The Girl Who Chased the Moon

  “That’s a very elaborate story,” she said.

  “Emily, you’ve even seen me. In your backyard at night.”

  That gave her a start. “You’re the light in my backyard? You’re the Mullaby lights?”

  “Yes.”

  He could tell her mind was working, trying to sort it all out. “Then why have you stopped coming around?”

  “I come every night. But your grandfather sits on the kitchen porch below your balcony and tells me to go away before you can see that I’m there.”

  “My grandfather knows?” Her voice was pitching higher.

  “Yes.”

  “Prove it.” She looked around and saw the closet door. She walked over to it and opened it. There was nothing inside but a rain jacket and a single water ski. “Here, come here.”

  He walked over to her and she herded him into the closet and followed, closing the door behind them. It was a tight fit. She waited a few moments in the pitch black before she said, “Ha! I don’t see you glowing.”

  “That’s because it takes moonlight,” he said patiently.

  She snorted. “Well, that’s convenient.”

  “Actually, no, it’s not.”

  “This is ridiculous,” she said, and he felt her fumbling to find the doorknob.

  “Wait,” he said, and reached out to stop her. His hand landed on her hip and she suddenly stilled. “Meet me tonight at the bandstand. At midnight. I’ll show you.”

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked in a whisper. “Is this some elaborate plan?”

  She caught him off guard with that. If she knew he was manipulating her, why was she letting him? “Plan?”

  “For getting back at my mother for what she did.”

  “No,” he said. “I told you before, I don’t blame you for what she did.”

  “But you’re re-creating that night with my mother and your uncle.”

  “It has nice symmetry, doesn’t it?”

  “Okay,” she said unhappily. “I’ll be there.”

  He almost laughed. “You don’t have to sound so enthusiastic.”

  “This would be easier if I didn’t like you so much.”

  “You like me?” He felt both elated and ashamed. She didn’t answer. “How much?” he asked quietly, the air filling with tension.

  “Enough to meet you tonight, even though I’m pretty sure you have something else planned other than glowing in the dark.”

  “That isn’t enough?” He could sense her holding her breath when she realized how close his face was to hers. “I’m knotted up with you,” he said. “Don’t you feel it? From the moment we met. I was meant to show you.”

  “I need to go.” She opened the door, and a blinding burst of light hit them. She was gone in seconds.

  He caught up with her on the deck as she was putting on her shoes. “Don’t go through the woods tonight. Come into the park from the street.”

  She stood and stared at him for a long time. He started to reach out his hand to touch her, to reassure her as much as himself, but she gave him a brief nod before turning and quickly making her way down the steps to the beach.

  He watched her walk away, then he put his hands in his pockets and walked slowly, thoughtfully, back into the house.

  He stopped when he entered the living room.

  His father was sitting in the big black leather chair by the couch, his legs crossed.

  Win was so astonished he couldn’t speak for a moment. He could usually feel when his father was looking for him. Finally he said, “When did you get here?”

  “Just now. I called earlier to ask you not to block your mother’s car when you come home, because she’s leaving early tomorrow with Kylie to go to Raleigh to shop for school clothes. Penny said you were on the beach. I asked with whom. She said a girl. I asked her to describe the girl, and it sounded like Emily Benedict. But I thought, No, Win knows better than that.”

  That must have been the phone call Penny had answered earlier. Win had to give her credit for doing what she could. She’d told his father he was on the beach with Emily, not that he was in the house alone with her. “So you came out to see for yourself,” Win concluded. He took a deep breath and said, “I like her.”

  “I liked a girl once, when I was your age,” Morgan said, steepling his fingers. “Her name was Veronica. She was new to Mullaby, too. All I wanted to do was spend all day staring at her. I asked her to a matinée, and your grandfather found out. He slapped me, then locked me in my room. When I didn’t show up at the movie theater, Veronica came to the house to ask if I was all right. Your grandfather was horrible to her. He told her that my asking her out was just a joke. She hated me after that. But he made his point.”

