The Girl Who Chased the Moon

  “I told you she’d be home any minute,” Julia said.

  “Am I interrupting something?” Stella asked hopefully, looking back and forth from Julia to Sawyer. “I can come back later. As a matter of fact, I don’t have to come back at all. I can be gone all night.”

  “You’re not interrupting anything. Good night.” Julia turned and jogged up the stairs to her apartment.

  “Night?” Stella said. “It’s barely five o’clock.”

  Julia locked the door behind her and went straight to her bedroom. She sat on the edge of the bed, then she fell back and stared at the long yellow squares of daylight stretching across the ceiling.

  She suddenly had a very big decision to make, one she thought she’d never have to make.

  Coming back here had messed up everything.

  HER FIRST six weeks at Collier Reformatory in Maryland were hard. There were some tough girls there. Julia spent a lot of time crying in her bed in the dorm, and using all her allotted phone time trying to call Sawyer. His maid always said he wasn’t home. Julia refused to call her father, or talk to him when he called, for doing this to her. Her therapist didn’t pressure her. Her therapy sessions were odd at first, but then she started looking forward to them.

  In fact, her therapist was the second person she told when realized she was pregnant.

  Julia was thrilled when she found out. In her mind, it meant she could go home and be with Sawyer. They would get married and move in together and raise their child. He could make her happy. He could make her better. She knew he could. He saw her. He was the only person who did.

  She called his house incessantly until she obviously wore the maid down. When Sawyer got on the phone, she was taken aback by his tone.

  “Julia, you have to stop calling here,” he said brusquely.

  “I … I’ve missed you. Where have you been?”

  Silence.

  “This place is horrible,” she went on. “They want to put me on medication.”

  Sawyer cleared his throat. “Maybe that’s a good idea, Julia.”

  “No, it’s not.” She smiled, thinking how wonderful this was going to be. “It might hurt the baby.”

  Silence again. Then, “What baby?”

  “I’m pregnant, Sawyer. I’m going to tell my therapist, and then my dad. I should be home soon.”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” he said quickly. “What?”

  “I know it’s a surprise. It was for me, too. But, don’t you see? It’s really the best thing that could have happened. I’ll come home and we can be together.”

  “Is it mine?” he asked.

  She felt the first string tighten around her heart, thin and sharp. “Of course it’s yours. That was my first time. You were my first.”

  He waited so long to say something that she thought he’d hung up. “Julia, I don’t want a baby,” he finally said.

  “Well, it’s too late for that,” she said, trying to laugh.

  “Is it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m sixteen!” He suddenly exploded. “I can’t be a parent! And I’m with Holly. This is the worst thing that could happen to me right now! I have plans.”

  A second string, then a third, tightened around her insides, making it hard to breathe. “You’re with Holly?” She knew he’d been dating Holly, but she’d assumed, after what had happened on the football field … the way he’d looked at her and touched her …

  How could he do that to her and still be with Holly?

  “I’ve always been with her. You know that. We’re going to get married after college.”

  “But that night—”

  He interrupted her, saying, “You were upset.”

  “It’s not just the baby, then?” she almost whispered. “You don’t want me?”

  “I’m sorry. I really am. I thought you knew.”

  You thought I knew? Her eyes started filling with tears and her breathing was heavy. She thought she might hyperventilate.

  He was supposed to save her.

  “I’ll take care of it,” she said, turning to hang up the pay phone. Sawyer might not want the baby, but she did. She would take care of it by herself.

  Sawyer misunderstood. “That’s good. It’s the right thing, Julia. I know it’ll be hard, but it will be over before you know it. Just get an abortion and everything will be fine. Let me send you some money.” His voice was so nice now, so relieved. She felt a wave of hatred so strong that it popped off her skin and caused a crinkling noise in the phone receiver.

  An abortion? He wanted her to get an abortion? He didn’t want the baby, but he didn’t want her to have it either. How could she ever have thought she was in love with such a person? “No. I can do it by myself.”

  “Let me do something.”

  “You’ve done enough,” she said, and hung up.

  Telling her father was horrible. When her therapist made her call him, he wanted her to come home right away, thinking she’d gotten pregnant at Collier. But she admitted that it had happened before she left Mullaby. Though he demanded to know who the father was, she never told him. In the end, everyone agreed that she should stay at Collier. She wasn’t the only pregnant girl there, after all.

  She started craving cakes around her third month. The sensation was unbelievable. There were times she thought she would go crazy with it. Her therapist told her it was just a normal pregnancy craving, but Julia knew better. This child growing inside her obviously had Sawyer’s magical sweet sense. When Julia couldn’t get enough sweets during the day, she started sneaking out of her dorm to go to the cafeteria. That’s where she baked her first cake. She became pretty good at it after a while, because it was the only thing that settled the baby. It had an unusual effect on the rest of the school, too. The smell of cake would slowly waft through the hallways while she baked at night, and girls in their dorm rooms, even the girls whose dreams were always dark, would suddenly dream of their kindhearted grandmothers and long-ago birthday parties.

