Evvie scowled as she placed the empty plate in the sink. “Almost forgot. There’s a man coming by later to do some work on your gran’s greenhouse. It’s in awful shape, but he swears he can fix it.”
“Does that really make sense? Spending money on repairs when the new owners will probably just knock it down?”
“Probably not, but your gran set it up before she died. She loved that greenhouse.”
“I know she did,” Lizzy said somberly, opting to let the matter drop. “Thanks for breakfast. I’ll be back in a bit.”
Lizzy stepped out the back door and headed for the greenhouse, as good a place as any to begin her tour. Evvie’s assessment of its condition had been generous at best. Several of the glass panes were cracked; others were missing entirely. Inside, the tables were mostly bare, strewn here and there with rusty tools and stacks of empty clay pots. In one corner, several bags of potting soil had split open, spilling their contents onto the packed earth floor.
She walked the lavender fields next, or what remained of them. Hidcote, Grosso, Folgate, Lavance. They had all grown here once upon a time—Althea’s pride and joy. Now, only stunted patches of green remained, leggy and budless after too many untended winters. The sight made her heart sink. Why hadn’t Althea picked up the phone and asked for help?
The question quickly segued to another. Would she have come? If Althea had in fact picked up the phone, would she have dropped everything and returned to the farm? She wanted to believe the answer was yes, but she couldn’t help wondering. The truth was she’d never considered such a scenario, preferring to pretend Althea would live forever, because anything else was simply unthinkable.
She arrived at the apple orchard a short time later to find that it had fared only slightly better. While the trees themselves seemed not to have suffered, the ground was riddled with last year’s fruit, left to decay where it had fallen, luring swarms of greedy yellow jackets. A small wooden shed stood beyond the last row of the trees, its shingled roof sagging and green with moss. In better days, it had been used to store bushel baskets and picking poles for the locals who would descend each fall to pick their own apples—back before the Gilman girls went missing.
Strangely enough, speculation about Althea’s role in the disappearance had initially been a boon for business, luring curiosity seekers eager to purchase a vial of lavender oil in exchange for a glimpse of the woman suspected of murdering two teenage girls. For nearly three weeks speculation grew and the money had poured in. For those who knew Althea, locals who’d come to trust her remedies and charms over the years, the talk seemed ludicrous. But even they began to doubt when the swollen bodies of Heather and Darcy Gilman were recovered from the pond and zipped into heavy black bags. Overnight, the avalanche of customers slowed to a trickle. Eight years later, the memories were still fresh, a wound that had never quite scarred over. But how could it when the questions continued to fester?
Lizzy turned away from the orchard, heading for the woods and the trail Althea had walked nearly every day. She had made it a point to spend time among the trees every morning. Her prayer time, she’d called it, which made sense. The woods had been her temple, sacred in a way no stone edifice could ever be. But she would never walk here again, never forage for mushrooms and wild herbs, never return from her walk with some feather, or bird’s nest, or bit of horn she’d discovered along the way.
A warm breeze suddenly shivered through the trees. Lizzy lifted her nose, catching the unmistakable scents of lavender and bergamot. It was only a whiff, the kind that clings to scarves and sweaters long after the wearer has shed them, but the sensation was so palpable that it felt like an actual presence, and for an instant she half expected to turn and find her grandmother standing behind her with an old willow trug tucked into the crook of her arm.
It was just wishful thinking, wasn’t it? Sensing a loved one’s presence after they were gone? Believing they were still nearby, watching over those they held dear? She’d heard of such things, everyone had, but she’d always chalked them up to grief. Now she wasn’t so sure. What she’d just experienced—a fleeting but bone-deep certainty that she wasn’t alone—was hard to dismiss. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to.
Lizzy forced her feet to move, knowing all at once exactly where she was going—perhaps where she’d always intended to go.