  “What point?”

  “That we weren’t made for normal lives.”

  “Did your father treat your brother the same way?” Win asked as he took a seat on the couch.

  “The rules weren’t any different for Logan.”

  Win had never known that his grandfather hit his father. Win remembered the old man vaguely. He was very quiet when Win knew him. People used to say he was never the same after his youngest son, Logan, committed suicide. It made sense now that Logan and Dulcie Shelby had to sneak around. Win’s grandfather obviously would have slapped Logan and locked him in his room if he’d found out. It all seemed so ridiculous now. The extreme measures. The furtive prowling. The secret was out and it couldn’t be taken back.

  “It’s different now,” Win said.

  “You say that as if different is better,” Morgan said. “If we wait long enough, people will forget what they saw, and things can go back to the way they were. It’s just a matter of time. Sometimes I even hope your mother has forgotten.”

  “I don’t want to go back to the way things were.”

  “You don’t have a choice. You’re grounded. And you’re not allowed to associate with Emily anymore.”

  That wasn’t unexpected. “That girl you liked. Didn’t you ever want to tell her?”

  Morgan uncrossed his legs, then crossed them again. He stared at his cuticles awhile. “No,” he finally said. “I liked the illusion. When I was with her, I was …”

  “Normal,” Win finished for him.

  Morgan nodded. “It was like that with your mother for a while. Then Logan was tricked into showing everyone what we could do. Your mother and I had only been married for two years. Nothing has been the same. She’s never forgiven me for not telling her, for making her find out with the rest of the town.”

  Every Coffey man had a different way of telling the woman he married, but it was always after the ceremony. A tradition, like all the others, that made no sense. Win had often wondered, if Logan had never revealed the family secret, would his father have ever even told his mother?

  “Mom loves you,” Win said, certain that it had been true at least once.

  Morgan got up and headed for the front door. “She loves me in the daytime. Everyone loves us in the daytime. Trust me on this, Win. I’m trying to save you some misery.”

  Chapter 14

  Julia parked her truck by the Dumpster behind the restaurant and thought, What in the hell have I just done? Sawyer had gotten her so mad that she’d slept with him. Or was that really the reason? Maybe it had just been the excuse she’d needed. But everything was messed up now. She didn’t know what to do. There was no goal now, no plan. And now she had to go into her restaurant, which was already packed, wearing the same clothes she’d been wearing yesterday, and smelling of him. She adjusted the rearview mirror and looked at herself. God, she even had beard burn.

  She groaned and put her head on the steering wheel. She could go home, she supposed. But then people might come by and ask where she’d been, if something was wrong. It wasn’t worth all the additional explaining. And Sunday was the busiest day at the restaurant, the day that brought in the most money. She had to do this.

  She tried to smooth her hair back a little, but it didn’t help much
. She sighed and got out.

  Coming in through the back meant walking a few steps into the seating area itself, just past the restrooms. She tried to sneak in, but found herself stopping when she saw just how full the place was. She knew how well the business was doing from a financial standpoint, but it was an entirely different experience to see it for herself. Her father would have loved this. He would have been out there talking to people, making them feel welcome, catching up on news. For a moment, she could even see him, in his T-shirt and jeans, ball cap and half-apron He was a wisp of man, another ghost in her life. But then someone passed by her line of vision and she lost him. She suddenly wondered, when she left this place, would he still be here? Would his memory live on?

  “Hey, Julia!” someone called from a table, and several people turned to her. More people called out. A few waved. A couple of old ladies she’d gone to church with when she was a kid even got up to invite her to the Sunday night service. Normally, she was here so early that she never saw these people. Oh, she would see them in the grocery store and on the street, but they were never this friendly. For some reason, seeing her here made it different for them. Here, she was the restaurant owner. She was the reason they still had this place to come to, to gather, to socialize. Here, she was Jim’s daughter. And they saw in that something to be admired.