  Julia’s therapist started talking to her about adoption options in her fifth month. She adamantly refused to consider it. But every session her therapist would ask, How do you plan to care for this child on your own? And Julia began to get scared. She didn’t know how she was going to do it. Her only choice was her father, but when she brought it up, he immediately said no. Beverly didn’t want a baby in the house.

  In the spring, in a flood of pain and fear so great she doubled over in French class, Julia went into labor. It came on so quickly that she actually gave birth in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. She could feel the baby’s frustration, her impatience, as she maneuvered her way to freedom. And Julia couldn’t stop her. As much as she wanted to, there was nothing she could do to keep this child physically bound to her any longer. Her daughter had a mind, and an agenda, all her own. After it was over, the baby proceeded to fuss about how hard her journey had been to anyone who would listen, the way old ladies in tweed coats liked to fuss about long, hot train rides into the city. It made Julia laugh, holding the squawking infant in her arms in the ambulance. She was perfect, with Sawyer’s blond hair and blue eyes.

  Julia’s father came to Maryland to see her in the hospital the next day, and she asked him one last time to take her and the baby home.

  Standing at the foot of the hospital bed, his ball cap in his hands, looking shy and out of place, he again said no. She gave up on ever having a real relationship with her father after that. Nothing would ever be the same.

  It was the hardest decision Julia had ever made, giving up her little girl. Now that the baby was independent of Julia’s body, she knew she couldn’t take care of her alone. She could barely take care of herself. She hated Beverly for not wanting a baby in the house, and she hated her father for being so weak. But most of all, she hated Sawyer. If only he had loved her. If only he had been there to help her. Then she could have kept the baby. He was depriving her of the one person in the world who would ever need he
r completely, the only person in the world she knew she would love for the rest of her life. No questions. No limits.

  She was told that a couple from Washington, D.C., adopted the baby. Julia was given two photos. One was the official hospital photo, the other was of Julia in the hospital bed holding her—warm and soft and smelling pink. Julia put the photos away immediately, because it hurt too much to look at them, only to find them years later in an old textbook when she was packing to move after college.

  It took a long, long time to feel fine again. She started cutting herself again not long after she was released from the hospital. Her school therapist worked tirelessly to get her admitted into a summer program sponsored by Collier because Julia wasn’t ready to go home. Julia still felt too vulnerable to go back to Mullaby after the summer, so her father agreed that she should stay at Collier for her senior high school year.

  She applied to and was accepted to college the next year. Though she hadn’t baked since she was pregnant, those months of practice made her proficient enough to get a job at a grocery store bakery to help her father pay for her college tuition. By this time, with the help of continued therapy sessions, Julia was able to think of Sawyer without the world turning a furious ember red around her, and she remembered what he’d told her about following the scent of his mother’s cakes home. It became a symbol to her. Maybe one day in the future, baking cakes would bring her daughter—who had a sweet sense like her father—back to Julia. Then she would explain why she gave her up. At the very least, it would carry Julia’s love to her.

  Wherever she was.

  Nearly twenty years later, Julia was still calling out to her. Knowing she was out there in the world somewhere was what got Julia through every single day. She couldn’t imagine a life without knowing that.

  Sawyer was living that unimaginable life.

  It was then that she knew she had to tell him.

  She thought she’d been miserable here before.

  The next six months were going to be hell.

  JULIA HEARD a light tapping at her door. She opened her eyes and was surprised to see that the sky was blackberry blue and the first star of the night was out. She got up and went to her bedroom doorway.

  “Julia?” Stella called. “Julia, are you all right? You’ve been awfully quiet up here. Sawyer’s gone, if that’s what you’re waiting for.” There was a pause. “Okay. I’ll be downstairs if you need me. If you want to talk.”

  She heard Stella walk back down the stairs.

  Julia rested her head against the doorjamb for a moment, then she walked into the hallway. She paused at the door to the stairs, then walked past it and into the kitchen.

  A hummingbird cake, she decided as she turned on the kitchen light. It was made with bananas and pineapples and pecans and had a cream cheese frosting.

  She would make it light enough to float away.

  She reached over to open the window.

  To float to her daughter.

  Chapter 10

  The car had an eight-track player.

  The steering wheel was huge, like it should be on a boat.

  The interior smelled like cough drops. And she loved it.

  Emily loved this car.

  When Vance’s mechanic dropped the car off that next day, she eagerly sat behind the wheel. But then she realized that she couldn’t think of anywhere she wanted to go. The more she thought about it, the more she didn’t really want to leave Mullaby. Although she would never say it out loud—she would never tell another living soul—there was a part of her now finding an odd comfort in her mother’s fallibility. Dulcie had set an impossible standard in Boston, and Emily thought she could never do enough, care enough, work hard enough. And sometimes she’d resented it, which made her feel even worse. But it turns out even Dulcie herself couldn’t live up to that standard. At least not here.

