This year was going to be our greatest show yet. The best decorations, the biggest crowd. I said that every year, but this year I meant it. I was really going to outdo myself. My youngest son, Cole, was graduating. Next year he’d be in college with his older brother, Sam, and Paul and I would officially be empty nesters. Maybe then it would be time to pass the legacy on to someone else. Or end the party altogether.

But I’ll tell you this: if it was going to be the last Ivy Woods Halloween block party, we were going out with a bang.

The first nuts-and-bolts planning meeting was on Friday, always six weeks out from Halloween. Which is why I was surprised when Alice texted us on Wednesday night with an urgent message:

Bonfire meeting tonight. 8 p.m.

I stopped chopping the green pepper for the dinner salad. We’d just seen each other a couple days ago at the new Woodard principal’s welcome event and before that, over the weekend for girls’ night. Did something happen?

Whenever there was a crisis—like the time Pia found a lump (it turned out to be benign), or when Alice lost her full-time nanny, or when Bettina caught her first husband tapping into their retirement account to pay gambling debts—we’d meet in Alice’s backyard, around her firepit, and strategize how to fix it. It was all in the details, and you couldn’t get those kinds of details over the phone. We’d coined them bonfire meetings.

But we hadn’t needed a bonfire meeting in several years.

I kept my reply breezy: I love you guys and all, but three get-togethers in one week?

Will explain later. See you then.

Alice had three kids, and her husband was away on military duty. She rarely had the time to just hang out for fun. And it wasn’t like Little Miss Sunshine, who oozed happiness out of every orifice, to be so terse. Her texts were usually filled with pleases and love y’alls and emoji hearts. She was our Southern belle: sweet, soft, and smiley. We joked that someone could burn her house to the ground and she’d find a reason to bake them strawberry fig bars. Still, that was our Alice.

I washed the lettuce and set it aside in the salad spinner, then called Bettina. “What’s up with Alice?” I asked.

I could hear pots and pans clanging in the background. Probably her husband making dinner. Bettina rarely lifted a finger when it came to cooking, the lucky bitch.

“No idea. I wondered the same thing.” The noises stopped, which meant Bettina had moved into another room. I imagined her in the spare bedroom off the back, finding her way through the darkness to sit on the edge of the bed. We knew each other’s houses like they were our own.