  Julia smiled at them, a little dazed, and sidestepped her way into the kitchen.

  Hours later, in the thick of the lunch rush, Julia finally finished her cakes. They were being sliced and served even as she stood behind the counter and wrote the names of the day’s cakes on the chalkboard.

  She didn’t know it, but while she was in the kitchen, her stepmother, Beverly, had come in, but obviously not to eat. She was waiting for Julia at a table near the door. When she got up, the couple she’d been sitting with looked relieved.

  “Julia!” Beverly said as she approached, waving a large brown envelope. Several men looked her way. “I stopped by Stella Ferris’s house looking for you because you’re never here at the restaurant at lunchtime. What are you doing here at lunchtime? You’re only here early in the morning. Everyone knows that. You should set a routine and stick to it.”

  Julia was too tired, both emotionally and physically, to deal with Beverly today. She set the chalkboard down. “Let’s talk some other time, Beverly. I’m exhausted and I want to go home.” And where was that, exactly? she thought. Her apartment at Stella’s? Her dad’s old house? Baltimore? Nothing was clear anymore.

  “No, no, no. I’m put out enough with you already, missy. If I had known you’d be here, I would have come here first instead of stopping at Stella’s house and waiting for you. That woman is such an odd duck. What are you doing here at lunchtime?” she asked again. “You’re never here at lunchtime.”

  “I own this place, Beverly. I can come and go anytime I please.”

  “Speaking of which … Excuse me, hon,” she said to a man sitting at the counter as she hipped her way between him and the man beside him. It was a tight fit, but she didn’t seem to mind. Neither did the men. “Here’s the surprise I was talking about!” She slapped the envelope on the counter in front of Julia. “Your father would be so proud of me. I had my lawyer draw up partnership papers for this place. All you have to do is sign over half of J’s Barbecue to me. That way, when we sell it, we can split the profit.”

  The men on either side of Beverly looked at Julia curiously, waiting, as Beverly was, for her to say something. People at a nearby table heard, too. The news soon made its way around the room like smoke.

  Julia stared at the envelope on the counter. This shouldn’t have mattered, but it did. Just like last night shouldn’t have mattered, but it did.

  At least a full minute passed before Beverly began to look uncomfortable. “Now, Julia, you know I deserve this.” She leaned in and said in a softer voice, “I thought we had an understanding.”

  “My understanding,” Julia said, finally looking up from the envelope, “is that my father loved you, but you left him.”

  That had the restaurant quiet in seconds.

  Beverly scooped up the envelope. “Obviously, you’re cranky. From the look of you, you haven’t had much sleep. And don’t think I haven’t noticed that those are the same clothes you were wearing yesterday. Clean up a little, and I’ll meet you outside.”

  “No, Beverly. This ends here,” Julia said, and it all came flooding out. “You were everything to him, to the detriment of his relationship with me. I ceased to exist when you came into his life. These scars you like to point out every time you see me were because he wouldn’t look at me once you appeared. He worked damn hard at this business, but it was never good enough for you, was it? When it stopped making money, as paltry as it had been, you left him. Do you honestly think I’m going to give you half of it? That you deserve it?”

  Beverly pursed her thin lips, which were lined in pearly peach. “You could learn a thing or two about casting stones. You left him first. And you were the reason he was so deeply in debt. It was all your fault, missy, so don’t get all high and mighty on me.”

  Julia couldn’t believe her gall. “How could I be the reason he was in debt?”

  Beverly laughed resentfully. “How do you think he paid for that reformatory you went to? What little he made was still too much to apply for aid, and because you were from out of state, the fee was even higher. He mortgaged everything he had for you, you ungrateful girl. And I still didn’t leave him then. I only left when Bud started showing an interest in me and your father didn’t say a word about it. He stopped appreciating me a long time ago. All he talked about was you. How you were the first in his family to go to college, how you lived in the big city, how you were making your dream come true. He conveniently forgot that you tried to shred yourself to pieces, that you got knocked up at sixteen, that you took all his money and then never came back to see him.” Julia could see the surprise on the faces of some people in the restaurant. What people didn’t know about the scars on her arms, they inferred, but no one knew she’d been pregnant when she left.

