Stranger in the Moonlight

  “Nice kid,” Uncle Ben said, and Kim turned back to him. “Don’t tell your mom but I went over to your house and did a little cleaning. Any of this look familiar?” He pulled a box toward the back of the car and tipped it down so Kim could see inside. Five of her favorite books were in there, her second-best doll, an unopened kit for making jewelry, and in the bottom was her jump rope.

  “Sorry, no pogo stick, but I got one of Rams’s old bats and some balls.”

  “Oh thank you, Uncle Ben!” she said, and followed Travis’s example and hugged him.

  “If I’d known I was going to get this, I would have bought you a pony.”

  Kim’s eyes widened into saucers.

  “Don’t tell your mom I said that or she’ll skin me.”

  Travis had left his mother and was looking at his new bike in silence.

  “Think you can ride it?” Uncle Ben asked. “Or can you only handle a little girl’s bike?”

  “Benjamin!” Kim’s mother said as she came out to see what was going on. Mr. Bertrand was still inside. As far as anyone knew he never left the house. “Too lazy to turn a doorknob,” Kim’s father once said.

  Travis gave Kim’s uncle a very serious look, then took the bike from him and set off at a breakneck speed around the house. When they heard the unmistakable sound of a crash, Uncle Ben put his hand on Mrs. Merritt’s arm to keep her from running to the boy.

  They heard what sounded like another crash on the other side of the house, and at last Travis came back to them. He was dirtier, his shirt was torn more, and there was a streak of blood across his upper lip.

  “Any problems?” Uncle Ben asked.

  “None whatever,” Travis said, looking the man straight in the eyes.

  “That’s my boy!” he said as he slapped Travis hard on the shoulder. He closed the lid of the SUV. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

  “What work do you do?” Travis asked in an adult-sounding voice.

  “I’m a lawyer.”

  “Is it a good trade?”

  Uncle Ben’s eyes danced with merriment but he didn’t laugh. “It pays the bills, and it has some good points and bad. You thinking of trying the legal profession?”

  “I rather admire Thomas Jefferson.”

  “You’ve come to the right place for him,” Uncle Ben said, grinning as he opened the car door. “Tell you what, Travis ol’ man, you get out of law school, come see me.”

  “I will, sir, and thank you,” Travis said. He sounded very adult, but the dirt on him, the twigs, and the bruises, made what he was saying funny.

  But Uncle Ben still didn’t laugh. He looked at Mrs. Merritt. “Good kid. Congratulations.”

  Mrs. Merritt put her arm around her son’s shoulders, but he twisted away from her. He didn’t seem to want Uncle Ben to see him so attached to a woman.

  They all watched Uncle Ben leave, then Kim’s mom said, “You kids go play. We’ll call you in time for dinner and afterward you can catch fireflies.”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Merritt said. “Go play.” She looked as though she’d been waiting for years to say that to her son. “Mr. Bertrand is going to teach me how to sew.”

  “Lucy,” Kim’s mom said, “I think I should tell you that Bertrand is using you for free labor. He wants his curtains repaired and—”

  “I know,” Lucy Merritt said, “but it’s all right. I want to learn to do something creative, and sewing is as good as anything else. You don’t think he’d sell me his machine, do you?”

  “I think he’d sell you his feet, since he rarely uses them.”

  Lucy laughed.

  “Come on,” Kim’s mom said, “and I’ll show you how to thread the machine.”

  For two weeks, Kim lived in her idea of heaven. She and Travis were together from early until late.

  He took to having fun as though he’d been born to it—which Kim’s mom said he should have been.

  While they played outside, inside the two women and Mr. Bertrand talked and sewed. Lucy Merritt used the old Bernina sewing machine to repair every curtain in the house.

  “So he can get a better price when he sells them,” Kim’s mom muttered.

  Lucy bought fabric and made new curtains for the bathrooms and the kitchen.

  “You’re paying him rent,” Kim’s mother said. “You shouldn’t be paying for them too.”

  “It’s all right. It’s not as though I can save the money. Randall will take whatever I don’t spend.”

