Stranger in the Moonlight

  “I’ve known Jecca for many years,” Kim said tersely, “and I can assure you that her father is not after your mother’s money.” She really and truly did not like what he was insinuating. She stood up. “I think I’ll go back to the reception now.”

  Travis didn’t say a word. Just as he’d known he would, he’d blown it with Kim. But then, he always messed up when it came to good girls. He didn’t call when he was supposed to, forgot birthdays, didn’t send a gift that she’d expected. Whatever he did seemed to be wrong—which is why he tended toward women like Leslie. Give her something shiny and she was happy.

  Kim got to the end of the path before a strong sense of déjà vu hit her. She was eight years old again, she’d just let her temper override her and thrown a clod of dirt at a boy. She then ran away and hid, waiting for him to come after her. But that boy hadn’t come. She’d had to go after him. In the weeks that followed she’d found out that the boy didn’t know how to do much of anything. Couldn’t skip rocks, couldn’t ride a bike. He knew lots about science but couldn’t put a blade of grass between his thumbs and make a whistle. He didn’t know anything about the really important stuff in life.

  She turned back to Travis. Just as he’d done so long ago, he was sitting there, not moving. She didn’t know what was in his head now—probably something he’d learned in a book—but it was obvious that he was as socially awkward now as he was then.

  Slowly, she walked back to the bench and sat down beside him, her eyes straight ahead. “Sorry,” she said. “My temper sometimes gets the better of me.”

  “Then you haven’t changed.”

  “And you just sat there, so neither have you.”

  “Maybe as children we’re the purest forms of ourselves.”

  “In our case, I think so.” She took a breath. “Joe Layton isn’t after your mother’s money. As far as I know, no one knows she has any or will receive any. I don’t mean to reveal a confidence, but Jecca said that her dad knows little about Lucy, whether she has kids or not, anything. Whenever he asks about her personal life, Lucy starts kissing him and—I guess you don’t want to hear the rest of that.”

  “I would prefer your descriptions to be less graphic.”

  She smiled at the way he spoke. His extensive schooling was in every syllable. “I understand. I think you can rest easy that they are together for love, not money.”

  When he said nothing, she put her hand on his arm—and Travis put his hand over hers. He had almost forgotten how caring she was. When they were kids she was appalled at the things he didn’t know. She seemed to have a checklist of what each and every kid in the world must know and she’d set about teaching him.

  Right now there were a few things he’d like to teach her. She looked so good in that dress in the moonlight that it was difficult to keep his hands off her. But she was looking at him as though he were a stray dog that she needed to rescue. He had to work to keep desire out of his eyes, but she seemed to want to give him a bandage.

  He knew he should let go of her hand, but her long fingers were—He lifted her hand. “Is this a scar?”

  She pulled out of his grasp. “Very unfeminine, I know. But it’s a hazard of my trade.”

  “Your trade?” Thanks to the Internet, he knew all about her jewelry shop. He’d followed her all through school, then back to Edilean, where she’d opened her own business. Kim never knew it, but Travis attended every one of her one-man shows while she was at school. One time, he’d barely escaped being seen. She’d come in with two other girls, a tall, slim, dark-haired one, and a short blonde girl with a figure that had every male in the room staring.

  But Travis only had eyes for Kim. She’d grown up to be as pretty as she’d been when they were children. And he liked the way she laughed and seemed to be so happy. Travis didn’t think he’d ever been that happy in his life—at least not since he’d left Edilean and Kim so many years before.

  “I make jewelry,” she said.

  He turned on the bench to look at her. “The jewelry kit!”

  She smiled. “You remember that?”

  “You had me open it. You got it . . . ?”

  “My aunt and uncle had given it to me for Christmas, but I wasn’t interested enough to even open it. I was an ungrateful child! It was in that box Uncle Ben brought to us.”

  “With my bicycle,” Travis said, his voice softening with the memory. “You were very creative with everything in that kit. I was amazed.”

