Zola wasn’t there. She would have loved this. Joellen couldn’t legally tell me anything about Zola’s life beyond the fact that she was safe where she was. Try as I might, Joellen would not talk to me about Zola, the state of her happiness or lack of it. I hoped she had a pumpkin to carve. I hoped she was with her grandma. Or, better yet, home with her mom.

A small girl raised her hand. “Isn’t dickhead a bad word?”

“It sure is,” I said. “Grown-ups shouldn’t even say it, right, Sean?”

“That,” Sean said, “was a test, and you passed! Everyone keep going, we’ve got half an hour till the bus comes, and I want to see some scary faces carved into those gourds.”

The leafy trees among the pines and cedars blazed crimson like fire; I’d never seen such an autumn. Seattle’s parks and streets are full of and lined with trees, of course, but this was another world, lit and glowing orange. I sat with (not next to) Sean at the picnic table.

The kids flung gourd guts at each other. We let them.

“So. What are you doing tomorrow night?” he asked.

“Sleeping through the whole thing.”

“Hold up. You don’t like Halloween?”

“I love it.”

“Explain.”

“No kids in Francine’s house. It’s kind of making me sad.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Just different. You know?”

“This island is in love with Halloween.”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “I can tell.” Main Street had been lined with carved jack-o’-lanterns for weeks. Kira was giving herself carpal tunnel trying to keep up with the demand for her exquisite cookies, more bats and pumpkins with fondant vines and especially the vampires, each one featuring a different expression on its white frosting face, glittery red sugar blood dripping from every fang.

“Main Street is a block party. There’ll be a million kids there running loose.”

“Not mine. Not ones I can take trick-or-treating.”

“Okay, but there’s a parade, and, listen, Salishwood has a booth. I ran it last year, and I told Jane I’d ask you to come with this time.”

“Sean.”

“Please,” he said. “Come with me. It would be so fun. Not a date.”

Nearly impossible to say no to that smile, but I summoned all the resistance I had left.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’ll be eating KitKats in bed with Terry Johnson.”

He sighed. “That dog needs a new name.”

—

The next evening, said dog and I were settled in with our KitKats for Halloween, not in bed but on the sofa, waiting to answer the door to trick-or-treaters, and I was working hard to convince Francine I honestly did want to stay home by myself.

“Oh, come on,” she called from the bathroom, where face painting was happening. “It’s such a fun night, and won’t Kira be there?”

“She’s working.”