A BLOCK CAPTAIN DRAGGED A BARRICADE IN FRONT OF A BIKER ON HALLOWEEN, THEN A GIRL CALLED FROM HER WINDOW, “HE’S ON MY LIST.”

THE BLOCK CAPTAIN DRAGGED A BARRICADE IN FRONT OF A BIKER ON HALLOWEEN, THEN A GIRL SPOKE FROM A DARK HOUSE.

At five thirty on Halloween in Chillicothe, Ohio, Erin Walsh carried two folding chairs onto her front walk. The porch light was off. Next door, a plastic skeleton knocked its heels against a porch post every time the wind came up. Erin’s eight-year-old daughter, Lucy, sat behind the low bedroom window in a pumpkin-orange sweatshirt. The windowsill was just wide enough for the tin she’d asked her mother to wash out after lunch.

Ben “Bear” Dawson parked his cruiser in Erin’s driveway and set one boot down before the engine stopped turning. A canvas sack was strapped behind his seat. He’d just lifted it free when Marcy Bell, the block captain, dragged a striped plastic barricade across the mouth of the driveway.

“Put that bag down,” Marcy said. “I’m not letting your club use a little girl’s house to collect money.”

A father steering two children in dinosaur tails stopped at the curb. Somebody behind him took out a phone. Erin could see the screen pointed at Ben’s hands.

Ben set the sack beside the back tire. He was six foot four, broad enough that his black leather vest pulled tight across the back whenever he reached for something. The patch there was a stitched lantern with three short rays. The air smelled of dry leaves and gasoline. His tattooed fingers rested open against his jeans. He didn’t ask Marcy to move.

“I’m trying to keep this block safe,” Marcy told the people gathering by the curb. “If you all saw the message I got, you’d have put this here yourselves.”

Erin knew why people listened to her. Marcy had spent an afternoon getting neighbors to move their cars when Erin needed the driveway clear to bring Lucy home. Now Erin nearly asked Ben to take the sack around back. Then she looked at Lucy’s window and saw her daughter watching the front walk.

Ben pulled off one riding glove and tucked it into his back pocket. He turned to his cruiser, bent over the right saddlebag and lifted out a purple felt witch hat. It took a moment for the brim to unfold. A silver star hung crooked from its point, sewn on with orange thread.

The father at the curb stopped trying to steer his dinosaurs away. Marcy looked from the hat to the dark window. Erin knew the stitches. Lucy had pulled each one tight while Erin held the felt flat against the kitchen table. They’d had to start over when the star ended up pointing sideways.

Ben held the hat where Lucy could see it. “Kept the star,” he said.

Erin knew he’d promised to come by. He’d asked how far Lucy could see from her room and whether a person standing on the walk would be too low. She’d figured he meant to wave, maybe leave something at the door.

Lucy set both hands on the inside sill, beside the empty tin. Erin had left the window open an inch so they could talk without shouting. She could hear Lucy take a breath through that small gap. Her daughter looked past Marcy, straight at the man with the hat.

“He’s on my list.”

Part 2

“Where’d you put me?” Ben asked.

“First,” Lucy said. “You got the hat.”

He settled it on his head. The brim caught on the top of one ear, and he freed it with the same bare hand he used to turn tiny screws in the shop. Lucy smiled. Erin could see it even with the light behind her.

Marcy stayed beside the barricade. “What list?”

Lucy picked up a sheet of notebook paper from below the sill. The bottom caught against the tin. Erin could make out the first line because Lucy had used her thick orange marker.

Things that can come to my window.

Underneath were a witch, a ghost and a person with an enormous cape. Beside the witch, Lucy had written Bear. The other names were mostly descriptions. Ghost with the good boots. Lady who fixes buses. Guy who always has gum.

Erin recognized the bus mechanic. She’d seen her at Ben’s shop eating lunch on an overturned bucket. The guy with the gum could’ve been any of three men.

“How many did you ask?” Erin said.

Lucy looked at Ben. “I only asked him for the witch.”

Ben took a folded sheet from his vest pocket and handed it to Erin. It was the back of a parts invoice. Four groups of names ran down the page, ten to a group. Beside the first ten, in pencil, was a note that said Ask Erin first.

“Forty?” she said.

“If you want them.”

She looked at the two folding chairs. She’d put one out for herself and one for Ben because he’d asked whether he could stop by. There was room for a visitor on the walk. There was barely room for the idea of forty.

