The Last of the Moon Girls

by Barbara Davis

  NINETEEN

  August 3

  Lizzy scrubbed her hands on the seat of her jeans and reached for her water bottle. She’d been working in the shop since breakfast—scrubbing windows, purging shelves, cleaning up mouse droppings—and she was finally starting to see progress.

  She had called Althea’s supplier yesterday to order the ingredients for Louise Ryerson’s soap, knowing she would have to clean the shop before any work could begin. She still wasn’t sure why she had agreed to make a batch of soap—she had enough on her plate without adding someone else’s expectations to the mix.

  A bead of sweat traced its way down Lizzy’s back. August had arrived with a vengeance, and the shop was sweltering. She’d need to bring a fan down from the attic—for the heat as well as the lye fumes. She ran her eyes around the shop as she drained her water bottle, trying to imagine Althea’s apothecary stripped of its counters and shelves. What would the new owners do with it? A guest cottage with lace curtains in the windows? An artist’s studio littered with half-finished watercolors? Storage?

  The question shouldn’t bother her, but it did. Generations of Salem Creek residents had sought healing here. Many had found it. Now, on her watch, that would end.

  You’re all that’s left, the last and best of us.

  Althea’s words haunted her again. But they weren’t true. At least not all of them. She would be the last, but she had certainly never been the best. For her, Moon was just a name, something she’d inherited along with her black hair and strange gray eyes, like her mother, and her mother before her.

  Her mother.

  That’s where the Moons’ unraveling had begun. With Rhanna. The drinking and the drugs, the steady parade of men and repeated run-ins with the law—a slow-motion mutiny against the life she’d been expected to live. The life all Moon girls were expected to live. Rhanna had never wanted any of it, not the farm, not the shop, and certainly not her family. The murders had given her just the excuse she’d needed to pull up stakes and disappear for good.

  That was the part Lizzy couldn’t forgive. Not the leaving—she’d done that too—but the complete vanishing act. No warning. No note. Just an empty dresser and a vacant corner where her guitar used to sit. It never occurred to her that Althea might be worried sick. But then Rhanna never thought of anyone but Rhanna. She was happy bouncing from one calamity to the next, and to hell with whatever mess she might leave behind—including the daughter she’d never wanted.

  Lizzy had been five or six when she realized her relationship with Rhanna wasn’t normal, when she started school and saw how other mothers—real mothers—looked and dressed and acted. Rhanna had never been the healthy-snack, Purell-packing kind of mom. She’d been too busy partying to bother with things like checking homework or shopping for backpacks. Althea had done those things.

  In third grade, her teacher had invited all the moms to come in and help the kids decorate Christmas cookies. Rhanna had been the only no-show, leaving Lizzy with a dozen gingerbread men to decorate on her own. Mrs. Gleason had taken pity on her and stepped in, assuring her as they piped frosting onto the crispy brown men that something must have come up to keep her mother from being there.

  What Mrs. Gleason didn’t know was that two weeks earlier, Lizzy had dropped the take-home flyer into the first trash can she passed on the walk home. She couldn’t bear the thought of Rhanna showing up in her tie-dyed T-shirt and stringy bell-bottoms, standing next to moms in pastel twinsets and neatly pressed khakis. Being teased for being stood up seemed infinitely better than being teased for having a hippie mom who reeked of pot and patchouli.

  But that was water under the bridge. She was here, and Rhanna was somewhere else. Or maybe she wasn’t anywhere. She’d probably never know, and it didn’t matter. Not really.

  A shadow suddenly darkened the doorway. Lizzy turned to find Evvie behind her, a grin on her face and a glass of lemonade in her hand. “As my mama would say, you look like you could use a good scrub.”

  Lizzy peered at her grime-streaked hands, then wiped them on the front of her T-shirt. “I’m afraid I’d have to agree with her.”

  Evvie stepped inside, running her eyes around the shop. “You’ve been busy, I see. Wish your gran was here to see it.”

