I spoke with my sisters frequently, but there was something different about being in their presence. They had a calming effect on my ambition. The same ambition that had me leaving town six years ago without a backward glance.

It wasn’t until I was in their company that I remembered how much I missed and loved them.

They were also never sure when I would follow through on a promise and return home for more than a weekend. This time had been out of my hands, which left me a bit more bereft about my current situation. But I didn’t want my amazing sisters to think it was because of them. They’d always championed for me.

After consolidating years worth of embraces into a solid minute, I asked Rory, my innocent school teacher sister, to continue.

“Old Mrs. Hensen stood at our booth, stroking an eggplant, asking if we had any that were larger just as Coach Chisolm and his wife Lily walked by. Then that crazy spinster asked if we could try to grow them bigger next season because she liked the size of our cucumbers from the summer. Autumn, I was mortified.”

Alex stepped from around Rory and tossed her arm haphazardly across my shoulders while saying, “See what you missed all these years?”

“It’s definitely good to be back,” I replied as I squeezed her hand.

Rory chimed in again as Alex released me. “That wasn’t even the best part. Lily, being the badass that she is, walked over to Mrs. Hensen, inspected the eggplant, and agreed that we need to have bigger ones next season.”

“She did not!” Alex exclaimed.

“Oh, she definitely did. Most of the people here heard her.”

“Well, at least we know what coach keeps in his Wranglers.”

“Ew,” Rory cried out, scrunching her perfect button nose in the process. “He’s like. . .older than our brother.”

“Doesn’t mean we can’t admire him. Isn’t that right, Autumn?” Alex asked with a cunning slit to her eyes as she looked over at me where I was unabashedly examining the eggplants. Considering the direction of my love life, perhaps Mrs. Hensen was onto something. But Alex was right. It was no secret that I’d crushed on the high school and minor league hockey coach when I was younger. I’d always been attracted to older men. As the eldest of our parents’ four children, I always felt older than my twenty-four years. My grandfather used to say I had an old soul. Whatever that meant.

As my sisters went back and forth nagging each other just as they always had growing up, I took a moment to look around the market. It had grown exponentially in the years since I’d left Ashfield. Booths not only lined the open field, but they curved around the sidewalks and alleys.

Turning my back toward the crowd, I inhaled the thick mountain air as I stared at the Great Smoky Mountains off in the distance. There was something about their grandeur that always left me feeling lost. That I’d never know my place in the world. I’d always felt so minuscule in their shadow.

At one point, I thought I’d find my place in the bustling City of New York working for one of the top event planners in the nation only to learn that I was as expendable as a penny. Easily lost and forgotten. Especially when the man who promised you the world, and signed your paycheck, left you for his newest client. Taking your self-esteem and apartment with him.

Talk about a blow to my confidence.

Turning back around to look at my sisters, I couldn’t regret rushing back to Ashfield. I had wanted out of this small town when I was younger. It wasn’t that I disliked it here. I just thought I was destined for bigger and better things. I was the ambitious Easterly daughter. So arriving back at my family’s farm with my tail tucked between my legs wasn’t the way I had wanted to prove myself to everyone. I worried everyone would think that I’d chased my dream and failed. It wasn’t in my plan to return so soon.

“When did you get back to town?” Alex asked as I rejoined my sisters as they greeted customers and waved at the people walking past. “You should have called us.”

“Last night, just after dinner,” I mumbled as I snagged a carrot from the stack at the top of the vegetable display.

Our family farm functioned as corn growers, but my sisters and I carried on my grandmother’s penchant for gardening. Even as little girls, we kept up with her vegetable garden that had expanded from a small plot of land to two and a half acres of seasonal vegetables. The market stand that my family used in the past for homemade sauces and jams (which my mother still made in small batches to sell) transitioned to a booth for us. It made just enough to keep the garden growing, but I wasn’t sure how much longer my sisters could keep it up. We all had regular non-farming jobs that required a lot of time. I hoped to return to event planning, Alex managed a local bar, and Rory was a first-grade teacher. Only our youngest sister, Aspen, still worked at the farm with my father. Collectively, we had a friend of the family that ran the stand if we were absent, but typically my sisters and I rotated shifts. That was all before I moved away. I had a feeling that as we got older and busier, we’d come out less and less and would need more help with the stand. Who knew what would happen when we started our own families?