  As blindsided as she was by this news, by what her father had sacrificed for her, something in her mind clicked, and it made perfect sense. He’d never been good at expressing himself. She’d spent a long time in therapy, trying to adjust her expectations, especially from the men in her life. She’d thought she’d wanted grand gestures and expressive declarations, because her father never gave her that. Sometimes she thought that even falling for Sawyer when she was a teenager, how larger-than-life he was, was looking for something missing in her relationship with her father. But how could she have missed this? Everything her father did was quiet. Even loving her. The tragedy was that no one in her father’s life had ever understood that. Everyone had left him because they’d hadn’t been quiet enough to hear him. Not until it was too late.

  But no, she thought. It wasn’t too late.

  Tears came to Julia’s eyes. She wiped them away. She couldn’t believe she was doing this in front of everyone. “He was a good, uncomplicated man,” Julia said. “And he deserved better than us both. You’re not going to get any piece of this restaurant, Beverly. No one is. This was the one thing that never let him down. His only constant. Too many people have taken too many things from him as it is.” She pointed to the door. “You’re not welcome here ever again.”

  “Oh, I’ll be back,” Beverly said, sashaying to the door. “When you leave, I’ll be right back in here and there won’t be a thing you can do about it.”

  “I’ll be sure she knows she’s not welcome,” Charlotte, the day manager, said from behind Julia.

  “So will I,” the new waitress said.

  “I’ll remind her,” one of the men at the counter said.

  “Me too,” said someone across the room. The restaurant then became a chorus of agreement.

  Beverly looked aghast. She glared at Julia. “See, this is what you do! You go and leave all sorts of trouble behind.”

/>   “I’ve got news for you,” Julia said. “I’m not leaving.”

  The restaurant erupted into applause as Beverly left.

  Julia stood there, breathing heavily, and thought again, What in the hell have I just done?

  “THERE YOU are!” Stella said, meeting her at the door when Julia finally got home. She was wearing what she called her day gown, a silk robe with buttons her mother had given her. She said it made her feel like a lady of leisure. “I’ve been so worried! Where were you last night? Even your evil stepmother came by looking for you.”

  “Why did you sleep with Sawyer?” Julia blurted out, right there in the foyer. She hadn’t meant to say it. She was as surprised as Stella looked.

  “What?” Stella said.

  “Sawyer said you slept together, three years ago. Do you love him?”

  “Oh, that,” Stella said. “It was terrible. Not the sex … at least what I remember of it. But I was a mess. My divorce had just been finalized and all my money was gone. Sawyer came by that evening to give me a bottle of champagne to celebrate my freedom. I got drunk and I climbed all over him. I’m not proud of it. Believe me, I never wanted to be the woman men had sex with out of pity. It was just once, and I tried to avoid him after that, but he wouldn’t let me. Sawyer’s a good guy. A good friend. Why do you ask?” Stella clutched at her heart dramatically. “Oh my God! That’s where you were last night! You totally did it with Sawyer!”

  Julia didn’t answer, but she must have given something away with her look.

  Stella drew her into her arms for a tight hug. “I’m so happy. That man has always had a thing for you. I have no idea why he waited so long. I used to tease him that he was afraid of you.” She took Julia’s hand and led her to the living room, where she had been fortifying herself with a pitcher of Bloody Marys. “So, tell me everything! What happened? When? How many times?”

  Julia shook her head as she sat down and accepted the drink Stella gave her. “Uh-uh. No way.”

  “You have to tell me. You’re my best friend,” Stella said, which startled Julia. “It’s the code. I tell you everything that’s happening in my life.”