  “Me too,” Lizzy sighed, recalling the days when the shelves had been lined with an assortment of tonics and remedies, each bottle and jar hand-labeled in Althea’s careful script. Now the shelves stood empty, and those days seemed a lifetime ago. She accepted the lemonade from Evvie, downing half of it in one go, then wiped her mouth, leaving a fresh smear of grit on her chin. “What am I doing, Evvie?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  Lizzy blinked at her. “Honestly? No. I’m supposed to be getting the place ready to sell. Instead, I’m making soap for Louise Ryerson’s granddaughter. It’s crazy.”

  “It’s not,” Evvie shot back. “In fact, it’s the sanest thing you’ve done since you got here. This place is in your blood, little girl. This shop, and this soil, and that house—it’s all part of you. So is caring for people. That’s all healing is—trusting the magick, and sharing a little of it when you can. Your gran knew that.”

  Lizzy shook her head. “I’m not Althea, Evvie. I don’t have that in me.”

  “You do. You just forgot where to look. It’s why your gran left you the book—to help you find it. And you will, when it’s time. The best magick always takes us by surprise. We plan our lives like we’re in charge, lay all the pieces end to end like we think they should go, and then zing! Something happens we never saw coming, and we end up somewhere else. Sometimes it’s right back where we started.”

  Lizzy met her gaze squarely. “And sometimes it’s not.”

  “Maybe,” Evvie said thoughtfully. “The best thing any of us can do is get out of our own way.”

  “And trust the magick?”

  Evvie’s coppery-green eyes lit with a conspiratorial gleam as she reached for Lizzy’s empty lemonade glass. “Something like that. Come on inside now, and get cleaned up. Feels like maybe you’ve got some reading to do.”

  Lilies . . . for rebirth.

  My dearest girl,

  I am back as you see, returned to the page to scribble down things that are on my heart, things I hope will help you after I am gone. But there is selfishness here too, make no mistake. I’m not so noble as I thought myself when I began all this. I vowed when I lost Rhanna that I would never press you into a life you did not want. But now, as my candle burns down, I find my regrets make poor companions. And so I must turn my thoughts to the future, Lizzy—your future—and try to sway you a little.

  I have placed a lily between these pages. As you might guess, it was not an easy flower to press, too fragile in many ways to survive the harshness required to preserve it. But in the right hands, with the proper care, even the most fragile thing can withstand hardship and, in the end, yield a new kind of beauty—and so many lessons.

  Renewal. Rebirth. Reincarnation.

  Different words that all mean the same thing—the return of life to a thing believed spent. The end. The beginning. They have always been one. A part of the Circle into which we’re all born. It’s been taught in many ways down through the years, in many traditions, but the promise is always the same: the hope of a life to come. It’s the natural way of things—or the supernatural way if one prefers—an unimpeachable truth etched in blood and bone.

  Because we are all a part of the One. And so we must have a care, remembering that nothing is ever lost. Its seed—its purest essence—is always there, waiting to manifest a newer and better version of itself. With us to guide the process, to nurture and protect, heal and bring forth. It is our purpose—our raison d’être. Yours and mine, and all the Moons before us.

  Take from these scribblings what you will. They are the musings of an old woman who wishes with all her heart to see you happy, but longs to see her life’s work carried on too. We each have many destinies to fulfill. Being
your grandmother was one of mine, and I would be remiss to stop teaching you now, simply because my feet no longer leave prints in the earth. And so I will say what is on my heart, because it is what I have always done. One day, perhaps soon, you will find yourself at a place of choosing, torn between the life you were born to and the one you’ve made for yourself, between your duty and your dreams.

  And yet the two are not so far apart as you think. Trust your heart. Trust the magick. It’s in you still, tightly furled, waiting to be coaxed out into the light. You look around at what you’ve been left, which isn’t much just now, I’ll grant, and see only decline and decay. But nothing is ever too far gone, my Lizzy. Nothing is beyond rebirth.

  A—

  TWENTY

  August 7

  Lizzy came awake with a jolt, eyes wide in the cocoonlike darkness of Althea’s room, wondering what had startled her from sleep. There was no light bleeding under the door, no footsteps in the hall, no sounds that should have awakened her. She closed her eyes again, listening to the quiet, hearing only the familiar sounds of a house settling in for the night.

