Grant slowed the swing down awkwardly. Adam sat down on the ground and howled. It was time for them to go home. She couldn’t be the only one who felt it.

Grant offered to give Adam a piggyback ride home, but he wanted Mommy to do it. “I wish I could, pumpkin,” she said, and Adam hit her leg. She briefly considered hitting him back.

They smiled and thanked and pledged to do it again, soon, at Suzanne and Grant’s, once they got it fixed up, oh you’ll have it to your liking in no time, looking forward to it, good luck, good night, good night, they called to one another. Good night. Good night. Suzanne, Grant, and Adam walked down the path to the sidewalk, past the Coxes’ party—still going strong—and down the street, toward home.

6

OCTOBER 28—DAY

A bunch of grapes was in the lead. It seemed unlikely, with all those purple balloons wiggling to and fro, but there she was, a girl of maybe ten, outrunning the bewigged pop stars and the superheroes in their padded chests and capes. The kids’ Halloween fun run was a quarter mile long, around the green a couple of times; the adults’ race was three miles through the neighborhood. Grant was warming up for it, jogging in place in his jodhpurs. He snugged the string of his cowboy hat tight against his chin, hoping the flapping wouldn’t slow him down.

The cast of Annie Get Your Gun had been given cowboy clothes to wear, things Allison found at Mitchell’s Variety: a little advance publicity for the play, of which Grant was now an official cast member. It was lucky Mitchell’s didn’t carry cowboy boots. You couldn’t run in cowboy boots. He held his phone out, made a wry smile, and snapped a selfie, messaging it to the gang. Their message thread was a comfort—like carrying his best friends around in his pocket.

Adam, dressed as a vampire, sat on the curb, fake blood painted by the corner of his mouth, white plastic fangs in hand.

“You should’ve run it, buddy,” Grant said. “You could have won in the five and unders. Being five would have given you a huge edge.”

Adam tore open a bag of miniature pretzels, tossed to him by a clown on an oversize tricycle.

“Jillian’s going to babysit you while I run if Mommy’s not back.” Grant pointed to a table on the other end of the soccer field, where Jillian and another girl handed out water in cone-shaped paper cups to kids in the race. The girls wore the black T-shirt adorned with the white outline of a ghost that many of the older kids wore.