  Mrs. Aldredge knew that Randall was Lucy’s husband, but she didn’t know any more than that. “I want to know what that means,” she said, but Lucy said she’d told too much already.

  At night the children reluctantly went inside their separate apartments. Their mothers got them washed and fed and into bed. The next morning they were outside again. No matter how early Kim got up, Travis was always waiting for her at the back of the house.

  One night Travis said, “I’ll come back.”

  Kim didn’t know what he meant.

  “After I leave, I’ll return.”

  She didn’t want to reply to that because she didn’t want to imagine him being gone. They climbed trees together, dug in the mud, rode their bikes; she tossed the ball, and Travis hit it across the garden. When Kim brought her second-best doll out, she was nervous. Boys didn’t like dolls. But Travis said he’d build a house for it and he did. It was made of leaves and sticks and inside was a bed that Kim covered with moss. While Travis made a roof to the house, she used her jewelry kit to make two necklaces with plastic beads. Travis smiled when she slipped one over his head, and he was wearing it the next morning.

  When it got too hot to move, they stretched out on the cool ground in the shade and took turns reading Alice and the other books aloud to each other. Kim wasn’t nearly as good a reader as he was, but he never complained. When she was stumped by a word, he helped her. He’d told her he was a good listener, and he was.

  She knew that at twelve he was a lot older than she was, but he didn’t seem to be. When it came to schooling, he seemed like an adult. He told her the entire life cycle for a tadpole and all about cocoons. He explained why the moon was different shapes and what caused winter and summer.

  But for all his great knowledge, he’d never skimmed a rock across a pond. Never climbed a tree before he came to Edilean. He’d never even skinned his elbow.

  So, in the end, they taught each other. Even though he was twelve, and she only eight, there were times when she was his teacher—and she liked that.

  Everything ended exactly two weeks after it began. As always, as soon as it was light outside, sleepy-eyed Kim ran out the back door, past the back of the big old house, to the wing where Travis and his mom were staying.

  But that morning, when Travis wasn’t already outside and waiting for her, she knew something was wrong. She started pounding on the door and yelling his name; she didn’t care if she woke the whole house.

  Her mother, in robe and slippers, came running out. “Kimberly! What are you shouting about?”

  “Where is Travis?” she demanded as she fought back tears.

  “Will you calm down? They probably just overslept.”

  “No! Something is wrong.”

  Her mother hesitated, then tried the knob. The door opened. There was no one inside, and no sign that anyone had been there.

  “Stay here,” her mother said. “I’ll find out what’s going on.”

  She hurried to the front of the house, but Mrs. Merritt’s car wasn’t there. It was too early to disturb Bertrand, but she was too concerned about Lucy and her son to let that stop her from going inside.

  Bertrand was asleep on the sofa—proving what everyone suspected, that he didn’t climb the stairs to go to bed. He came awake instantly, always glad for a good gossip. “Honey,” he said, “they tore out of here at two this morning. I was sound asleep and Lucy woke me. She wanted to know if she could buy that old sewing machine.”

  “I hope you gave it to her.”
>
  “Nearly. I charged her only fifty dollars.”

  Mrs. Aldredge grimaced. “Where did they go? Why did they leave in the middle of the night?”

  “All Lucy would tell me is that someone called to say her husband was returning and she needed to leave. She said she had to get there before he did.”

  “But where? I want to call her to see if she’s all right.”

  “She asked us to please not contact her.” He lowered his voice. “She said that no one must know that she and Travis were here.”

  “That sounds very bad.” Mrs. Aldredge sat down on the couch, then jumped up. “Heavens! Kim is going to be heartbroken. I dread telling her. She’ll be devastated. She adores that boy.”

  “He was a sweet one,” Bertrand agreed. “Skin like porcelain. I do hope he keeps it, and doesn’t let the sun ruin it. I think my good complexion comes from a lifelong belief in staying out of the sun.”

  Mrs. Aldredge was frowning as she went to Kim to tell her that her friend was gone and it was likely that she’d never see him again.