Three weeks earlier, Erin had brought Lucy home after a kidney transplant. Their days still ran by alarms on Erin’s phone. There were bottles to organize, trips back for follow-up and a page on the fridge where Erin had written down questions as they occurred to her. Lucy had drawn a pumpkin beside the last question. She’d been hoping for Halloween until Erin sat at the edge of her bed and told her she’d be staying home this year.

“Nobody’s bringing me candy,” Lucy had said.

“I bought the kind you like.”

Lucy pushed her face into the pillow. “From a door, Mom.”

It took Erin until the next morning to understand what her daughter meant. Last year Lucy had spent forty minutes making a cardboard moon for her costume and another ten telling a man at the end of the street what it was. She’d had candy left in her bucket at Thanksgiving. Being seen in the costume was the part she’d wanted back.

Ben had stopped by the next day to tighten a loose hinge on the front gate. Lucy had called him over to the window. Erin had heard them discuss the purple hat and which way the star was supposed to point. She’d gone back to unloading the dishwasher.

Now she watched Ben unzip the canvas sack. The top layer was full of sealed candy. Underneath were folded capes, soft masks and a pair of green felt sleeves.

Marcy stepped closer. “Show her the other message,” she said.

Erin looked down at her phone. On the neighborhood page was a picture of Lucy’s window and a caption asking people to bring cash.

Part 3

Erin knew the photograph before she read the words. It was taken from across the street on the day Lucy came home. The bedroom shade was halfway down. One of the folding chairs had been there that afternoon because Erin had carried it out to sit while Lucy napped.

The post said the Halloween committee was accepting donations for a local family. It named Erin’s block and pointed people to a collection table at the corner. Somebody had shared it in a second group with a line of their own about motorcycles bringing candy. Erin could see how the two plans might look like one if the shared post was the first thing a person saw.

“Did you write this?” she asked Marcy.

“The committee page has three administrators.”

“That’s our window.”

“I know whose window it is.”

Erin felt for the back of the folding chair and sat. “Who said you could put it up?”

Marcy looked toward the corner. “Let’s get the sidewalk clear and talk after.”

Ben moved the sack farther into the driveway. The children in dinosaur tails had found a leaf to kick back and forth. Their father had lowered his phone. He was still standing near enough to hear.

A woman in a denim jacket hurried up from the corner with a roll of orange tickets sticking out of her pocket. Erin knew her as Jen from the Halloween table. Jen set a cardboard cash box on the second folding chair.

“Somebody asked me which part goes to the girl,” she said. “I told them I’d find out.”

Marcy picked up the box and handed it back to her. “Take that to the table, please.”

Jen kept both hands on it. “I put a separate envelope inside. I want to know what I’m supposed to tell the people who put cash in it.”

Erin looked at the window. Lucy was turning the empty tin in slow circles. She’d asked for a private visit from a man in a witch hat. Now a stranger at the corner could donate money because they knew where she slept.

“How’d you get forty people?” Erin asked Ben.

“Called ten,” he said. “They called the rest.”

“You told them about Lucy?”

“Told them a kid needed a Halloween at home.”

He tapped the invoice in Erin’s hand. The names had parking notes beside them. Two of the ten riders in the first group had volunteered to stay at the garage and bring the others up in pairs. The garage was close enough that they could walk. The only person who’d parked in the driveway was Ben, and he’d done that because Erin had told him he could.

Marcy pointed at the list. “Forty people coming to one window. You understand why I was worried?”

Erin did. The first thing she’d thought when she saw the number was how hard it would be to stop once everyone arrived.

“Can we do one first?” she asked Ben.

“Sure.”

Marcy’s phone buzzed. She read the screen and looked at the house.

“The photographer’s already here,” she said.

Erin took her hand off the chair. “What photographer?”

Marcy looked from Erin to the witch hat. “The one who’s supposed to take the picture of me giving Lucy her candy.”

Part 4

Erin waited for Marcy to explain how a photographer had become part of Lucy’s evening. Marcy zipped her jacket up another inch and said the businesses that paid for the block party liked to have a picture for their pages. She had told a volunteer to be at the house at quarter to six.

“What did you tell them they’d get?” Erin asked.

“A picture through the window. I’d hand her a bag.”

“You were going to ask me when?”

“I’m asking you now.”