  When she was a girl, she used to lie in the dark and imagine the house as a living thing, listening to its ancient bones creaking at the end of a long day, the ticktock of its clocks, steady as a heartbeat, its dark windows looking out onto the street like so many sightless eyes. And the curtains, sighing in and out at the windows, as if the house itself were breathing.

  They were stirring now, rippling on the barest of breezes. Lizzy watched the hypnotic push and pull, feeling the subtle tug of sleep returning. And then she caught it, a faint whiff drifting in through the screen—smoke.

  Her pulse ticked up as she threw back the covers and scrambled to the window. To the east, toward the apple orchard, the horizon glowed an eerie shade of orange. The breeze came again, pushing into the room, the bite of smoke unmistakable now.

  The orchard was on fire.

  Panic prickled through her veins as she dragged on her dirty jeans and shoved her feet into the work boots at the foot of the bed, then bolted out into the hall to bang on Evvie’s door. “Call the fire department! Tell them to go to the orchard!”

  And with that she was gone, thundering down the stairs in her unlaced boots, out the mudroom door, and across the empty fields. The smoke grew thicker as she approached the orchard, the sky glowing a hideous red. She nearly stumbled when she spotted the flames, jagged bright tongues licking from tree to tree with astonishing speed.

  A sob caught in her throat as she stood at the edge of the conflagration, nauseated by the smoke and the sickening crackle of timber being devoured. The heat was savage, kicking up a wind that scorched her cheeks and eyes. In some tiny but still-functioning corner of her mind, it occurred to her that she should move back, but her legs refused to obey. The orchard shed was already engulfed, its roof on the verge of buckling. Over the roar of the flames, she caught the sharp pop of a window exploding, and then the growing wail of sirens.

  There was a distant flash of red lights from the street as the pumpers pulled up. The sirens had barely stopped blaring when a handful of firefighters rushed in trailing hoses. Lizzy watched numbly as one team fanned out to circle the shed, and another went to work on the trees. One of the men spotted her and broke ranks long enough to order her to clear the area. Moments later the shed gave way, caving in on itself with a dry groan and a roar of fresh flames.

  At some point Evvie arrived in her bathrobe and UGGs. She wrapped an arm around Lizzy’s shoulder and dragged her close, her face shiny wet.

  “How could it happen?” Lizzy muttered hoarsely. “In the middle of the night—how could it just go up in flames?”

  Evvie dragged her gaze from the flames, as if coming out of a trance, then lifted her eyes to the smoke-filled sky. “Clear as a bell,” she pronounced ominously. “It wasn’t an accident.”

  Lizzy wasn’t sure who she was expecting when she answered the door the next afternoon, but it certainly wasn’t a man flashing a badge. She stared at him, her eyes still bleary from smoke and lack of sleep. “I’m sorry. Can I help you?”

  “Guy McCardle,” he announced briskly. “With the Salem Creek Fire Department. We’re here about the fire last night.”

  Over his shoulder, Lizzy caught sight of a white SUV at the bottom of the drive, its doors emblazoned with the letters SCFD. She hadn’t expected anyone to bother about a shed fire, but she supposed there were procedures that had to be followed.

  “Yes, of course. I’ll walk you to the orchard.”

  “I’ve got two of my men headed there now, actually. But I do have a few questions.” He stepped away, motioning for her to follow, then picked up the pace when she fell in beside him. “It’s my job to investigate the origin and cause of last night’s fire,” he explained as they cut across the barren herb fields. “To process the scene and collect evidence, then conduct an investigation.”

  Lizzy eyed him dubiously. “I’m not sure there’s much to find. It was just a shed, and there’s not much left.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  She was about to respond when she caught the stench of smoke and scorched apples on the breeze. She forced herself to keep moving, telling herself that nothing could be worse than actually watching it burn.

  She was wrong.

  Her heart sank as they approached the orchard, her throat raw as she took it all in: row upon row of ruined trees, their charred trunks and gnarled limbs reminding her of something from one of those gruesome fairy tales with the haunted forests and poison apples.