Lizzy slowed as she caught her first glimpse of the pond. The last time she saw it, there were policemen in wet suits and divers’ masks crawling through the cattails and common reed along its banks. But before that—before the Gilman girls and the body bags—her mother had come here to swim during the sticky New England summers. Once, she had even been invited to tag along.
It was one of the rare times—perhaps the only time—Rhanna had invited her anywhere, and for a few brief weeks, Lizzy had been foolish enough to think things between them might change, that at long last Rhanna was ready to actually be her mother, instead of leaving those duties to Althea. But that was the summer Rhanna abruptly stopped swimming, and that had been the end of that. She left a few weeks later.
Not that she’d been surprised. It was always Rhanna’s way, to live her life in fits and starts. She’d never had any real roots to Moon Girl Farm. Staying had merely been the path of least resistance—three meals a day and a roof over her head, and the freedom to come and go as she pleased. She had steered clear of the day-to-day work of the farm, choosing to busk on street corners instead, crooning folk ballads for whatever passersby might toss into her battered guitar case, or to read cards at the downtown market, wearing a head scarf and enormous hoop earrings. It had never earned her much, but it kept her in cheap booze or whatever else she happened to be into, and for Rhanna that had been enough.
Lizzy shrugged off the memories and inched closer to the bank. The ground felt spongy, the damp grass slick under the soles of her boots, and for a moment she imagined herself skidding headlong into the reeds. She dug in her heels, unwilling to go closer, her arms hugged tight to her body as she gazed past the reeds to the shiny-dark water beyond.
It had never been very deep. Just deep enough.
The thought brought a shiver and the sudden chill of memory. Sodden hair dark with mud and a tangle of slimy weeds, a face rendered unrecognizable by weeks in the water. That was the Moons’ legacy now—those girls and that day. And it would continue to be their legacy, as long as there was one person alive who remembered it.
Harm none.
It was their creed, and one her grandmother had taken very seriously. It was why they were vegetarian, because harm none meant animals too. How could anyone think her capable of harming two young girls?
Lizzy squeezed her eyes shut, remembering the moment WKSN news had broken into the season finale of The Good Wife to report that two local girls had gone missing, and that police suspected foul play. No one could have predicted what happened next. How events would unfold to implicate an innocent woman, to rob her of friends, livelihood—and eventually her family. A guilty verdict without a trial.
How had her grandmother lived with it?
Worse still—how had she died with it? Knowing there would always be some who chose to believe the whispers? In her Book of Remembrances, Althea had written of the Moon line, of her fear that it would soon be broken. Couldn’t she see that it was already broken? That there was nothing to salvage, no way to clean up the story Salem Creek had already written?
You’re all that’s left now, the last and best of us.
The words returned to taunt Lizzy. She might be the last, but she certainly wasn’t the best. If she were, she wouldn’t be in such a hurry to be rid of Moon Girl Farm. She’d stay and make things right. Fight to clear Althea’s name. But was that even possible?
As far as she knew, the police had failed to come up with a single viable lead, content in the absence of any real evidence to let the court of public opinion decide. And the public—or most of it at any rate—had been only too happy to oblige. That there’d be
en no trial, no conviction, no sentence, was immaterial. People knew what they knew, and that was that.
But if it was true that there would always be someone who remembered the day the Gilman girls came out of the water, it might also be true that someone, somewhere, remembered the day they’d gone into it. Perhaps someone who knew something they didn’t realize they knew. And maybe that was reason enough to try.
FIVE
Andrew Greyson stepped over the low stone wall separating his family’s land from the Moons’, determined to finally begin the greenhouse repairs he’d promised to start nearly six months ago. He hated that Althea had died before he could make good on his promise, but winter had gone on forever, and then there’d been a backlog of renovation clients that needed placating. He thought there’d be more time—she’d always been such a tough old bird—but things had gone quickly at the end, which he supposed was a blessing.