Erin looked at the driveway. Marcy’s barricade was still where she’d dragged it. A minute earlier she’d been telling the neighbors she had put it there to protect Lucy.

“You can tell the photographer there’s no picture,” Erin said. “And I want the post with her window taken down.”

Marcy held her phone at her side. “We’ve already put it in the sponsor packet.”

“Then send them a correction.”

The father with the dinosaurs walked on. Jen went back toward the corner carrying the cash box, and two people followed her to ask about the money. When the driveway was quiet again, Erin went to the window and asked Lucy if she wanted the chair moved away from it.

“Is the witch leaving?”

Erin looked at Ben. He was holding the hat by the brim again. The silver star knocked gently against his knuckle.

“You can see him first,” Erin said. “Then we can decide about the others.”

Lucy looked at her own sheet of paper. “Can he come to the window like I’m the house?”

“What would he do?”

“Knock. I say who’s there.”

Erin moved one of the folding chairs sideways, using it to mark where she wanted each visitor to wait. She told Ben how she’d arranged the handoff. One person at a time. Lucy would sit back while Erin took the wrapped piece at the narrow opening. The visitor would step away after their turn. If Lucy wanted to rest, Erin would close the window and they would wait. Ben listened, then took his phone out and sent a message to the people at the garage.

“Ready?” he asked Erin.

She went inside to be beside Lucy. From there, the driveway looked different. Most of it was hidden by the wall below the window. Lucy could see the tops of people’s bodies once they got to the walk. The first thing she saw of Ben was the point of the purple hat rising past the sill.

He tapped once with a knuckle.

“Who’s there?” Lucy said.

“Witch.”

“What kind?”

“Bad at flying.”

Lucy laughed so hard she had to put both feet flat on the floor. Erin hadn’t heard that particular laugh since before the operation. It usually came when Lucy had asked a serious question and somebody gave her an answer worth the effort.

Ben passed a small wrapped chocolate to Erin through the gap and stepped away. Erin dropped it into the tin. It made a little flat knock, almost the same sound as Ben’s knuckle on the glass.

Lucy peered down at it. “You can send the ghost now.”

Erin reached for her phone. Before she could text Ben, a message from Jen came in with two screenshots. The first showed the neighborhood post as it looked now. The second showed it before somebody had edited the caption.

The original had gone up that morning. It promised a photograph with Lucy at her window, hours before Ben had arrived.

Part 5

Erin took the phone into the hall. Through the bedroom door she could hear Lucy telling Ben that the ghost was allowed to knock louder if it had trouble seeing through its sheet. Ben said he’d pass that along.

The original post hadn’t named Lucy. It had said the block captain would make a special delivery to a child spending Halloween at home after surgery. The donation line was right beneath it. Erin had told Marcy about the transplant in a text when she asked for help getting the driveway clear. She remembered how much she’d hesitated before hitting send. She had been relieved when Marcy wrote back, I’ll take care of the cars.

Jen called while Erin was still looking at the screenshots.

“I made the post,” she said. “Marcy sent me the picture and said you’d agreed. I edited it after I saw Ben in the driveway. I thought if I took out the bit about her delivering it, it could still be about the candy.”

“Did Marcy know Ben was coming?”

“I told her his club had asked the garage owner if a few people could park there. He’d said yes.”

Erin rested her forehead against the hallway wall. “Then what was the message she said she got?”

“The one from the garage owner. It says no engines on your block and no one going to the house until you say it’s okay. I can send you that too.”

Erin asked her to. Then she asked Jen to take the post down and stop accepting money connected to Lucy. Jen said she’d already set aside the cash and written down the names of the people she could find. She’d ask the other committee members to handle the rest.

Back in the bedroom, Lucy was counting the chocolate by touching the side of the tin with one finger. She looked up.

“Are we still doing the ghost?”

Erin wanted to close the curtain until she had finished every phone call. It would be easier to keep Lucy away from the window while people sorted out what they had said about her. Lucy had spent a lot of days waiting for adults to finish their conversations.

“Do you still want the ghost?” Erin asked.

“Yes. Can everybody else wait a second? I don’t want to miss him while I’m talking.”

Erin texted Ben. A woman in a white costume with soft fabric around the shoulders came up the walk. Her face was uncovered and her boots had silver buckles. Lucy recognized the boots immediately. It was Jo, who fixed school buses and once brought a broken marker light to Ben’s shop because Lucy wanted to see how it worked.