  Kim took it better than her mother thought she would. There were no tantrums and no tears—at least not that anyone saw. But it was weeks before Kim was herself again.

  Her mother took her into Williamsburg to purchase an expensive frame for the only photo she had of Travis. Kim and he were standing by their bikes, both of them dirty and smiling hugely. Just before Mrs. Aldredge clicked the shutter, Travis put his arm around Kim’s shoulders, and she clasped his waist. It was a sweet portrait of childhood and it looked good in the frame Kim chose. She put it on the table by her bed so she could see it just before she fell asleep and when she awoke every morning.

  It was a month after Travis and his mother left that Kim brought down the house. The family was just sitting down to dinner when Reede, her older brother, asked what she was going to do with the bike Travis had left behind.

  “Nothing,” Kim said. “I can’t do anything because of Travis’s bastard father.”

  Everyone came to a halt.

  “What did you say?” Mrs. Aldredge asked in a whisper of disbelief.

  “His bas—”

  “I heard you,” her mother said. “I will not have an eight-year-old using that kind of language in my house. Go to your room this instant!”

  “But, Mom,” Kim said, bewildered and already close to tears, “that’s what you always call him.”

  Her mother didn’t say a word, just pointed, and Kim left the table. She barely had the door to her room closed before she heard her parents burst into laughter.

  Kim picked up Travis’s picture and looked at it. “If you were here now I’d teach you a dirty word.”

  Sighing, she stretched out on her bed and waited for her dad to be sent to “talk” to her—and to slip her some food. He was the sweet one while her mother did the discipline. Kim thought it was very unfair that she was being punished for repeating something she’d heard her mother say several times.

  “Bastard parents!” Kim muttered and held Travis’s picture close to her chest. She would never forget him and she would never stop looking for him.

  One

  New York

  2011

  The big office sprawled across a corner of the sixty-first floor. Full-length windows went along two sides, offering breathtaking views of the skyline of New York. The other two walls had tasteful paintings chosen by a designer, but they gave no hint of the occupant. In the middle was a desk of rosewood, and sitting in a steel and leather chair was Travis Maxwell. Tall, broad shouldered, and darkly handsome, he was bent over papers and frowning.

  Another damned merger, Travis thought. Another company his father was buying. Did his desire to own, to control, never end? When Travis heard the door to his office open, he didn’t look up. “Yeah? What is it?”

  Barbara Pendergast—Penny to him, Mrs. Pendergast to everyone else—looked at him and waited. She didn’t put up with bad moods from anyone.

  Travis looked up at the silence and saw her. She was twice his age and half his size, but she intimidated the hell out of everyone but him. “Sorry, Penny, what is it?” She had worked for his father until just a few years ago. Together the two of them had gone from owning nothing until Randall Maxwell was one of the richest men in the world. When Travis joined the business, Penny decided to help him out. It was said that Randall Maxwell’s protests could be heard six blocks away.

  Penny waited a moment to give the full weight to her announcement. “Your mother called me.”

  “She what?!” Travis forgot about the merger as he leaned back in his chair and took a couple of deep breaths. “Is she all right?”

  “I’d say she’s better than all right. She wants to divorce your father because there’s a man she wants to marry.”

  Travis could do nothing but stare. Penny wore her usual boring, but expensive, suit. Her hair was pulled back, and she was looking at him over her reading glasses. “My mother is supposed to be in hiding, keeping a low profile. How can I protect her if she’s out in public? And she’s been dating?”

  “I think you should see this,” Penny said and handed him a photocopied newspaper article.

  It was from a Richmond newspaper and told of a fashion show for kids that had taken place in Edilean, Virginia, where his mother was staying, or more accurately, hiding. He scanned the article. Some rich woman had thrown a lavish birthday party for her daughter and there were some clothes designed by a Jecca Layton and—He looked up at Penny. “Sewn by Ms. Lucy Cooper.” He put the paper down. “That’s not so bad. Cooper is an assumed name, and there’s no photo.”