  Emily sat in the car until it became too hot, then she got out. She couldn’t go next door to visit, because Julia had left earlier. And she didn’t want to go back inside her own house, because Grandpa Vance was taking a nap, and the new butterfly wallpaper in her room made her nervous. She would swear it moved sometimes, and she couldn’t figure out how. She walked aimlessly to the back of the house. The yard was so overgrown that, at eye level, it was hard to even see the gazebo at the back of the property. Looking around, she was amazed that she’d come away with only a cut on her heel that night she’d chased the Mullaby lights.

  She hadn’t seen the light in the woods since she’d come back from the lake, and she was a little disappointed. Making sense of at least one thing here would be nice.

  With nothing better to do, she began to pick up twigs and fallen limbs from the yard. She checked the garage for a lawn mower, but didn’t find one. She did find some shears, though, and went to the gazebo and began to trim back the wild boxwood bushes, flustering a large frog who was hiding in the shade there.

  As she slowly worked her way around the gazebo, shortening the bushes so the posts and latticework could be seen, the fat frog followed her.

  At one point, she lobbed off a bit of boxwood and a twig fell onto the frog. She laughed and bent to lift it off of him, and that’s when she saw it.

  A large heart with the initials D.S. + L.C. carved inside.

  It was carved onto a back post of the gazebo, near the bottom, just like on the tree at the lake.

  Her fingers reached out to trace the lines of the heart. Logan Coffey had been in this backyard. She didn’t know why her eyes went to the woods, just a hunch, but there, on one of the trees that formed the border into the woods, was another carving.

  D.S. + L.C.

  She set the shears down on the steps of the gazebo and went to it. The frog followed her for a few steps, then stopped. She saw another heart farther in the woods. Then another. They formed a trail, too irresistible not to follow. Every three or four trees, there was a heart with the initials inside. Some of them were harder to find than others, and she spent at least fifteen minutes slowly making her way through the woods, until she finally broke into a clearing.

  This was exactly the same place the light had led her the night she’d chased it.

  The park on Main Street.

  She looked over to the bandstand, and there, carved into the base of the structure, next to the side steps, was the heart with the initials.

  She walked to the bandstand and knelt, touching the carving.

  Why did they lead here? Did they have something to do with her mother leading Logan Coffey onto the bandstand stage that night?

  She stood again and looked around the park. It was full of people that day. Some were having lunch, some were sunbathing. A couple of people were playing Frisbee with their dogs.

  And then there was Win Coffey.

  He was standing with a few adults in the middle of the park. One of the men was the big man from the party at the lake. She didn’t realize it before, but he was clearly related to Win—if the dark hair, the summer linen suit, and the bow tie were any indication. The adults were gesturing toward the street, to the large festival banner being erected, but Win’s head was turned the other way, looking at her.

  Without thinking, she ducked behind the bandstand. Then she immediately regretted it. What was the matter with her? In a small town, it was inevitable that they would run into each other. But she didn’t want him to think she was following him. Not that hiding as soon as she saw him helped that impression.

  She waited a few minutes before she straightened her shoulders and walked back around the bandstand. It was a public park. She had as much of a right to be here as he did.

  As soon as she came around from the back, she gave an exclamation of surprise.

  There he was, facing her. He was leaning one shoulder against the side of the bandstand, his hands in his trouser pockets.

  “Are you hiding from me?” he asked.

  “No,” she said quickly. “I mean, I didn’t know you’d be here. I didn’t even know I’
d be here. I was just following a trail of these from the back of my grandfather’s house.” She pointed to the carving.

  Without moving, he lowered his eyes to the heart. “They’re all over town. After my uncle died, my grandfather tried to scratch over all of them, until he realized there were too many around, more than he’d probably ever find.”

  “Dulcie Shelby and Logan Coffey. That’s what they mean?”

  He nodded.

  “Despite what everyone thinks of her, she wasn’t this person,” she found herself saying as she indicated the carving again. “Not when she left.”

  “I know,” he said. When she raised her brows, he shrugged. “I Googled her name the day after we met. I found out a lot about her. I read about the school she helped found in Boston. And I saw your photo on the school’s website.”

  That made her cheeks feel like she’d bitten into a green apple. She hoped it wasn’t the photo of her at the Christmas food drive. She looked constipated in that photo, yet it was always the one they used in the school literature. When Emily had protested, her mother had said, Don’t be vain. What you look like doesn’t matter. It’s the deed that matters. Emily used to think her mother had no idea what it was like to be a teenager. “You know a lot more about me than I know about you,” Emily finally said. “I don’t think that’s fair.”

  Win leaned in toward her, making her heart do a strange kick. His eyes went to her lips, and she suddenly wondered if he was going to kiss her. The crazy thing was, despite every-thing, there was a tiny part of her that wanted him to. “Does this mean you’re curious?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said honestly, swallowing. “Especially about why coming out at night caused your uncle to commit suicide. My mother might not have been a very nice person here, but what kind of secret is that to kill yourself over?”

  She didn’t realize what she’d said until he suddenly pulled back and gave her an assessing look. “You’ve learned a few things since we last talked.”

  “My grandfather said he didn’t tell me because he thought I was better off not knowing. He’s not thrilled that you took it upon yourself to be my tour guide into my mother’s past.”