Jo knocked twice.

“Who’s there?” Lucy asked.

“Ghost.”

“Can you go through the wall?”

“Couldn’t even get through the garage door. Bear had to open it for me.”

Lucy gave her a point for the boots and one for being funny. Jo slipped a wrapped caramel to Erin and went back down the walk.

A second group was gathering by the garage. Erin could see bright fabric through the gap between houses. Then headlights swept over the bedroom wall and a woman stepped onto the sidewalk with a camera bag.

Ben met her at the end of the walk. Erin heard him ask who had invited her. The woman took out her phone and checked a message.

“Marcy,” she said. “She texted me five minutes ago that the family had changed their mind.”

Part 6

Erin went out through the front door and pulled it closed behind her. The photographer had already lowered her camera bag to the sidewalk. She introduced herself as Paige. She took family portraits on weekends and had agreed to volunteer for the committee that night.

“I was told I could shoot from here,” Paige said.

Erin showed her the message she’d sent Marcy. It was brief enough to read without scrolling. Paige read it, then opened her own thread. Marcy had written that Erin was comfortable as long as Paige stayed on the sidewalk.

“She didn’t ask me again,” Erin said.

Paige zipped the camera bag shut. “Do you want me to tell her I’m leaving?”

“I’d appreciate that.”

Paige stepped aside to make the call. Ben stood near the gate with the purple hat in one hand. The ink along the side of his neck was a little crooked where the design met an old scar. Erin had known him since Lucy was four. He’d been the person who fixed the front gate the first time, after Erin’s brother backed a trailer into it. He’d come over with the right screws and stayed long enough to drink the bad coffee Erin offered him.

“Why the lantern?” Erin asked him.

He looked down as if he could see the patch on his own back.

“One of the guys used to leave his shop light on when somebody was still riding home,” he said. “Rest of us started doing it.”

“Lucy likes the star better.”

“Fair.”

Erin looked up at the window. Lucy had found the cardboard moon she’d made the year before. The tape on the back had taken some of the paint off, and one corner had gone soft. She held it up when she saw Erin looking.

“Do you want me to put that in the window?” Erin called.

Lucy shook her head. She lowered the moon into her lap and held up a stack of paper squares. Erin recognized them from the kitchen counter. She’d thought Lucy was cutting scrap paper to make confetti.

“What are those?”

“Stars for the people.”

Erin went inside to see. Lucy had drawn something on each square. Some had one five-pointed star. Some had a circle with rays like the patch on Ben’s vest. The last few had marks Lucy had turned into faces because she’d lost count of the points.

“I made a lot,” she said. “I didn’t know if people would actually come.”

There were thirty-seven. Erin sat down with her and helped cut three more from the back of an old grocery list. Lucy drew on them while Erin watched the clock. The next riders waited until Erin opened the curtain again. Nobody tried the door.

A witch with green sleeves came up next. Then a superhero with a red cape cut from a tablecloth. Then a man in a paper crown who had forgotten to pick a character and called himself King of the Snack Drawer. Lucy passed each a paper star through Erin. Two riders walked back toward the garage comparing theirs under the streetlight.

Just before the second group finished, Jen came back down the sidewalk with the cash box. Marcy walked behind her. Her burgundy jacket was open, and she’d left her phone in her pocket.

Jen stopped at Erin’s gate. “She needs to tell you who put your house on the sponsor list.”

Part 7

Marcy stopped beside the barricade she’d brought over. Someone had nudged it closer to the grass so a stroller could get by. She looked at it for a second, then picked it up and carried it to the side of the walk.

“I did,” she told Erin. “I told the sponsors we had a family who’d let us do a delivery.”

“Before I’d agreed?”

“Before I asked.”

Jen put the cash box on a folding chair. She had a list of three people who’d given her money specifically for Lucy. Two were still at the corner and had already asked for it back. She’d spoken to the committee treasurer about contacting the third. Erin listened until she knew nobody needed her to take the box or sign anything for it.

Marcy said one of the businesses had offered to cover the cost of the lighted displays if the committee could show where its money went. The window photo was meant to be part of that pitch. She’d spent her own money on some supplies and wanted the committee to get enough sponsor funding to pay her back. When Jen mentioned the bikers, Marcy had worried the sponsor would see the window event without her in it and ask what the committee had provided.

“So you told people he was using her to collect money,” Erin said.