  “And you were an excellent model,” she said. “No boy I knew would have let me put a necklace of beads around him.” She didn’t tell him that the pleasure of those two weeks and the jewelry kit were all tied together. Travis and jewelry and happiness were synonymous to her.

  “I still have that necklace,” he said.

  “Do you?” she asked.

  “Yes. Kim, that was the best two weeks of my childhood.”

  She started to say it was for her too, but she didn’t. “What are your plans about your mother?”

  “I don’t really have a plan. I just heard of this yesterday. She called . . .” He thought it best not to say “my secretary.” “And left a message saying she wanted to get married, so she needed a divorce. That’s all she said. It was a total shock to me. I thought she was living in an apartment in a house owned by a respectable older widow and they were sewing children’s clothes. Now I find out that Mom is doing back bends in front of the whole town.” He looked at Kim. “So, no, I haven’t come up with a plan. Mainly, I want—”

  “What?”

  “I want to know if this man Joe Layton is good for my mother. Forget love—she thought she was in love with my father. I want to know if he’s a good person and that he’s not going to browbeat my little mother.”

  Kim drew her breath in sharply. Jecca’s mother had died when she was young, and she’d been raised by her father. Joe Layton was a very strong-willed man who liked things done his way. All through college, there had been hundreds of girlfriend sessions where Jecca was tearing her hair out about some maddening thing her father had said or done. While the man could be very sweet, he could also be a serious pain in the neck. And he was very possessive! When Jecca fell in love with a man in Edilean, Virginia, Joe Layton had moved there to be with her—and his stunt had almost caused Jecca and Tris to break up.

  “What is it?” Travis asked.

  “I, uh . . .” She didn’t know exactly what to say. She was saved from replying by the sound of voices coming their way.

  Kim could tell from Travis’s expression that he didn’t want to be seen. At least not yet, before he saw his mother. “Follow me,” she said as she stood and lifted her long skirt to start running down a narrow path through the woods.

  “Gladly,” Travis murmured as he followed her. It was dark in the heavily wooded area, but there was enough moonlight to see Kim’s pale skin and the silvery blue of her dress. He loved watching her run.

  His eyes were so focused on her that he almost collided with what looked to be an old playhouse. The tall turret, shadowed in the moonlight, looked like where the evil witch in a fairy tale would live.

  “In here,” Kim said as she opened the door, then locked it behind them.

  Travis started searching for a light switch, but Kim caught his wrist and put her finger to her lips indicating he should say nothing. She motioned for him to get out from in front of the window.

  He leaned back against the door, close beside Kim.

  Outside they heard the voices of what sounded like teenagers.

  “Come on. I’m over here,” came a loud male whisper.

  “We’ll get caught.” It was a girl’s voice.

  “By who? Dr. Tris? He’s already on his honeymoon.” There was the sound of kissing. “I’ll bet that right now he’s doing what we want to do.”

  “I’d trade places with her,” the girl said in a dreamy voice.

  Kim looked at Travis, and they grimaced. The girl had said the wrong thing.

&n
bsp; “So now I’m not good enough for you?” the boy asked.

  “I just meant . . .” the girl said. “Oh, never mind. Let’s get back to the tent. My mom will be looking for me.”

  There was a loud turn of the door handle on the playhouse. “The damned thing is locked anyway,” the boy said.

  “Good!” the girl said and footsteps ran down the leafy path.

  When it was silent again, Kim let out her breath, looked at Travis, and they laughed. “Tomorrow the entire teenage population of Edilean will be wondering which couple got to the playhouse first.”

  “But it was just us oldies,” Travis said.

  “Speak for yourself. You’re the one about to turn thirty. I have years and years to go.” She moved to the right. “Come through here, but duck. The doorway is low.”

  He followed her into a very small second room, with a short daybed built into the wall.

  Kim motioned to the bed. “You are now looking at the love capital of Edilean. Well, the indoor one.”

