Chapter 44
Forty-Four
Louise
Bliss Garden looks incredible.
This is my favorite time of year.
The entire parking lot is lined with vehicles all decorated and ready for Trunk-or-Treat today. The sun is shining, setting the gold and scarlet and fluorescent orange leaves in the trees to blazing brilliantly.
The temperatures cooperated, thank God. It’s a comfortable sixty-five degree day, and I couldn’t have wished for a more beautiful afternoon for our biggest event of the fall season.
Always the last Saturday before Halloween, the event is earlier in the afternoon than the city’s organized Trick-or-Treating downtown, which takes place in the evening on Halloween night.
This year, it happens to be the same day.
We started it when Darci’s kids were little, and little three-year-old Graysen had gotten lost in the throng of people. Darci and Nolan had both been beside themselves with terror. Darci had insisted we needed a different option for families with small children.
So, Bliss Garden’s Trunk-or-Treat was born.
Nine years later, it’s grown into our most anticipated event each year.
The tractor is ready with the trailer piled high with hay-bales for the hayride.
The corn maze is set. Tessa’s pumpkin and apple pie donuts are fresh out of the oven.
Mom has made a metric ton of her famous apple cider—both chilled and hot—and our resident ‘mob boss’, aka Grandma Jude, is overseeing that the pumpkin stand is well stocked for any last-minute pumpkin purchases.
Tessa, dressed as a Renaissance-Esque woodland fairy, complete with giant Organza fairy wings and glitter freckles dusted across her cheeks and nose, rushes into the main barn. She’s carrying in another massive baker’s box that I know is filled to the brim with her homemade donuts.
Sienna has her camera looped around her neck, ready as our event photographer for the day.
Charcoal black fabric swirls around her, fashioned into a toga across her body.
The material shimmers and glitters in the sunlight.
A blue wig fashioned into a Grecian updo with gold threaded into it covers her chestnut brown hair, with electric blue lipstick painted on her lips.
She makes the perfect Hades from the animated Hercules.
Mom is dressed as Rosie the Riveter—the same as every year—red bandana tied around her head and fire-engine red lipstick in place.
She and Darci are standing out in the parking lot, greeting all our volunteers and Trunk-or-Treat participants.
Darci’s orange and black striped tights disappear beneath a black tulle tutu skirt, and a cropped jean jacket covers her arms. Her short dark hair is wavy down to her shoulders, and a black, feather-trimmed witch hat is on her head.
I had gone all out on an authentic, custom designed and fitted Princess Peach costume with white satin gloves that go up to just above my elbows. It’s so fun.
I reach down and adjust the big skirt around my legs, the crinoline beneath the pink satin swishing as I walk. The skirt is removable… and I have a surprise under it later for Zach.
Including thigh-high-white stockings and an extremely short skirt that leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination.
Princess Peach is in the house, sir.
My blond hair is left down, cascading over my shoulders and down my back. I’d teased and curled the crap out of it, making it bigger than ever, and a gold tiara sits atop my head.
I can’t wait for Zach and the girls to get here.
This will be the first time I’m introducing them to everyone.
Grandma Jude included.
I’m more nervous for them to meet my grandma than anyone else in my family.
What if Grandma Jude sees something in Zach that I don’t? What if Willow is right, and my picker really is broken?
“Oh God, Grandma Jude found the firefighters,” Sienna calls to Tessa and I, and we both drop what we’re doing to race to the barn doors.
Sure enough, down the winding pathway to the parking lot and just to the left, where the Petoskey Fire Department have set up one of their smaller Bush Rig trucks decked out in full Halloween décor, is our grandma chatting with three of the department’s firemen.
The three men are nearly doubled over, laughing at something our feral granny has said that we can’t hear from way up here.
“Should we rescue them?” Sienna asks out of the corner of her mouth, only half joking.
Tessa snorts. “Who would we even call? More firefighters?”
I shake my head, practically wheezing with laughter. “I know they say never leave a man behind, but they’d probably sacrifice these guys to Grandma Jude.”
Sienna cackles, “That’s the slogan for the Army, Lou.”
Oh, right. Two in, two out. “Look, I was close! It’s the same principle!”
“Ohmygod I’m dead,” Tessa laughs, rolling her eyes. She’s wearing contacts today instead of her usual fire engine red framed glasses. It’s always jarring to see her without her classic red frames. “I’m going to go see if I can herd Jude away from them.”
