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“What are you going to do with that,mes chères? It’s almost as big as you are!” Jo said.
“Not for us, for you! For your porch! You can give it triangle eyes and fangs for teeth and paint it with green stripes and it’ll be a monster!” Emily did a little jumping dance, pointing to various parts of the gnarled gourd.
“But I don’t put out a jack-o’-lantern,” Jo said. “And you’re supposed to be picking out pumpkins for yourselves.”
“But you have to put one out this year. You and Uncle Matt have to dosomethingto celebrate Halloween,” Isabelle said, her tone telegraphing how ridiculous Jo was to not have considered this.
Jo hid her smile and looked up at Matt. “What do you think? I have no idea how to even go about carving something that big. I think it weighs more than I do.”
He playfully puffed out his chest and flexed his biceps. “I haven’t met a pumpkin I couldn’t bend to my will. Wrap it up!”
The girls cheered, and Isabelle said, “We should take a selfie with it.”
A small corner of Jo’s heart tugged. Isabelle was hurtling toward that tween phase where selfies and Instagram would take over her life, and the little girl she’d been would disappear.
Jo pulled Matt into a squat in front of the pumpkin and the girls pressed in on either side of them. She snapped three pictures, and marveled as she showed them to the girls how much more Emily looked like her each day—Emily’s chestnut hair was now below her shoulders just like Jo’s, and her green eyes glowed out from the same heart-shaped face.
The girls chimed approval, then ran back out into the field in search of their own pumpkins.
“I can’t believe you fell for that,” David, her brother-in-law, said as he and her sister Sophie appeared next to them. “That thing’ll take over your porch.”
“That’s what aunts are for. To be indulgent.” Jo took the cider Sophie handed to her, then removed the lid and blew on the contents to cover the annoyance she didn’t want to show.
Several months before, David had been caught cheating on Sophie with a much-younger woman, Chelsea Whitens. A bad enough mistake on its own, but he’d also gotten her pregnant, which meant Sophie and the girls would have to deal with the fallout of that mistake for the rest of their lives. Sophie had been struggling with whether to get a divorce or give David a second chance; he claimed Sophie was the woman he truly loved and had asked her to take him back. This trip to the pumpkin patch, buffered by the presence of Jo and Matt, was a first tentative step to see how it felt to bring him back into the fold. She’d support Sophie in whatever decision she made—but even if Sophie could forgive him, Jo wasn’t sure she ever could.
“I want this one!” Emily hopped up and down next to a squat fairy-tale pumpkin.
“That one’s too short, you won’t be able to carve it,” David answered.
“I can, too! It will have a small face, like a dolly,” Emily said.
“Fine, but I don’t want to see a single tear later if it goes wrong,” Sophie said.
Emily crossed her heart. “I promise.”
“I want this one,” Isabelle said, standing a few yards away next to a perfect, round orange globe.
Jo smiled. Not only did Emily favor Jo in looks while Isabelle was the spitting image of Sophie, their personalities had the same parallels. Emily was fearless and spirited while Isabelle was traditional and staid.
“Looks like we’re done, then,” David said, cutting off Isabelle’s pumpkin.
“Time for the corn maze!” Emily did another little dance.
As the girls ran ahead with their pumpkins and David and Matt struggled with the mutant monstrosity, Jo leaned over to Sophie. “How’s it going?”
Sophie pushed her light-brown bob behind both ears and shrugged. “Very strange. On the one hand, it’s familiar and comfortable, like nothing ever happened. On the other, it’s alien and bizarre, like everything’s different. Like that bodysnatcher movie you loved when we were kids.”
Jo understood—she’d been having a similar reaction. “Do you think you’re going to let him come home?”
Sophie glanced back at David. “I think so. If I take him back and he cheats again, our marriage will be over, but I know now I’m strong enough to make it through that pain. But if I don’t give him a second chance, I’d spend the rest of my life wondering if I gave up too easily on my marriage.”
“And you’ve got your boundaries in place?” Jo asked.
“I have a list of topics we need to agree on before he comes back. Mom said if today goes well, she’ll take the kids tomorrow so he and I can have a little chat about it all.”
“Sounds very organized and well-thought out.” Jo bumped her shoulder into Sophie’s. “I’d expect no less from you.”
They paid for the pumpkins and put them into their respective trunks, then strolled over to the entrance to the corn maze.
