"Penny! Penny! Look at all my candy!" Davy said, running up to me. The pillowcase dragged behind him on the ground. He had so much candy he couldn't even pick it up.
"I think you might have overdone it," I said.
"No kidding!" Josie said.
"Oh, you were smart," I told her. She was dressed like a zookeeper with comfy khakis and sturdy boots.
"Yeah, I am not a walking-in-heels person. I am a sitting- or possibly standing-in-heels person."
Garrett picked up Davy and sat him at the farmhouse table. Davy climbed up to stand on top of it. He clapped as Garrett dumped all his candy out before him.
"Wow, you collected a lot!"
Davy immediately threw himself on top of the pile.
"I mean," I said, "who hasn't wanted to jump into a pile of candy?"
"Davy, you smooshed most of it," Garrett said.
"I want to eat all of it!" he shrieked.
"You should probably space it out…"
"Actually," Parker interjected, "dentists believe that it's better if you eat as much of the candy as you can all at once. It's better for your teeth to have one sugar shock as opposed to having candy every day for months. I've been working with a lot of them for that new toothpaste we're developing at PharmaTech," he added.
"You heard him," Garrett announced to his brothers. "Eat as much candy as you want!"
They high-fived and started attacking the loot.
"At the very least," Garrett said as Andy stuffed a huge Snickers into his mouth, "they'll be so sick after this that they won't want to touch it."
"I'm not cleaning it up," Mace declared, pouring more rum into his apple cider and snatching one little tiger before he could throw a candy wrapper into the fire. "Put it in the trash bag," he ordered.
I sat down next to Garrett on the porch swing.
"Harrogate has certainly improved Halloween since the last time I went trick-or-treating when I was a kid," he said, sipping his cider.
"I can't believe you hadn't passed out candy or taken your brothers since then," I said, wrapping my arm around his waist. Garrett nuzzled my hair.
"I was busy, and I also didn't want to deal with the bad memories," he admitted.
"Now you have nicer ones hopefully."
"Absolutely," Garrett said, kissing me. He peered at me then rubbed at my face. "You're covered in white paint."
I laughed. "So now that you're a Halloween convert, we need to think about how we're going to remodel the Victorian house."
We looked up. The house was silhouetted against the full moon. It creaked ominously.
"It looks like a lot of work," Garrett said.
"It will be worth it though! We'll have a nice home, and we can host crazy Halloween parties."
"Could take a while to be done," Garrett said.
"You don’t want to live in the house with all the creepy dolls until then?" I teased, leaning against Garrett's chest.
"Not particularly. Maybe we can buy a condo, an apartment, or take over part of the wing of the house—there's the whole east wing that hasn’t even been renovated yet," he said carefully. "Though I'm sure my family is too crazy for you to want to live there for any extended period of time."