As she flits down the pathway toward them, I turn to Sienna. “So, is Connor going to be here later?”
Fiddling with a setting on her camera, she hedges, “Uhh, probably not. You know him. Always go, go, go for work…”
“How’s uh, how’s wedding planning going?” I ask quietly.
My sister shrugs. “Oh, you know. His mother has her ideas of how she envisions things.”
I keep my expression as neutral as possible and nod. “And you’re sure you’re okay not getting married here?”
She shrugs again, nodding slowly. “Yeah, it means a lot to Constance for us to get married at the same church she and Connor’s dad got married in.”
I wrinkle my nose at that. “Wait, it’s at a church? That’s… so not like you and Connor…”
“It’s okay, really,” she insists, letting the camera rest on its strap around her neck.
“Constance gets to make all the decisions, and Mom doesn’t have to stress about affording a wedding of this caliber.
It’s not… it’s not exactly what I would choose, but at the end of the day, I get to marry Connor.
And that’s what’s important, right? Marrying your best friend? ”
I can’t keep my expression neutral this time, my face scrunching up as I look at my sister. I inhale deeply and release it slowly, then whisper, “Is he, though…?”
Sienna rolls her eyes and backs away a step. “Not this again, please.”
I drop my shoulders in defeat. “I’m sorry. I just… I want you to be happy.”
“I am happy, Lou.”
“Okay,” I murmur gently. But I know she knows that I don’t believe her.
“I am.” She glares at me, and I laugh, holding up my hands.
“Okay, Sienna. If you’re happy, I’m happy.”
Her eyes narrow on me in suspicion, her entire body going still. “Why do you say it like that?”
I pop my eyes wide. “What? No reason.”
She continues to stare at me for several seconds before turning away. “I’m going to go get some shots of the cars decorated this year and get it posted to the social media pages before we get started.”
“Sounds like a great idea,” I agree, following her out and down the pathway to the waiting vehicles.
One is decorated like a mummy, wrapped in toilet paper and giant eyeballs made out of paper plates.
Another has the words ‘I Smell Children’ strung up across the open trunk, and the three women—from the local library—are dressed as the Sanderson sisters.
One is decorated to look like Cookie Monster’s head.
A mini van has a blue tarp laid on the ground and a one-foot wide wood board on the tarp extending to the back of the trunk, with shark fins propped up around it, and a sign that reads, ‘Walk The Plank’.
The trunk is decorated like a pirate ship, with a skeleton holding a giant bucket of candy.
Another has a Twister game pad strung up and the spin-wheel on a small folding table next to it.
Each Twister color circle has a piece of candy taped to it, and when you spin the spinner, you get whatever candy the arrow lands on.
One of the local tattoo shops set up their usual display, offering temporary tattoos or airbrushing.
Vanna White and Pat Sajak are set up in front of a Wheel of Fortune themed car.
But my favorite is one that is decorated like a giant gumball machine, complete with colorful balloons, that when you turn the crank, you get a balloon to pop, and your treat is hidden inside the balloon.
This is easily our biggest turnout yet, with over sixty different vehicles to visit and collect a treat from.
The expansive parking lot has been divided into two sections, the back half for Trunk-or-Treat guests to park and leave their vehicles, the front half roped off with cornstalks creating pillars every ten feet to keep the Trunk-or-Treat area for foot traffic only.
As the first guest cars start pulling into the parking lot at ten to three, excitement buzzes through me. I’m thrilled I get to get away from behind the bar today, and I get to do what I do best; mingle and interact with the guests and kiddos.
Nerves take over me entirely when I spot Zach’s big navy blue truck with the tell-tale firefighter light bar on the top of the cab pull into the parking lot.
This is it.
Shit. We never really discussed this part. Do I introduce him as my boyfriend? We haven’t talked about what this is—
Too late, as soon as the truck comes to a stop in a parking spot the back doors fly open and I watch as a dalmatian Beanie Baby, a colorful pinata, and my favorite bunny cop rush out, racing across the mostly empty parking lot toward me.
Bailey reaches me first, followed swiftly by Chloe, both barreling into my legs, nearly toppling me over. The crinoline crunches as they attempt to hug me through the many layers of skirts.
“Ohmygawwdd your dress is so pretty,” Chloe shouts, her little pink painted bunny nose the cutest damn thing I’ve ever seen.