“June live-streamed it. It got two hundred shares.” She shouldered her little backpack, bulging with extra tools and her lucky carving pencil. “That’s disaster-level in a town this size.”
The town square was buzzing when we arrived, the crisp autumn air filled with the scent of apple cider and wood smoke from the hot chocolate stand. Families clustered around picnic tables laden with pumpkins of every size, the orange globes glowing like harvest moons against the red and gold maple trees lining Main Street. Children ran between the stations wearing their Halloween costumes again, their laughter mixing with the music from the band setup near the gazebo.
I kept my head down as we found our assigned station, but I could feel the weight of curious stares following us like shadows.
“Is that Lily Sage?”
“Poor thing, after what happened at the gala...”
“I heard he packed his bags the same night.”
“Such a shame. Olivia seemed so attached to him.”
My cheeks burned, but Olivia squeezed my hand and stage-whispered, “Mom, ignore the gossip vultures. We’re here for pumpkin domination.”
Our carving station was right next to the Hendersons, who greeted us with the kind of gentle, pitying smiles that made me want to crawl into our pumpkin and hide until spring. Mrs. Henderson pressed a thermos of hot cider into my hands without a word, her eyes soft with understanding.
“What are we making?” I asked Olivia, grateful for the distraction as she began sketching her design with the intensity of Michelangelo planning the Sistine Chapel.
“A cat wearing a crown,” she announced, “because cats are independent and don’t need anyone, but crowns are pretty and make you feel special.”
My heart squeezed. “That sounds perfect, baby.”
She was halfway through outlining the whiskers when Mayor Gable’s voice crackled through the microphone at the front of the square.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” he boomed, his breath forming little puffs in the cold air. “Before we begin our annual pumpkin-carving contest, we have someone who’d like to say something to the crowd!”
My stomach plummeted like a stone dropped down a well. Please, no. Not another public spectacle. I’d had enough humiliation to last several lifetimes.
But then I sawhim.
Mario stood on the small wooden platform the committee had erected for the judges, and he looked absolutely terrified. His dark hair was mussed like he’d been running his hands through it, the five o’clock shadow was dark against his jaw, and he was clutching something orange against his chest—a pumpkin, I realized, though I couldn’t make out any details from this distance.
The crowd fell silent with the kind of hush that only comes when something momentous is about to happen. Even the children stopped their chatter, sensing the shift in adult energy.
“I’m not good at this,” Mario began, his voice rough and carrying easily in the crisp air. “Talking about feelings. Public speaking. Any of it, really. I’m much better with engines than emotions.”
Someone in the crowd chuckled nervously. A woman near the front—Mrs. Benson from the library—called out, “We’re listening!”
He cleared his throat, his knuckles white where they gripped the pumpkin. “A little over two months ago, I came to this town to hide. To disappear. To figure out who I was if I wasn’t the driver behind the wheel of a racecar.”
His eyes swept the crowd, and when they found mine, everything else seemed to fade into background noise.
“I didn’t expect to find a home here. I definitely didn’t expect to find a family.”
Beside me, Olivia’s grip tightened on my hand, her carving knife forgotten.
“I was offered a job last week,” Mario continued, and I heard several people gasp. “A good job. The kind of position I thought I wanted—back in racing, back in Europe, back to the life everyone expected me to return to, eventually.”
My throat closed. Here it was—the official announcement that he was leaving.
“I wrote the acceptance email three times,” he said, his voice growing stronger. “But every time I tried to send it, I kept thinking about the things that would be hard to leave behind.”
The crowd was so quiet I could hear the autumn wind rustling through the oak trees, could hear someone’s thermos lid squeaking open two tables away.
“Like Sunday dinners where Mrs. Sage interrogates me about my intentions while passing the mashed potatoes.” A few people laughed, and I saw my mother press her hand to her heart. “Like fixing a toilet that sounds like a ghost with digestive issues.”
Olivia giggled, quickly covering her mouth with her free hand. The sound seemed to loosen something in Mario’s chest, and his posture relaxed slightly.