  “It’s not bad unless your father decides to go looking again,” Penny said. “Her love of sewing is a dead giveaway.”

  “What else did Mom say?”

  “Nothing,” Penny said. “Just that.” She looked at her notepad. “To quote her directly: ‘Tell Travis I need a divorce because I want to get married,’ then she hung up. You know she thinks you, her precious son, makes the world spin on its axis.”

  “My one unconditional love,” Travis said with a half grin. “Did she say who she wanted to marry?”

  Penny gave him a look. Travis knew there had always been great animosity from his mother to Mrs. Pendergast. For many years, Randall left his wife and child home, but he never went anywhere without Penny. “Of course she didn’t tell me,” Penny said. “But to answer before you ask, I don’t think she would have been stu—uh, unwise enough to let this unknown man in on who she is currently married to. So no, I don’t think the man is after her money.”

  “Would that be the money she stole from Dad, or the money she could get in a divorce settlement?”

  “Since I don’t believe in fairy tales, I’d say the three point two million she stole.”

  “I watch her accounts pretty carefully, and there have been no unusual charges. In fact,” he said proudly, “she’s been self-supporting for years now.”

  “Are you referring to the living she’s been earning with the hundred grand in equipment and supplies she bought with the embezzled money?”

  Travis gave her a look to let her know he’d heard enough. “I’ll take care of it.” Even as he said it, he dreaded what he saw as the future. His father would make a war of a divorce. It wouldn’t matter if his wife relinquished all claim to his assets and paid back what she ran away with—a pittance to him and legally half hers—he’d still use everything in his power to make his wife’s life a living hell. The deal Travis had made with his father four years ago was that he’d work for him if his father would leave Lucy alone. He wasn’t to move heaven and earth to find her, and if he did find her, he couldn’t torment her. It had been a simple bargain. All Travis had had to do was sell his soul to the devil—i.e., his father—to obtain it.

  “Anything else?” he asked Penny.

  “Mr. Shepard has asked to have dinner with you tonight.”

  Travis groaned. He was doing the legal work needed to buy Mr. Shepard’s compa
ny out of bankruptcy. Since the man had started his business thirty years ago, it wasn’t going to be a pleasant meal. “Helping Dad destroy a company will be a picnic after today.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Penny asked, her voice with a hint of sympathy in it.

  “Nothing. No! Wait. Don’t I have a date tonight?”

  “Leslie. This will be the third one in a row that you’ve canceled.”

  “Call—”

  “I know. Tiffany’s.”

  For all his complaining, when Travis glanced at the newspaper article on his desk, he couldn’t help smiling. Edilean, Virginia, had been the site of the happiest memories of his life—which is why when his mother ran away, she went there. Kimberly, he thought and couldn’t help the feeling of peace that came over him. He was twelve and she was just eight, but she’d taught him everything. He didn’t know it then, but he was a boy living in prison. He hadn’t been allowed to be with other children, had never watched TV or read a work of fiction. He may as well have been living in a cave—or a past century. Until he met Kim, he thought. Kim with her love of life. On his desk was a little brass plaque, the only personal item in the room. It read: I’M GOOD AT HAVING FUN. WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO SHOW YOU HOW? Kim’s words to him. The words that had changed everything.

  Penny was watching him. She was the only person he trusted to know the truth about his life. “Shall I make your plane reservations, or do you want to drive?” she asked quietly.

  “Drive where?” When she didn’t answer, he looked at her. “I . . .” He wasn’t sure what to say.

  “How about if while you’re at dinner tonight I buy a normal car—something that’s legal to drive on the streets—and you pack a bag full of normal clothes? Tomorrow you can drive down to see your mother.”

  Travis still wasn’t sure what to say. “Leslie . . .”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll send her enough diamonds that she won’t ask questions.” Penny didn’t like Leslie, but then she didn’t like any of the girls Travis dated. “If you can buy her off, it’s not love,” she’d said several times. Penny wanted him to do what his dad had done and find a woman who loved her family more than the contents of any store.