Page 9 of The Pumpkin Patch Sisters

She reached into the cardboard box and pulled out a stack of manila folders. The tabs were unlabeled, some worn down to fuzzy yellow threads. Dahlia laid the first folder in the cleared space directly in front of her. When she opened it, a faint cloud of white flour drifted upward, settling on her dark gray pants. She brushed at the white powder with her palm, but the flour smeared against the fine wool, leaving a pale streak across her thigh. Dahlia sighed, shook her head, and then ignored the stain. She’d already ruined one pair of pants this morning. She made a note to invest in some jeans and decent boots before her entire wardrobe was ruined.

Inside the folder, there were no typed spreadsheets or official bank statements. Instead, Dahlia found a collection of torn grocery bags, blue-lined notebook paper, and the backs of envelopes. Every scrap was covered in her mother’s distinct, looped cursive, written in blue ink.

Dahlia picked up a piece of cardboard torn from a cereal box. She held it close to her face, her eyes scanning the faded handwriting. Joe Miller. Three bushels of sweet corn. Paid with two hours of tractor repair.

Dahlia set the cardboard down to her left, starting a new stack. She picked up a yellowed index card. Sarah Jenkins. Six pumpkin pies for the fall festival. Balance settled.

Dahlia shook her head, her fingers playing with the edge of the card. There was no date, no monetary value, and no record of whether the pies had actually covered the cost of the pumpkins Sarah had taken from the patch. This was how her mother had run a commercial enterprise for forty years. It was a network of handshake agreements and neighborly barters, completely invisible to the local tax assessor and utterly useless to a bank.

Dahlia shifted her weight, the wooden chair legs scraping softly against the worn linoleum floor. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table, and plunged both hands back into the box. She pulled out a heavy metal recipe tin with rusted brass hinges. The green paint on the lid was chipped, showing gray metal underneath.

Dahlia placed the tin on the table. She pressed her thumb against the small brass latch, pushing upward until the lid popped open with a metallic click. Inside, instead of recipe cards for apple crisp or pumpkin bread, she found a dense stack of folded paper.

She pulled out the first folded sheet, which was a formal white envelope from the Berkshire Cooperative Bank. Dahlia unfolded the paper, her heart dropping as she read the red print at the top. It was a secondary mortgage notice, dated two winters ago, detailing a loan taken out against the farm's John Deere tractor and the cider press. The outstanding interest payment was due by the end of September.

"Why didn't you tell us?" Dahlia whispered to the empty room. Her voice sounded thin, lost in the high ceiling of the old kitchen.

She didn’t wait for an answer that would never come. She laid the bank notice on the right side of her laptop, starting her second physical stack. This would be the pile for actual liabilities.

Dahlia spent the next hour sorting through the contents of the green tin. With every paper she unfolded, the physical reality of the farm's desperation became clearer. She found three unpaid utility bills from the previous winter, a hand-written receipt for seed corn that had been paid for in cash from her mother's savings, and a warning letter from the county agricultural extension regarding a clogged drainage ditch near the western boundary.

Dahlia's lower back began to ache with a dull, persistent throbbing. She stood up, her knees cracking in the quiet room. She walked to the counter, picked up the glass coffee carafe, and poured the remaining dark liquid into her mug. She didn't bother to heat it. She walked back to the table and sat down again, pulling her chair forward until her stomach pressed against the edge of the wood.

She began to organize the three distinct stacks she had created. The first pile, on the far left, consisted of informal barter notes. The second pile, in the middle, held underpriced local invoices that had never been collected. The third pile, on the right, was a mountain of legal liabilities, late notices, and bank correspondence.

Dahlia opened her leather portfolio. She picked up her gold pen, clicking the top with her thumb. She wrote the heading Immediate Cash Flow Requirements at the top of the page. Underneath, she listed the bank payment, the utility arrears, and the cost of the immediate repairs Beckett had mentioned.