  “If you have two in a town this size that must make Edilean the romance capital of the world.”

  “You have to have something interesting to do in a town that doesn’t have a Walmart.”

  Travis laughed as Kim sat down at one end of the bed and motioned for him to take the other. He had trouble fitting his long legs into the small space.

  “Here, stretch out. See how we fit?” she said. Their legs went to the sides of each other.

  “You and I always have fit together rather well,” Travis said.

  Kim was glad that the lack of light hid her expression. We’re friends, she reminded herself.

  “So tell me about Joe Layton,” Travis said and his voice was serious.

  “I don’t know him well, but he did boss Jecca around a lot while we were in school. But to be fair, all our parents did. My mother never let up on me. She wanted to know who I was dating, when I got in, and if I’d applied for a job yet.”

  “Sounds like she cares about you. How is she now?”

  “She demands to know who I’m dating, when I got in, and what the weekly gross for my shop is.”

  Travis laughed. “And your dad?”

  “My father is made of sugar. He truly is the sweetest man alive. My parents and my little sister, Anna, are on a long cruise right now. They won’t be back until the fall.”

  “So you’re in town alone?”

  “My brother, Reede, is here, and I do have a few relatives.” She thought he was being polite to ask so many questions about her when what he wanted to hear about was the man his mother wanted to marry. “I think Mr. Layton is a good man, but it depends on your mother, doesn’t it? From what you’ve said, she doesn’t seem to stand up for herself very well.”

  He took his time answering. “When I was growing up, my mother was a very quiet woman. I think she’d learned that to stand up to my father just made him worse. If she stayed in the background, it gave him the illusion that everything was under his control, so he didn’t need to reassert his authority.”

  “And what about you?” she asked. “What was your life like?”

  Travis tried to move on the little bed, but there wasn’t room. “I’m about to fall off this thing. Your feet are . . . Do you mind?” he asked as he picked up her feet and put them on his thigh.

  Kim would have died before she protested his movement.

  “Ow! Sorry, but the heels on your shoes are rather sharp and . . .”

  It took her about a quarter of a second to flick her pretty high-heeled sandals off and put her feet back on his thigh. He made it seem natural when he began to massage them. Kim thanked the Spirits of the Spas that yesterday she’d had a mani-pedi. Her heels were as smooth as glass.

  “Where were we?” he asked.

  “Uh . . .” Kim couldn’t remember. No man had ever given her a foot massage.

  “Oh yes, you asked about my life. The truth is that you changed everything.”

  “Me?”

  “I didn’t grow up like other kids. We had a big house on a hundred acres in upstate New York. The place was built by a robber baron around the turn of the last century and it was a testament to his greed. Very high ceilings and lots of dark paneling. It suited my father perfectly. My mother and I lived there with a houseful of servants—all of whom became like family to us. We hardly ever saw my father, but his presence was always there.”

  Travis’s thumbs caressed the ball of her left foot, his fingers sliding between her toes. It wasn’t easy for her to comprehend what he was saying.

  “Until that summer when my father went to Tokyo and my mom drove us to Edilean, I had no idea that my life wasn’t like other people’s. You taught me how other kids lived, and I’ll always be grateful to you for that.”

  “I think you’re making it up to me now. Travis, where in the world did you learn to do that?”

  “Thailand, I think,” he said. “Or maybe it was in India. Somewhere. You like it?”

  “If I pass out from ecstasy, pay me no mind.”

  “Can’t have that, can we?” he said and tucked her feet to the side of him. “Tell me more about Joe Layton.”

  Kim let out a sigh of disappointment that he’d stopped rubbing her feet, but she sat up straighter. “I don’t have any answers. Jecca complained a lot about her father, but she also loves him very much. I know she’s the light of his life. When she was younger, he wanted her with him every minute. The first summer she went back home from college, she had to beg and plead to get to visit me for just two weeks. And Mr. Layton scrutinized every man Jecca so much as looked at. She said that Tristan—the man she married—paid a bride price by giving her dad a building.”

