Chapter 1 - The Pumpkin in Two Pieces
At 7:43 Sunday morning, my seventy-two-year-old grandmother was kneeling in wet grass with half of my dead grandfather's wooden pumpkin in her lap.
She didn't cry.
That somehow made it worse.
"They really did all this because it's September?" she asked.
Around her, the front yard looked like somebody had lost a fight with Halloween and then kept swinging. Fabric ghosts were ripped open. Orange lights hung in dead loops from the porch rail. Three scarecrows she'd owned since I was little were scattered near the driveway like broken dolls.
I stood beside the mailbox with my fists clenched.
"Don't touch anything else."
Grandma glanced up. "I already touched everything."
"I mean for evidence."
"Oh." She looked down at the cracked pumpkin. "Well, that's probably not ideal."
That was June Reed. She could make an apology sound like a weather report.
I pulled up the doorbell camera on her phone. It took three attempts because she had somehow changed the font size to what looked like billboard mode.
At 1:17 a.m., two figures crossed her lawn.
One wore bright lime running shoes.
The other had a little white dog trotting behind her.
I looked toward the house next door.
Brent's shoes were on his front porch, muddy at the soles.
Melissa's little dog was scratching at their glass storm door.
"Call the police," I said.
Grandma rubbed her thumb along the split in the pumpkin.
"Maybe."
"Maybe?"
She stood carefully, one hand on my shoulder for balance, then carried both halves of the pumpkin inside.
On the kitchen table, she set them down beside Grandpa's old coffee mug.
"He painted this in 1998," she said.
"I know."
"No, you don't." She turned the pumpkin over. On the back, beneath layers of faded orange paint, Grandpa had carved something into the wood.
JUNE'S HOUSE. ALWAYS THE FUN ONE.
Grandma stared at it for several seconds.
Then she reached for the phone.
"Who are you calling?"
"Not the police. Yet."
Her mouth twitched.
"I'm calling everybody."
That was the moment I realized Grandma wasn't planning to take the decorations down.
She was planning to put up more.
And by noon, three cars were already pulling into her driveway.
May you like
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