The total was staggering. The farm stand's current prices for pumpkins, cider donuts, and apple bread would not cover even a fraction of the debt, let alone the operational costs for the upcoming autumn.

Dahlia leaned back, her shoulders dropping. She looked at the three stacks of paper. She looked at her ledger. The numbers didn’t lie, and the story they told revealed a mother drowning in debt as she tried to keep her family and her community afloat.

A floorboard creaked in the hallway outside the kitchen. Dahlia turned her head, her pen poised over the paper, as the sound of footsteps came closer.

The heavy latch of the pantry door clicked, and Junie stepped into the kitchen. She carried a five-pound sack of unbleached flour cradled in her left arm like a sleeping infant. Her copper-colored curls were tied back in a messy bun with a green cotton bandana, though a few loose strands stuck to her forehead. She wore a faded denim apron over her yellow t-shirt, the fabric already dusted with white patches from some earlier project in the cider barn.

She stopped near the edge of the kitchen island, her eyes dropping to the oak table where Dahlia sat surrounded by the three neat stacks of paper. The rhythmic scraping of Dahlia's pen against her legal pad ceased.

"I didn’t realize you were up," Junie said, her voice quiet as she set the heavy sack of flour down on the wooden island. The bag landed with a soft thump, sending a tiny cloud of white dust into the warm air.

"I got an early start," Dahlia replied, her back stiffening as she leaned back against the hard wooden spindles of her chair. She reached for her coffee mug, but her fingers only brushed the cold ceramic handle before she pulled her hand back. "There’s a significant gap between the actual operating costs of the pumpkin patch and our recorded revenue."

Junie didn’t answer immediately. She walked to the small pantry cabinet next to the stove and pulled out a yellow mixing bowl, cradling it against her ribs. She brought it to the island and set it down with a clink next to the flour. She reached into her apron pocket, retrieved a wooden spoon, and laid it across the rim of the bowl.

"The cost of the cider apples went up fifteen percent last autumn," Dahlia continued, sliding her ledger three inches across the table, the paper whispering against the polished wood. "And the property insurance increased by twelve. Yet, according to your farm stand price list, we are still charging the exact same amount for a gallon of cider as we did five years ago."

Junie reached for a metal measuring cup inside the flour sack, her hand disappearing into the white powder.

"We charge what people in the valley can afford," she countered, her arm moving in a steady rhythm as she scooped the flour and leveled it off with the back of her index finger. She tipped the cup, pouring the white mound into the yellow bowl. "The valley is not Chicago. People here don’t have a budget for fifteen-dollar artisanal apple cider."

"This isn’t about Chicago," Dahlia asserted, standing up from her chair. The wooden legs scraped loudly against the worn linoleum floor. She took two steps toward the island, stopping on the opposite side of the counter from her sister. "This is about keeping the farm from going into foreclosure. The bank sent a secondary mortgage notice last week. If we don’t adjust our prices to reflect our actual expenses, we won’t survive the harvest season."

Junie stopped her hand mid-scoop, her fingers gripping the metal handle of the cup tightly. She looked across the counter, her eyes narrowing as she studied Dahlia's tailored pants and pristine silk blouse.

"Our mother had handshake agreements with half the families in this town," she retorted, her voice dropping to a firm murmur. "She let the Millers take three crates of squash every September in exchange for their help with the tractor repairs. She let the school district buy pumpkins at cost for the elementary school festival."

"Those informal agreements are precisely why the accounts are empty," Dahlia replied, her voice remaining calm, though her fingers gripped the edge of the counter until her knuckles turned white. "We cannot run a business on barters and good intentions. I’m looking at the cold reality of the ledger, and the ledger says we are bleeding money."

Junie dumped another cup of flour into the bowl with a forceful flick of her wrist. She set the measuring cup down on the counter with a metallic rattle and grabbed the wooden spoon. She began to stir the dry flour, the wood scraping against the ceramic bowl with a sweeping sound.