Marcy looked at Ben. He had taken his hat off and was holding it with the point down.

“Yes,” she said. “I said that.”

Ben pulled the brim straight. “Tell the people who heard it.”

Marcy took out her phone. Jen asked her to put the correction in the same neighborhood group. She posted that the riders had come by invitation, were making a private visit and had never been collecting money. She also wrote that the committee had announced a delivery without the family’s permission. Erin checked the post from her own phone. There was no photo and no address.

Then Marcy looked toward the window. “Should I tell her I’m sorry?”

Erin went inside to ask. Lucy was arranging paper stars along the sill in groups of five. She asked if Marcy could say it from the walk where the others stood. Erin said she could.

Marcy waited on the far side of the chair. She didn’t knock until Erin nodded.

“I’m sorry I told people about your window,” she said. “And I’m sorry I stopped your witch.”

Lucy leaned toward the opening. “He missed the first five minutes.”

“I know.”

“You can still see the last ones if you stay over there.”

Marcy looked where Lucy pointed. There was an empty folding chair beyond the gate. She sat in it. Erin hadn’t expected Lucy to offer her a place, and she was glad the chair was far enough back that Lucy could go on with her evening without having to keep an eye on it.

Over the next hour, the remaining riders came up the walk. Ben stayed near the gate, counting people in and waving the next one forward. A ghost with plaid pajama pants wanted to know whether they counted as a costume. Lucy told him they did if he slept in a graveyard. A rider in a blue cape let the wind turn him sideways and said it was the only flying he could manage. Each one knocked, passed a wrapped piece through the crack to Erin and went away carrying a paper star.

At seven forty, Erin had forty names checked off. Ben put his glove back on and said he ought to get the bike out of her driveway. Lucy counted the stars left on the sill.

There was one.

“Mom,” she said, “ask the first witch to come back. I have to give him something.”

Part 8

Ben had one boot over the seat when Erin called him back. He put it down, pulled the glove off again and walked to the same place on the path. This time he wore the hat with the brim high enough that Lucy could see both his eyes.

“Am I early?” he asked.

“You already came,” Lucy said.

“Thought so.”

She handed Erin the paper star. It had a lantern on it, with three rays drawn in orange. Erin had seen Lucy cut the other stars into squares. This one had an extra flap that folded up at the bottom. Inside was the wrapped chocolate Ben had given her at the start of the evening.

“You’re supposed to keep your candy,” he said.

“I have a whole tin.”

Ben looked at Erin. She took the little packet through the opening and held it out until he came close enough to take it. He opened the flap just far enough to see what was inside.

“Were you saving that for me the whole time?”

Lucy shrugged. “I didn’t know if witches got any.”

Ben tucked the paper star and the chocolate into the inside pocket of his vest. Erin watched him pat the leather once to make sure he’d found the pocket. He had a patch on the back that strangers saw before they saw his face. Inside, he had a piece of orange paper he’d have to remember to take out the next time the vest got wet.

The next morning the committee treasurer called Erin. The money set aside under Lucy’s name was being returned, and the committee had removed the window photo from its sponsor materials. Two committee members would handle the remaining sponsor correspondence. Marcy had stepped down as block captain and handed over the page and cash-box keys. The correction was still up. Erin asked that it stay there long enough for the same neighbors to see it.

Then she called Ben. His shop was open, and she could hear the air hose in the background.

“Did you really have forty people free on Halloween?” she asked.

“No. Had forty people who could get away for ten minutes.”

One had come straight from work. Another had gone back to walk his own children around the block. The man in the paper crown had cut it in the garage because the costume he brought turned out to be too small. Erin liked knowing that. Lucy’s two hours had been made out of a lot of other people’s ten minutes.

Lucy was at the kitchen table sorting candy by wrapper color. Erin asked whether she wanted to put the tin away for next year.

“No,” Lucy said. “I need it for the stars.”

“You gave them away.”

“I can make more.”

Erin put a grocery bag on the table for paper scraps. Then she looked out at the driveway. Yesterday she had almost sent Ben around back because a woman she trusted had told her what to see when she looked at his vest and his motorcycle. From the back of the house, Lucy would’ve missed the purple hat coming up past the sill. She would’ve missed the first knock.

That evening, Erin found Lucy taping the cardboard moon to the bedroom glass. From outside, it was a little off-center. Beside it Lucy had taped an orange paper lantern, low enough for someone standing on the walk to see.

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