And yet here he was, toolbox in hand. Because a promise was a promise, especially one made to a dying woman. And Althea wasn’t just any woman; she’d been part of his life for as long as he could remember, going back to the weekends he’d spent at the farm, helping his father, who, when not running the local hardware store, had enjoyed playing handyman. When Andrew moved back from Chicago four years ago and found his father in failing health, it had seemed natural that he’d step in as Moon Girl Farm’s handyman.
There wasn’t much he hadn’t patched or mended over the years. He knew every inch of the place: every leaky faucet, rickety gate, and tricky fireplace flue, not to mention the groaning furnace and fritzy wiring. He’d done his best over the years to help hold the place together, but two hundred years of damp springs and snowy winters had taken an inevitable toll, meaning long-term repairs needed to happen sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t be cheap, and although Althea had never said so directly, he suspected money was scarce.
It would be sold eventually, perhaps as a fixer-upper, though as an architect specializing in the renovation of historic properties, his advice would be to raze it all to the ground and start from scratch. And yet the thought rankled. Something about the place—its history and its secrets—had gotten under his skin as a boy, and had never quite let go of him.
Okay, not something—someone.
Elzibeth Moon.
Lizzy.
She’d been part of his life for years too, though that particular street ran in only one direction. Nearly twenty years later he could still see her, emerging from the woods in a shower of autumn leaves, her dark hair caught on the wind, like something from another world, and so damn beautiful she’d made his throat ache. Until that moment he’d had only a vague awareness of her, the memory of a young girl peeling apples in her grandmother’s kitchen, all knees and elbows and enormous gray eyes. And then that day in the woods, when he realized the skinny little girl had become a young woman of strange and startling beauty.
She’d gone still at the sight of him, eyeing him like a skittish colt. There’d been a flash of something quick and sharp as their eyes locked. Recognition? Defiance? All these years later he still couldn’t say. The encounter hadn’t lasted long—the space of a few heartbeats—but in those few taut moments, without so much as a word or a nod, she had bewitched him. And had then proceeded to treat him as if he were invisible. At school, in town, even at the farm, she’d gone out of her way to steer clear of him. And who could blame her, when he’d stood there staring like a lovesick calf?
It wasn’t until she left for school that he’d finally taken his father’s advice to stop mooning over that girl and go live up to your potential. And so he’d packed his car and headed to grad school. He’d done well for himself too, graduating top of his class with a job waiting at one of the most prestigious architectural firms in Chicago. But the Windy City had quickly lost its shine, and when his father finally came clean about the cancer, returning to Salem Creek had been a no-brainer.
He had assumed Lizzy would do the same when Althea got sick, but she hadn’t. He got it, sort of. She’d never been comfortable in Salem Creek, and the witch hunt that had ensued when the Gilman girls disappeared certainly hadn’t helped. He was a Granite Stater down to his bones, but he wasn’t blind to the sometimes priggish beliefs of small New England towns, or the damage those beliefs could do when turned on an entire family.
The last he heard she was in New York, making perfume. Good for her, if she was happy. God knows she deserved it after all the crap she’d endured.
He’d been walking mindlessly, lost in his memories, but now, as he approached the place where the path forked off to the right, he registered the crunch of footsteps. He halted, turning toward the sound. For one addled moment, he entertained the possibility that he had stumbled through some sort of time warp, that the years had rewound themselves, hurtling him back to that chance meeting so many years ago. His next thought was that he’d lost his grip on reality. It wasn’t until she turned to face him that he realized she was actually there, staring back at him as if no time had passed at all. His breath caught as their gazes locked, as if he’d just been sucker punched. Was it any wonder people believed what they did about the Moon girls?
SIX
Lizzy went still as she approached the fork in the path, startled by what she assumed was a squirrel scurrying about in the underbrush. She peered through the trees, scanning left, then right, as the sound drew closer. She saw him then—Andrew Greyson—coming through the trees, wearing jeans and heavy work boots, carrying a battered red toolbox.
