Page 5 of The Pumpkin Patch Sisters

"I hope not," Nell replied, her tone softening slightly as she took a bite of her dinner. "I truly hope not. Now, please, let us eat this food before it gets cold. We have plenty of work to do tomorrow."

An hour later, after Nell had left, Dahlia carried her heavy leather bag up the stairs. The second floor of the farmhouse was quiet, the air holding the afternoon's trapped heat. She walked down the narrow hallway, passing the closed doors of her sisters' rooms. Each door was painted a soft cream, the brass knobs tarnished from years of handling.

Dahlia pushed open the door to her childhood bedroom and stopped.

The room was smaller than she remembered, the sloped ceiling dipping low over the single bed. The wallpaper, decorated with faded yellow wildflowers, was peeling slightly near the baseboard. Her mother hadn't changed a single thing since Dahlia left for college thirty-two years ago. The white painted dresser still sat against the far wall, its drawers slightly askew. Dahlia walked across the room and set her laptop bag on the small desk near the window.

She reached out and touched the wooden windowsill. There, carved into the pine with a pocketknife, were her own initials next to Beckett's name. They had carved them when they were fifteen, hiding behind the curtains to avoid Rosalind's sharp eyes. The wood was dry and rough under Dahlia's fingertips, the carved letters worn smooth by the passage of time.

Dahlia sat on the edge of the mattress. The springs groaned under her weight, a familiar, metallic protest that she remembered from her teenage years. She reached for her leather bag and pulled out her smartphone. The screen was dark. There weren't any new messages from Marcus, and the corporate calendar was empty until tomorrow morning. She set the phone on the nightstand, next to a small pottery lamp that her sister Prue had made in high school.

The silence of the house was different from the silence of her Chicago apartment. In Chicago, there was always the distant hum of traffic on the expressway, the rattle of the elevated train, or the steady vibration of the building's ventilation system. Here, the silence was active. It was filled with the rhythmic chirp of crickets in the tall grass near the well house and the dry scrape of the old sugar maple branches against the window pane. It didn't feel peaceful to Dahlia; if anything, it felt demanding.

Dahlia unzipped her suitcase and began to unpack. She hung her tailored pants in the small closet, the wire hangers clinking against the wooden rod. She folded her silk blouses and placed them in the top drawer of the dresser. The scent of lavender and aged pine rose from the wood, a scent that belonged exclusively to her mother's house. It made her throat tighten with a sudden ache.

She walked to the window and pushed the glass upward, securing it with the wooden block that still sat on the sill. The night air was humid, carrying the scent of damp earth and ripening apples from the orchard down Marchetti Lane. Across the dark fields, she could see a single yellow light shining from Beckett's gray farmhouse. It was a steady, quiet light, a reminder that her childhood best friend was only a field away.

After showering and changing into her pajamas, Dahlia pulled back the hand-quilted yellow blanket on her bed. She lay down on the mattress, her body tense as she stared at the white ceiling. The wooden floorboards below her creaked as her sisters moved around the house, preparing for sleep.

She had told her sisters that she would fix the farm's finances, draft an operating plan, and hire a manager within a month. She had treated this trip as a temporary disruption, a brief vacation from her real life in Chicago. But as she listened to the crickets and pictured the yellow light across the field, Dahlia felt a familiar ache in her heart. The farm wasn't just a business problem to be solved with a color-coded spreadsheet. The house, the fields, and the secrets that Nell Vance had hinted at were already pulling her back. Dahlia closed her eyes, but she knew sleep wouldn't come easily tonight.

DAHLIA

The morning air carried the crisp, clean scent of damp earth and woodsmoke. A heavy blanket of silver mist hung over the Berkshire foothills, keeping the valley in a filtered light. Dahlia stepped out onto the back porch of the farmhouse, holding a mug of cold coffee. She wore a tailored beige trench coat over a cream silk blouse, her leather portfolio tucked firmly under her arm.

