Page 15 of Love and Lattes at Pumpkin Hollow
‘I already have something I love,’ I said shortly. I stood up, scraping back my chair. ‘I need to leave for this appointment.’
‘I’m still coming.’ Dylan jumped up too as if sensing I was about to say I wanted to be alone, and I had been about to. ‘You wanted to talk about the plan for the patch,’ he reminded me.
I sighed. I did want to see if he thought it was doable. I wanted someone else to believe this was an idea that could work, not just me. ‘Fine. I’ll get changed and see you outside in twenty minutes. You can drive,’ I said, walking up to my room. The jewellers had told me to come and see them this afternoon. I hoped they would want to buy the necklace today and I wanted to get the best price I possibly could, so I’d thought them seeing Dylan’s fancy car might give me more bargaining power. The more money I could make, the better for the farm.
‘I’m off, Dad,’ I said after I’d I freshened up and changed, now hovering in the doorway to the kitchen.
He was clearing away our lunch things and turned to look at me. ‘Are you really sure about this, love?’
I nodded. ‘There’s no point in keeping things when we could lose our home. And I know you think we can start over somewhere; maybe we can, maybe we might have to, but I don’t want to.’ I tried to push down the lump in my throat. I had always been a dreamer but I knew right now, I also needed to be practical.
Dad heaved a heavy sigh. ‘I hate that you’re in this position, I really do. But I’m also proud of you.’
‘Mum would understand, wouldn’t she?’
Dad came over and reached out to give my shoulder a squeeze. ‘She would be proud of you too.’
God. The lump came back with a vengeance. I nodded, trying to hold it together. ‘Okay then, I’m off. Wish me luck.’
‘Good luck, Willow.’
I hurried out before either of us could start welling up and walked down the driveway. Dylan was in his car already, on his phone, not paying attention as I walked over to him. The window was open so I could hear his conversation coming out of the car speakers.
‘You better not let me down with this, Dylan,’ a gruff voice said.
13
I froze and listened in, as Dylan promised he wouldn’t let this person down, until he hung up and rubbed his chin with a deflated sigh. I assumed he’d been talking to his brother. He looked worried and I wondered how much was riding on him getting us to sell. For a second, it made me falter. But I knew I didn’t owe him anything. He was a stranger who had picked our farm and showed up out of nowhere to try to take it from us. Even if his brother was giving him a hard time about getting us to accept their offer, it wasn’t my problem.
This was my home.
Our family business.
My future.
Pushing back my shoulders, I carried on walking to the car and opened up the passenger side. ‘Ready?’ I asked as I slid in.
He jumped a little bit but nodded, closing the car window and setting off down our driveway. ‘Where are we headed?’ he asked, nodding at the screen in front of us. I gave him the postcode of the jeweller’s and he typed it into the satnav, and then we left the farm. ‘Jewellery?’ Dylan asked, glancing across at me quickly before returning his eyes to the road.
I decided it was best to be honest about what I was doing. ‘I’m going to sell a necklace my mum passed down to me. I need money to make this pumpkin patch happen, and I’ve resisted for a long time using what she left me, but this is a last-ditch effort. And Dad agreed she would want me to do this.’ I looked out of the window but the sight of the leaves on the birch trees fading into yellow didn’t raise the smile they usually did. ‘It doesn’t make it any easier, though.’
Dylan was quiet for a moment. ‘I wouldn’t let my brother and my dad clear my mother’s things for a long time. It made me so angry to think of them even touching any of her possessions, let alone getting rid of them. So, I understand more than most.’
I looked over and saw his knuckles were stretched white on the steering wheel. ‘Did you eventually clear them?’ I asked curiously.
‘Yeah. My grandmother persuaded me to. She said they were just things; they weren’t memories. I’d always have memories of my mother. She advised me to keep just a couple of things that meant the most then let the rest go. And I did feel a little bit better once I’d done that. But what made me feel the best was…’ He pushed back the sleeve of his jacket and tilted his wrist so I could see a tattoo there. It was a black outline of a robin. ‘My mum’s name, and her favourite bird.’ He quickly covered it again and I saw him swallow hard.
I pulled my own jacket sleeve up and held my wrist out to show my black outline tattoo of a tree with the bark and bare branches. ‘My mum’s name was Hazel. She called me Willow. My dog is Maple. A tree just seemed fitting,’ I explained as Dylan glanced at it, his eyes widening in surprise. I shook my head. It was another strange coincidence. We had lost our mothers and both had tattoos. ‘The exact same place as yours,’ I added softly as I pulled my wrist back and covered it again.
‘Crazy,’ he muttered. He cleared his throat. ‘So, the money you make from the necklace, have you thought how you will use it?’
‘I’ve been looking at farms in the surrounding areas that might sell me pumpkins in bulk, but I need to know exactly how much I will have first. I will also need hay. I might need to hire a marquee and I need to buy props so people can take photos. I’ve been trying to think about how I can do it all as cheaply as possible but good enough that people enjoy it, spread the word, come back again…’ I trailed off. It was a lot to work out. There was no point in spending a fortune if I couldn’t make a profit out of it all, but it also needed to be a place people wanted to visit.
‘Are you going to charge an entry fee?’
‘We don’t for pick-your-own season; we just charge a small fee that people can use towards the fruit and veg, then they usually spend more anyway.’
‘This is more of an event though, isn’t it? It’s not just about people buying a pumpkin, so you could charge an entry fee.’
