme squeezed my hand. The relief came too quickly. Then she added, “But maybe we don’t have to say no because we’re scared either.”

I looked at her and she didn’t look away. That was Meme. Warm enough to make you forget she could still cut straight through every excuse you had. “How will we get it ready in four weeks?”

“We will find a way, we have to trust that we will.”

The meeting continued another hour. I barely heard most of it. Committees formed. June took charge of food vendors. Rosie claimed entertainment. Darlene somehow ended up overseeing decorations, despite nobody remembering appointing her. Iris volunteered the bookstore for an evening ghost-story reading, and Clover proposed a Christmas preview booth. It was immediately shouted down by three people because it was September.

Walter also volunteered Jones Automotive for hay wagon inspections. By the end, Beau and Jax had somehow acquired responsibility for generators, lighting trailers, two old wagons, and “general mechanical emergencies,” which sounded broad enough to become a nightmare.

Beau accepted it with considerably more grace than his brother.

When Rosie finally dismissed everyone, people remained anyway. Willow Creek meetings never truly ended. They dissolved into smaller meetings with snacks.

Meme was immediately swallowed into a conversation with Margaret and June.

Walter disappeared beside three men discussing tractors.

Clover cornered Rosie near the cider table.

I escaped toward the hallway. For approximately twelve seconds.

“Running already?” Beau’s voice came from behind me.

I turned. He stood a few feet away with his hands in his pockets.

“No.”

“You’re walking quickly toward an exit.”

“Coincidence, I guess.”

He didn’t challenge that. For a moment we stood beneath the hallway’s terrible fluorescent lighting while the noise of the meeting continued behind us. I thought back to the meeting. Every so often, his attention had shifted toward me…

“You okay?” he asked. There was no exaggerated concern in it.

“I don’t know.”

“Fair.”

I looked back toward the room. “Everyone made up their minds before I walked in.”

“Probably.”

I exhaled. The silence settled comfortably. “They really think it could make that much money?”

He knew exactly what I meant. “Probably.”