She looked down at her feet. She'd chosen a pair of mahogany leather boots for her walk into the northern pumpkin fields. They were Italian leather, styled with a flatter heel that was meant for carpeted offices and paved city streets, not the uneven terrain of western Massachusetts. She hadn’t been able to find where the rubber farm boots were kept, as they weren’t in the usual place and her sisters were still asleep.

Dahlia descended the porch steps, her heels sinking immediately into the damp grass. She walked past the equipment shed, heading toward the northern boundary of the property. The fall dew was incredibly thick, clinging to the tall blades of orchard grass and immediately soaking into the leather of her boots. Within fifty yards, the mahogany leather was dark with moisture, and heavy clumps of mud clung to the narrow heels, making every step feel like an exhausting chore.

Dahlia stopped near the stone wall that marked the edge of the pumpkin patch, balancing on one foot as she scraped a thick layer of mud off her left heel with a fallen maple branch. She opened her ledger, her fingers cold as she flipped to a fresh page labeled: Northern Fields: Irrigation and Boundary Assessment.

Dahlia looked up from her notes and froze.

Across the cedar fence that separated the Marchetti farm from the neighboring land, a man was standing near a tractor. It was Beckett Shaw. He was wearing his usual denim jacket and a faded cap, his broad shoulders squared as he leaned against the fence post. He was watching her. He didn't wave, and he didn't call out, but his eyes were locked on her as she struggled to maintain her balance in her ruined boots.

Dahlia felt a sudden, defensive heat rise in her cheeks. She quickly set her foot down, ignoring the mud that instantly squelched around her foot, and straightened her trench coat. She closed her leather portfolio with a snap, her manicured fingers clutching the now slightly damp cover.

Beckett adjusted his cap, his weathered face showing a dry amusement that made her jaw tighten. He walked slowly toward the fence line, his sturdy work boots moving with a quiet familiarity over the damp earth. He looked at her notebook, then down at her mud-clogged boots, and finally up at her face.

"You're going to ruin those shoes before the sun's fully up, Dahlia," Beckett observed, his voice carrying that low drawl she remembered from their childhood.

"They're boots, Beckett," Dahlia countered, her voice tight as she adjusted the strap of her leather bag. "And they're perfectly fine for a simple walk across the property."

"They're city boots," Beckett corrected, leaning his forearms against the top rail of the fence. "They aren't made for wet clay. You'll ruin the leather, and you'll probably twist your ankle before you reach the boundary wall."

Dahlia took a step closer to the fence, her heels sinking another inch into the mud. "I'm conducting a professional assessment of the farm's assets. I need to document the state of the northern irrigation lines for our operating plan."

"An operating plan," Beckett repeated, his eyes narrowing slightly as he studied her polished appearance. "I suppose that means you’re planning to package this place up and run back to Chicago the moment the harvest's over."

"The will requires us to keep the farm operational," Dahlia replied, holding his gaze and refusing to let her defensiveness show in her tone. "My goal's to stabilize the business so we can hire a professional manager. That's the most logical way to protect our family's interest."

"A manager," Beckett said, his voice dropping as he looked out over the mist-covered fields. "Your mother didn't build this farm with logical operating plans, Dahlia. She built it with her own hands, and she did it for the people here, not for some corporate spreadsheet."

Dahlia felt the heavy guilt tighten in her chest, but she pushed it down, hiding it behind her professional tone. "A spreadsheet's what'll keep this farm from going into foreclosure, Beckett. If we don't manage the debt, there won't be any fields left for anyone to build anything on."

She looked away from him, her eyes tracing the line of the fence where the cedar posts met the morning mist. She could feel his stubborn presence just feet away, a reminder of the life she'd left behind thirty-two years ago, and she knew that keeping her distance was going to be much harder than she'd promised herself.

A metallic clang echoed from the tree line, followed by a loud, wet hiss. The sound cut through the quiet morning mist, causing Dahlia to freeze. She looked toward the low stone wall that separated the Marchetti fields from the Shaw property.