Page 79 of Pumpkin Spice Promises

How quickly she turned anything too personal into sarcasm.

The way she looked at the ranch when I’d driven her home, as if every broken fence post was somehow a personal failure.

How she’d looked at Meme tonight when the older woman admitted she missed the festival.

There had been love there. And guilt. A hell of a lot of guilt.

I’d caught only pieces of their conversation. I hadn’t been trying to listen. The room had been loud, and I’d been standing near the hallway when their voices dropped low enough that most people stopped paying attention.

But I’d heard Evelyn say something I hadn’t been able to get out of my head.

You came home from that hospital different.

You lost something before him that I never knew how to help you grieve.

James wasn’t the only thing Carson lost five years ago. I already knew that much, and Dad said there had been an accident. Everyone knew about it, but nobody spoke a word about the details, almost as though it could be forgotten in the past.

Nobody told me what kind.

Nobody told me exactly what happened.

Only that Carson stopped racing afterward.

Then James died.

Then she stopped coming into town.

And apparently, Willow Creek had simply accepted that Carson Rome wanted to be left alone.

I picked up my phone. It was nearly eleven. I should’ve gone to bed. The shop opened early, and the supplier bringing the parts for James’s truck was supposed to arrive sometime before ten.

Instead, I opened Google.

For several seconds, I stared at the search bar, wondering if I was invading her privacy, but I had to know more.

I typed: Carson Rome barrel racing

I wasn’t sure what I expected. A couple old articles, maybe. Some archived rodeo results. Dad had said she was good. Everyone seemed to talk about Carson’s racing as if it had been more than a hobby, but small towns had a habit of making their own people sound more important than they actually were.

The search results loaded and I sat forward, shocked at the dozens of old articles, Facebook posts, photos, and videos.

One of the first videos had been uploaded almost eight years ago.

YOUTH BARREL FINALS — CARSON ROME & BLUEBERRY — WILLOW CREEK, GA

The thumbnail showed a young blonde girl on a horse. I clicked it. The video quality was terrible. Someone had recorded it from the stands on a phone that probably belonged in a museum by now, and whoever held the camera couldn’t keep it still.

It didn't matter. I recognized Carson immediately.

She looked younger. Seventeen, maybe eighteen. Her hair was tied back beneath a hat, and she wore a long-sleeved blue shirt tucked into jeans. Blueberry shifted beneath her at the entrance to the arena, muscles moving restlessly beneath her coat.

The horse looked ready to explode.

Carson didn’t. That was the first thing I noticed. She was completely still, focused on the task at hand.

Then somebody opened the gate. Blueberry shot forward instinctively.

I knew horses. I’d worked around them enough growing up and spent enough time at Marigold Ranch to understand what I was watching.