Her breath caught as their eyes locked and an eerie sense of déjà vu crept over her. What was he doing here? Now? Again?
She eyed the toolbox in his right hand. Evvie had said someone would be coming by to repair the greenhouse. That it turned out to be Andrew Greyson shouldn’t really surprise her. He’d been a kind of fixture around the farm when they were kids, and even at school, always turning up at awkward moments, like some jock in shining armor, always bent on rescuing her, whether she wanted him to or not.
There was the time he’d ambushed her at homecoming assembly. She’d been sitting by herself, as usual, when he dropped down beside her, grinning goofily as he held out an open pack of Twizzlers. Every eye in the gym had suddenly fixed on them. At least that’s how it felt at the time. She’d wanted to crawl under her seat. Instead, to the delight of his jock pals, sitting two rows up, she’d bolted. Unfortunately, it hadn’t deterred him. He kept turning up, tagging along with his father when he came to repair a faucet or a bit of fencing, appearing out of nowhere to offer her a ride home when the sky opened up one day and rained pea-size hail all over Salem Creek. And then the night at the fountain, when Rhanna had made a drunken spectacle of herself in front of the whole town, he had turned up again, to rescue her from the hecklers. It still baffled her. He’d been one of the hottest guys in school, honor student, captain of the football team, the clichéd big man on campus. She couldn’t imagine what he’d want with someone like her. Maybe it was pity. Or curiosity. The Moons were nothing if not curious.
And now, here he was again.
He was taller than she remembered, and harder somehow, but still ridiculously good-looking—his russet hair cropped close to his head, his face lean and tanned. The last time Althea mentioned him, he was in Chicago, designing swanky homes for well-heeled corporate types. But that was before his father died. Was he here to stay then, or had he merely returned as she had, to tie up loose ends?
“Hello,” he said stiffly. “You might not remember me. I’m—”
“Andrew. From next door.”
He nodded, shifting the toolbox from his right hand to his left. “I didn’t know you were back. I’m sorry about your grandmother. I know you used to be close.”
Lizzy bristled at the suggestion that that was no longer the case. “We were still close.”
“Right. I didn’t mean—”
“She wrote me that your father died. I’m sorry. I remember him being a nice man. Nice
to Althea.”
“Yes, he was, and thank you. I was on my way over to do some work on the greenhouse.”
“Evvie said you’d be by. Well, not you, but someone.”
An awkward silence spooled out as the small talk dried up. Andrew shifted the toolbox again and took a step forward, as if planning to accompany her back to the house. Lizzy turned away, heading down the path at a clip. She had a decision to make, and she didn’t want company. Andrew Greyson’s least of all.
Back at the house, she found Evvie seated at the kitchen table, surrounded by saucers filled with an assortment of colorful beads. She was stringing a necklace, threading a series of marbled blue spheres onto a thin leather cord. After a moment, she looked up.
“How was your walk?”
“You said someone was coming to work on the greenhouse. You didn’t say it was Andrew Greyson.”
Evvie shrugged. “Didn’t think it mattered.” She peered at the beads she’d just strung, adjusting several before looking up. “Does it matter?”
“I was just surprised to see him. I didn’t know he was back.”
“Almost three years now. Came back when his daddy got sick, and never left. Truth be told, I think he was looking for a reason.”
“A reason?”
“He knew where he belonged. Chicago never really agreed with him. Salem Creek did. Simple as that. How was your walk?”
Lizzy blinked at her. She had a habit of doing that, changing the subject so abruptly you weren’t sure you’d been following the actual thread of the conversation. “I ended up at the pond,” she said quietly. “Seeing it again, after all these years, started me thinking. All the hideous things people said, the things they believed . . . I can’t help wondering if that’s why Althea got sick. Maybe she just . . . gave up.”
Evvie laid down her cord of beads and shot a look over her glasses. “Your gran never gave up on a thing in her life.”
The Last of the Moon Girls Page 5