Page 7 of Pumpkin Spice Promises

Not even because of the prosthetic.

Losing a leg changed my body, but losing Pops had changed everything else.

These days I spent more time in his truck than I did in my own bedroom. The cracked leather seat still smelled faintly of coffee and his favorite cigars, which had been something I used to hate, but now missed so desperately.

Every Tuesday morning, after finishing my deliveries, I’d sit behind the wheel for a few extra minutes pretending he was going to climb into the passenger seat and complain about feed prices or ask why I hadn’t replaced the windshield wipers yet.

It was stupid.

He’d been gone for five years.

But grief didn’t care about logic.

Neither did I.

Meme needed me too much.

She still set out two coffee mugs some mornings before catching herself. Still talked about Pops in the present tense. Still turned toward his empty chair whenever something funny happened.

As much as losing him broke me, I knew it had broken her worse.

They’d spent more than forty years together.

Forty years was a lifetime compared to my measly twenty-five.

So while Meme mourned her husband, I learned how to keep Marigold Ranch running. Or at least how to stop it from falling apart completely.

Pops knew every inch of this property.

He knew which cows liked to wander through broken fencing. He knew which pasture flooded after a hard rain. He knew which suppliers could be trusted and which ones would overcharge you the second they thought you were desperate.

I didn’t, even though I’d spent years at his side learning as much as possible… I still made so many mistakes.

Expensive mistakes. The kind that kept me awake at night, staring at spreadsheets I barely understood.

After Pops died, most of the ranch hands left for bigger operations. The dairy cooler needed repairs I couldn’t afford. Feed prices climbed every year. Half the fencing along the south pasture needed replacing.

Every month felt like plugging holes in a sinking boat with whatever scraps I could find.

And every month I wondered if this would be the one that finally sank us. Because the truth was, Marigold Ranch had never belonged to me.

It belonged to Pops.

I was just trying not to be the generation that lost it.

Some days I thought I was failing anyway. It would’ve been easier if I could still ride Blueberry. Not because I needed a horse to run a dairy farm, but because horses had always been where I went when things got hard. Before the accident, I could spend hours in the saddle and somehow find answers to problems that seemed impossible an hour earlier.

Now I couldn’t even look at her tack without feeling sick.

Blueberry never blamed me for what happened. She greeted me every morning with the same gentle nudge and soft whinny she’d always given me.

A loud cranking noise rattled through the engine, pulling me from my thoughts. I winced. The truck had been making new sounds for months now.

Some squeaked.

Some rattled.

Some I pretended not to hear.