Page 88 of The King of Halloween
“All right.” Adam stuck out his arm, and his mother took it. “But they’re going to get jealous.”
“Oh?”
“Of me having Anoka’s prettiest girl on my arm.”
She blushed to her dyed hairline and slapped him with a limp, “Stop.”
It was easy to make his mother happy. They didn’t even have to try. She just seemed excited to be alive. Even in the dark days after their dad passed, she’d sit in her favorite chair and hum the song he’d play on his stupid harmonica. He was terrible at it, but no one had had the heart to tell him.
Adam couldn’t wrap his mind around parents only bestowing affection on whoever earned it instead of whoever was in the vicinity. To think of siblings as competition instead of the girl with the soul of a Victorian serial killer who kept stealing his Legos.
“Do you have errands to run downtown?” Adam asked.
“No,” his mother said.
“Are you meeting up with someone?”
“No.”
Okay, now he was confused. “Don’t tell me, you’re learning poker from a card shark so you can fleece Joyce for all she’s got?”
She giggled and shook her head. “Of course I’m not.”
“So why…?”
“It’s a nice day, and I wanted to walk with my son.”
Adam couldn’t find an argument against that, so he held his tongue and took in the lingering leaves dancing on the branches. It was a beautiful day. The sky was as blue as it could be, with sunbeams striking at just the right angle to cast little rainbows down the sidewalk. A handful of cars whizzed past, but most people were at the fun run.
He’d silenced his phone hours back so no one could reach him. If they needed someone in a pumpkin costume to run behind people so bad, Marianna could handle it. After Raj had left in a flurry, Adam stared at his calendar with new eyes. He’d given damn near every last day to the committee. Not just the events, or the hosting gigs in the pumpkin, but the meetings, the plannings, the buildings. He made his whole life the Halloween king, because he didn’t have anything else to fill it.
And the one damn time he thought maybe that could change, he wanted to be casual.
“I’m casual, right, Mom?”
She peered over at him in his three-piece suit and perfectly folded pocket square. “No one’s more casual, dear. If anything, I think you could use a bit more formality. You don’t even wear a top hat or a monocle.”
He’d tried casual for years. He’d lived in hoodies, ratty jeans, tennis shoes. Every knot and bent nail that made him Adam Stein was sanded away in the hopes that one guy would look at him and think “I can put up with that.” And for what? Being who they wanted never worked, so why would being himself be any different?
“Your father used to walk me like this every afternoon.”
“He did?”
His mother smiled serenely to herself. “He would close the store and walk all the way to the diner. If my shift was running long, he’d order a slice of pie—blueberry—then escort me to the store.”
“Why?” It wasn’t like Anoka had roving gangs about to take out random women on the streets.
His mother patted his hand, then looked up at him. “Because he was so excited to see me, he couldn’t wait another two hours. The silly goose.”
Silly. His father had probably lost thousands of dollars in business over the years just because he’d wanted to talk to his wife. Most people would call that dumb, anti-American even. Everything for the all mighty dollar.
“Mom…?”
“I wanted to believe that love like that could exist for everyone. That it didn’t have to be all helicopter rides to Paris and champagne on top of a skyscraper.”
“You have rather expensive romantic tastes.” Adam laughed.
“Sometimes love is a man sitting in a diner eating blueberry pie.”