  But somehow the shed was harder to look at, its blackened shell splayed like a dead thing at the edge of the orchard. There was something vaguely macabre about its remains, lying cold and wet in the afternoon sun, bits of wood jutting like blackened bones. It had endured countless New England winters, weathered scores of nor’easters, but had in the space of only two hours been reduced to cinders.

  How?

  The question hummed in her head as she scanned the rubble. There were remnants of a spade and several rakes among the ashes, their wooden handles burned away. Bits of shattered glass glinted among the soot. Lizzy shuddered, recalling the sickening pop of windows exploding over the windlike rush of the flames.

  McCardle’s men were already at work, one brandishing a camera, taking shots from various angles, the other walking gingerly around the perimeter of the rubble, eyes glued to the ground. Both wore latex gloves.

  She turned to McCardle, who was scribbling something on a small notepad. “What are they looking for?”

  “Evidence. Footprints, accelerant containers, a scrap of clothing, anything the culprit might have left behind. It’s too early to say for sure, but it looks like the fire originated in the shed, with the trees catching later.”

  “But how did it start? No one’s used the shed in years.”

  “That’s what we’re going to try to determine. Do you know if the structure was used to store chemicals of any kind? Paint, fertilizer, gasoline? Even oily rags can pose a danger if they’re stored in a closed container.”

  “No. Nothing like that. It was just picking poles and apple baskets. A couple of old ladders.”

  McCardle tipped his head back, surveying the area overhead. “No power lines running to the structure, so it wasn’t electrical. That’s the first thing we rule out for a structure like this. Old wiring, dry wood, only takes a spark. Next, we look at the weather. Lightning strikes are more common than people think, but there weren’t any storms in the area, which means we can rule that out as well.”

  Lizzy felt a prickle of dread. “What does that leave?”

  “Arson.”

  The word seemed to hang in the air as one of McCardle’s men approached. “Thought you’d want to take a look at this.” He was holding what looked like a glass bottle top, broken off at the neck. A scrap of checked yellow cloth had been twisted into the mouth. A piece of dish towel by the look of it, partially singed. “Found it just off
to the right there, outside the zone.”

  McCardle pulled a pair of blue latex gloves from his back pocket and wrestled them on with a snap at each wrist, then took the proffered bit of glass and fabric and raised it to his nose. “Kerosene,” he announced, turning to Lizzy. “And an old glass milk bottle. Better known as a Molotov cocktail. Crude, but effective, although apparently not in this case, since the rag is still intact. Probably went out before impact.”

  “It was effective enough,” Lizzy pointed out. “The shed’s an ash heap.”

  “Which is why we’ll keep looking. We’ll sift through every square inch if we have to.” He looked away briefly, handing back the broken bottle top. “Good job, Ward. Bag it for the lab.”

  Lizzy watched as Ward produced a heavy poly bag, slid the bottle fragment and rag inside, and zipped it closed. “What happens at the lab?”

  “We’ll do an analysis on the rag to confirm the accelerant, and run the bottle for prints. Sometimes we get lucky. Do you know anyone who’d have a reason to do something like this? Someone who might be harboring a grudge?”

  Lizzy stared back at McCardle, beginning to grasp the gravity of the situation. She’d been holding on to the slim hope that the doll had in fact been a prank, rather than what it looked like—an outright threat—but there was no explaining this away. Was the timing a coincidence? Or had someone—Fred Gilman, perhaps—gotten wind of her sit-down with Louise Ryerson, and decided she needed another scare?

  It was certainly possible. Someone from the school library could have mentioned her visit, or one of the kids from the lunchroom, though she doubted any of them knew who she was. Or who Fred Gilman was, for that matter.

  The truth was, Fred Gilman wasn’t the only one who had a problem with the Moons. The icy stares she’d been receiving since her return were proof of that. It was tempting to jump to the most obvious conclusion, but bringing Fred Gilman into it without any kind of evidence would be rattling a door she wasn’t ready to open. The locals were already taking sides. Accusation would only entrench them further.