“Did you see Dad at all?” Alex asked.

“No, but Mom was up with Aspen.”

“That’s good,” she murmured under her breath the way she did when we were teens and she had more she wanted to say. I couldn’t help but notice how her knuckles whitened as her fingers bit into her palms. I got along with all of my sisters, but Alexandra and Aspen fought like caged animals. They were truly like the summer and winter. Two polar opposites.

I wanted to ask more, but I noticed a crowd was growing across the way and I wondered what had captured everyone’s attention. The nosiness of small-town living was in our blood from birth and there was little any of us could do to fight it off.

“What do you think is going on over there?” I asked no one in particular as I grabbed another carrot to munch on.

“Oh! Coach Chisolm was talking to some of his players about his protégé coming into town to visit for a while. It’s the biggest thing to happen to Ashfield since we heard you were coming back.” The petite blonde standing across from me stared with wide eyes as if she would blink and I’d disappear. There was a look of both mystery and envy in her gaze, and it left me feeling. . .lacking.

“Well, that’s something,” I said, munching on the orange veggie.

The girl stared for a second longer, then leaned closer toward me over the display as if she was about to tell me all of the world’s secrets. Her eyes glistened with excitement and the corners of her mouth tipped up in suppressed joy.

“What’s it like? New York? Is it just as beautiful as all the movies make it out to be?”

This girl could be no more than fourteen, fifteen at most, and I didn’t have the desire to burst her bubble and tell her that New York was both beautiful and lonely. For every shining beacon, there was a shadowing hole ready to envelop you. But I remembered the excitement and thrill of imagining such a glamorous place and I would have sneered at anyone telling me differently.

I opted for the closest truth I could muster. “It is beautiful and when they say no one ever sleeps, they mean it. But you know what?” I told her, watching as her chest puffed out, holding in her exhale with bated breath. “I missed home. There is nothing quite like it.” While it was true, it was definitely a stretch. While Ashfield was my birthplace, I grew up thinking the place was holding me back. There was nothing besides family that ever made me want to stay.

“Wow,” she exhaled with a whoosh, the hair surrounding her shoulders moving with the air.

I responded with a simple smile, hoping that I placated her dreams while internally I felt shame from the lie.

“It sounds so amazing. I don’t know why anyone would ever come back. Nothing exciting ever happens in this town.”

Internally, I agreed with the teen and my inner self was nodding her head enthusiastically, but externally, I continued to smile politely with a tilted head. My dad always called it my “you’re not right, but I’ll let you think you are” look.

“Well, never say never,” Alex said with her signature sneer. For someone named after the birthstone of June, she had the cold temperament of the winter. Another reason she and Aspen rarely got along.

The teen trotted off, not nearly as affected by my sister’s proclamation as I was.

“You shouldn’t dismiss her hopes and dreams like that. Maybe she’ll actually get out and find her way.”

“Yeah, her way back home. Everyone always comes back - usually,” Alex said as she began placing the vegetable trays in the back of her vintage pickup.

I knew what she meant. Everyone came back except for Rory’s childhood friend and our neighbor. It was a sore subject with our sister and we rarely spoke about it, but I knew that was what Alex was implying.

They weren’t surprised when I called up last Sunday and said I had packed all my belongings and would be home the following weekend. It had offended me they weren’t bowled over to hear the news, but Mom asked at the end of every phone call when I was going to move back home. To them, I was living some childhood fantasy and needed to get my head on straight.

But until my ex had destroyed everything, I had been happy. I’d loved my life.

Right?

I remembered the perfect little apartment we’d leased on the Upper East Side. It had been in his family for years and was rent controlled. We would have never been able to afford it any other way. I’d adored the apartment and thought of how we could raise a family in the three-bedroom space. I’d even hoped that he was going to propose the exact night he dumped me.

It was the same tragic tale that I’d seen in movies countless times. I just never expected it to happen to me.

Fired and dumped in the middle of our living room, surrounded by hundreds of candles. I’d set up the room for our anniversary, expecting something else entirely.

Heaving a sigh, I lifted one of the trays and placed it in Alex’s truck.

“What’s the matter?” Rory questioned. She’d always been the most intuitive of the sisters. We could usually speak without saying a word.

“Nothing,” I said with a chipper edge I knew wasn’t going to fool anyone.