Page 68 of Halloween Town

Good call, Poppy. No one, not even the ghosts, knew how far Luna would go. “You give me far too much credit, darling. No, it was simply a misunderstanding about a ghost, a diamond ring and a too fast car⁠—”

“La-la-la-la-la,” Poppy chanted, shoving her fingers in her ears. After twenty seconds she dropped them and spoke again, her tone serious. “Lu, can you ask around and see if anyone has a cottage, or a one-bedroom apartment to rent?” she asked, her voice quieter than usual.

“For whom?” Luna demanded, instantly suspicious.

Poppy hauled in a deep breath. “For me. I need to move out of Solstice Deep.”

What?

Ruby looked at Lila, then at Naomi, and her shock was reflected in their faces. Right, so this was unexpected.

“Why?” Luna asked, her voice calm and steady. “Did you have a fight with Thom?”

“No, we are good.”

Luna didn’t respond, and Ruby was equally confused. Poppy loved this place. Why did she want to move on? “I don’t understand, baby girl. You and Thom are together; if you aren’t fighting, then why leave? Especially since it’s your favorite place.”

“That’s why I have to leave, Luna. Because I love it so much.” Poppy pushed her hand through her hair and rubbed the back of her neck. “I can’t stay here. I need to figure out who I am, and I can’t do that living here. There are too many memories… It’s too easy to be here. I don’t think easy is what I need. I need to live on my own for a while, I need to figure some stuff out.”

Ruby waited for Luna to speak, assuming she would ask a barrage of questions that would make Poppy wanting to leave a lot clearer. But Luna, for the first time, didn’t speak for a couple of beats. And when she did, it wasn’t what Ruby expected. “Okay, I’ll ask around.”

Poppy closed her eyes, relief on her face. “And will you keep this between us until I find a place? I don’t know how to⁠—”

“Explain?” Luna completed her question for her. “We’ll keep it between us, baby girl.”

Poppy thanked Luna, told her she loved her—humans tossed “love yous” around like confetti these days!—and placed her phone on the stairs beside her. Then she rested her forehead on her knees.

Moving out? Poppy? Ruby hadn’t expected this.

Her chest tightened with something like awe and something sharper—was it fear? Was Poppy finally stepping out from under the house’s, her family’s and Thom’s shadow, to stake a claim on her own life? To work out exactly who she was and what she wanted? It was something Ruby had never been able to do, never thought to do, and never realized was an option.

She had always measured herself by the men in her life and in her bed—through their presence first, and then through their approval. The thought of being alone terrified her. Poppy was toying with the idea that her self-worth wasn’t tied up in Benji, or in Thom. And where did her family fit into this? Could she step away from them, too?

Ruby didn’t know if Poppy was being brave or stupid. Whether she was making the right decision—walking away from Thom, one of the good ones, from everything he could give her emotionally, mentally, even financially—to “discover” herself. What if she realized she wasn’t all that, and had made a huge mistake? Would Thom take her back? The risk was enormous…

Would she find herself? Could she survive it?

All Ruby knew for sure was that she wouldn’t have had the guts to do something so drastic. Because choosing herself would never have occurred to her.

Thom

As always, Luna and her minions knew how to throw an event. The last time Thom was here, at the Lantern Walk, the decorations for the town square had been spookier, darker, more somber. Tonight, he looked around and it seemed like someone had vomited a rainbow over the square. As per tradition, or town law, or Luna law, there were the prerequisite lanterns and maniacal pumpkins filled with candles, and fairy lights in the potted shrubs on each corner of the square. But Luna had found the funds to purchase a high-lumen, professional-grade projector capable of projecting 3-D images on the façade of the town hall, and he was impressed. Say what you will about Luna, but a display like that required specialized projectors and professional software; Luna and the H-Town leaders were not technologically quaint.

Poppy placed her free hand—her other one was swallowed by his—on her chest, as she watched images of previous Tag & Thanks events flashing before their eyes on the huge outdoor screen they’d erected to the left of the town hall. “I didn’t know this tradition preceded Luna,” he said, surprised at the vintage images of women and children in long dresses tying pieces of paper to the branches of the much younger tree.

“The first documented T&T event was in the eighteen-nineties,” Poppy answered him. He’d been so busy with the inn’s renovation and his new consulting gig, and Poppy, that the town’s Halloween events, and their history, had fallen well down his priority list.

“And people hang tags from the tree?”

He looked over to the tree, the focus of everyone’s attention. It stood in the center of the square, its long branches drooping low enough that most people—Poppy and children excluded—could reach them without stretching. It was barely eight in the evening, but the branches were already loaded with tags. Hundreds of them. Maybe more.

Small rectangles of card, in every conceivable color, hung from ribbons, twine and string, shifting and flickering in the light from the pumpkins, lanterns, and fairy lights. Some were tied carefully, neat bows and loops. Others had clearly been slapped on in a hurry, knotted tight. He squinted and could just make out that a few tags had tiny drawings on them—hearts, pumpkins, stars—but most simply carried words. Names. Dates. Short messages of gratitude written in a hundred different pens.

People stepped forward one at a time, tying on their tags before melting back into the crowd, leaving a small piece of themselves behind. He looked down at Poppy. “Got yours?”

Because of course she would have. Poppy was into this type of thing.

She pulled out cards from her pocket. He looked down at them, taking in the gold frame, the careful writing, the bold, gold velvet ribbon. Typical Poppy—she’d taken her time to make them look exceptional. He wondered what she wrote on them.