When my boys saw what our neighbor had done, I wanted her to feel a fraction of their hurt. For a moment, my response seemed to work. Then a photograph appeared in our neighborhood group, and I realized I’d given her a way to make people look at my mistake instead of what she’d done to my children.
After Joel died, the quiet after dinner was the hardest part of my day.
Then October came, and the boys and I started making Halloween decorations at the kitchen table.
“Mom, look,” Ben said one night, holding up a cereal box cut into a tombstone.
He was eleven and took his work seriously.
The top curved to the left, and the whole thing leaned like it had a bad back.
Toby, who was seven, tilted his head.
Ben laughed so hard he snorted.
While we worked, we could miss Joel without having to talk about it.
Toby drew a lopsided face on a sheet ghost.
When we hung it from the porch beam, it kept spinning to face the house.
“He’s shy,” Toby decided.
It became his favorite thing we had ever made.
This year, the boys asked to enter the neighborhood Halloween walk. Visitors would follow a short route and vote for their favorite stop.
I signed us up, and Ben began planning how he’d demonstrate the lanterns.
***
Across the street, Mrs. Whitmore had arranged matching skeletons and orange garland around her porch and red maple, all below her sitting-room window.
Families started stopping on the sidewalk to look.
One dad asked Ben how he’d made the milk-jug lanterns, and Ben lit up like one.
“Hang on,” he said. “I’ve got one that’s not done. I’ll show you.”
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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