  “For his hardware store?”

  “Yes,” Kim said.

  “Is the store open yet?”

  “No. There was a lot of remodeling, rebuilding actually, that had to be done. Mr. Layton had some friends of his come down from New Jersey to do it. He and Jecca had a big fight, as she said there were good contractors in Virginia, but he wouldn’t listen to her.”

  “Sounds like a man who likes to have his own way,” Travis said, frowning. “My father is like that. He has to rule over every situation.”

  “You think your mother said yes to Mr. Layton because he’s . . . He’s what’s familiar to her?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. I wish there was a way I could see them together—but only if he didn’t know who I was.”

  “You’re right,” Kim said. “If you’re introduced as Lucy’s son, Mr. Layton will be on his best behavior with you. You’d never see anything close to the truth.” Her head came up. “Would your mother agree to—”

  “Not telling him who I am?” Travis asked. “That’s what I’m wondering. I don’t know. I find women extremely unpredictable. My mother could laugh and agree, or she could get angry and ask how dare I think I know more about people than she does.”

  Kim had to laugh. “Spoken like Mr. Spock.”

  “Is he someone in Edilean?”

  “No,” she said. “He’s someone from TV. My parents’ generation. Do you often find missing pieces in your education?”

  “Whole decades,” he said with sincerity. “People make references to things I’ve never heard of. I have to watch other people to see whether to laugh or not. However, I’ve learned to never ask what the hell they’re talking about. That gets me branded as something akin to being an alien.”

  Kim laughed more because that’s just what she had done. “You can ask me anything and I’ll do my best to answer it.”

  “I’ll take you up on that.” He paused. “So tell me, are Dr. Spock and Mr. Spock the same person?”

  “No. Far from it. My dad has DVDs of Star Trek episodes, so I’ll lend them to you.”

  “I’d like that very much,” Travis said as he suppressed a yawn. “Sorry, but it’s been a very long day. I meant to be here this afternoon so I could talk to my mother right away. But my father had something he wanted
me to do, so I got a late start.”

  Kim turned around and put her bare feet on the floor. “Have you eaten? And where are you staying?”

  “Unless Edilean has a hotel and a restaurant open past—what is it now? Nine-thirty?—I’ll be going into Williamsburg.”

  Kim decided not to think too hard before she spoke. “I have a guesthouse and a refrigerator full of food. It’s really just a tiny pool house that the previous owners made into a place for their son to stay when he visited. When I bought the house, my brother, Reede, said he would move in there, but it’s too small for him. He took over Colin’s—he’s the sheriff—old apartment, but he hates that too. Reede does, not Colin, although Colin hated the apartment too.”

  She stopped before she made a complete fool of herself.

  “I would be honored to accept,” Travis said softly. “As for dinner, I’d take you out, but . . .”

  “The old cliché: We roll up our sidewalks at nine.”

  “When did you get sidewalks?”

  “I am wounded!” Kim said. “We’ve had sidewalks for three years now. Next year we’re getting electric streetlamps.”

  “I bet the lamplighter is crying over the loss of his job,” Travis said.

  “We married him off to the cobbler’s daughter, so they’re happy.”

  They laughed together.

  Three

  As she drove home, Kim marveled at the fact that Travis had returned. She kept checking the rearview mirror to make sure she hadn’t lost him. He was driving an old BMW that didn’t even have an automatic transmission. Maybe she could teach him that he didn’t need to shift gears.

  She was dying to ask him thousands of questions about what he’d done in the last years, but she thought it would be better if he told her at his own pace. She knew he worked for his bastard of a father—the word made her smile in memory—and his father had money. But if his car was any indication, it looked like he didn’t share it with his son.

  Kim thought about the horror of what Travis’s current life must be like—and why he was doing it. To give up his own life to protect his mother! How heroic was that?