The Last of the Moon Girls

by Barbara Davis

  As far as Lizzy knew, Rhanna hadn’t made any plans for the future. Apparently she’d been holding out hope that Moon Girl Farm would remain in the family, and together they’d reopen the shop. She hoped their conversation had squelched any further thoughts in that direction.

  “Where’s your mama?” Evvie inquired through a scrim of pale smoke.

  “I left her up on the rise,” Lizzy said, not quite meeting her eyes. “I told her I’d be leaving in a few days.”

  Evvie lowered her smudge stick and nodded mutely.

  “I know you wanted this to end differently, Evvie. And for a while I think I lost sight of the promises I made when I decided to come. But now I’ve done what I came to do, and it’s time to go back. I wish you’d tell me what you plan to do, so I know you’re going to be okay.”

  “I’m a grown woman. I’ll be fine.”

  “Yes, all right. But I can’t help worrying. Will your car even make it to Texas?”

  Evvie blinked at her. “Who said anything about Texas?”

  “I just thought . . .”

  “Nope. Not going to Texas. Or back to Baton Rouge either. I’ll be right here in Salem Creek if you must know.”

  It was Lizzy’s turn to stare. “You’re staying here in town? I just assumed . . .”

  Evvie resumed fiddling with the smudge stick, eyes carefully lowered. “I found myself a roommate.”

  Lizzy narrowed her eyes, taking in the uncomfortable posture and averted gaze. She’d seen her like this before, sheepish and evasive, when she’d teased her about being sweet on Ben. “This roommate wouldn’t happen to own the local hardware store, by any chance?”

  Evvie squared her shoulders, struggling to keep her face blank. “He might.”

  Lizzy experienced a fierce stab of joy, the first she’d felt in a long time. “Oh, Evvie! I’m so happy to hear it. I had a feeling there might be something going on there, but I had no idea it was this serious. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Evvie offered one of her grunts. “Folks my age don’t run around bragging about shacking up.”

  Lizzy barked out a laugh. “Shacking up?”

  “That’s what we called it in my day. Anyway, that’s how it is. You’re looking at a lot of alone when you’re my age. No one to talk to you, or do for you—or remember you. We’re both on our own, and we get on. Makes sense to set up house together.”

  “But you care for him?” Lizzy prodded, worried that circumstance and not genuine affection had pushed Evvie into accepting Ben’s offer.

  Evvie smiled, eyes clouding. “My husband, Archie, was like a clap of thunder. Liked to knock me flat the first time he kissed me. Ben’s a warm blanket, a bit frayed at the edges, but cozy and safe, which is exactly what I want at this point in my life. Truth is, at my age a thunderbolt’s likely to kill me. I can help him in the store, and I’ll have a place for my bees and my vegetables. But yes, little girl. I care. He’s a good man.”

  “He’d better be,” Lizzy said somberly. “You’ve been so kind to me, to Althea, and to Rhanna. You’ve become part of my family. I want you to be happy.”

  “And Andrew?”

  “What about Andrew?”

  “Don’t you want him to be happy?”

  “I do, Evvie. Which is why I can’t stay. He wouldn’t be happy with me, with what I wouldn’t be able to give him—he only thinks he would. But eventually he’d resent it. And me. And I won’t do that to either of us.”

  Evvie let the subject drop. “When will you leave?”

  “I’m not sure. A few days, maybe. As soon as I finish packing and tie up the loose ends.” She ducked her head, her throat suddenly tight. “I know you’re disappointed in me.”

  Evvie’s face softened. “Not if this is truly what you want. And only you can decide that. You did good, little girl. What you did for your gran—for your family—it was good. Now it’s time to live your life. Even if that life isn’t here. Go on up now, and do what you need to.”

  Upstairs, the aroma of white sage smoke still hung in the air, the telltale traces of Evvie’s smudging. Lizzy picked up a pair of empty boxes in the hall and carried them to Althea’s room, then crossed to the bookcase and dropped to her knees.

  The key turned with a metallic snick, the brass hinges rasping dully as she pulled back the glass door. She slid the first book free—The Book of Sabine—and was briefly tempted to open it. Instead, she laid it in the bottom of the box, then removed the others, one at a time, and carefully packed them away. There were eight in all—not quite the full set. Althea’s book was still out in the shop. She would leave it with Rhanna for now, to use until she left the farm. But what about Rhanna? Would there ever be a book with her name on it? One filled with recipes and scraps of wisdom rather than macabre sketches?

  And what of her own book?

  She rose and retrieved her suitcase from the corner. The journal was still in the front compartment, untouched since her arrival. She pulled it out, thumbing briefly through the clean white pages—The Book of Elzibeth.

  But was it really a book if its pages remained blank? The thought was strangely unsettling. Was that how her life would be remembered? As a blank? Come to that, would it be remembered at all? In the end, it really didn’t matter. There’d be no one to read it, no one to care what she’d done and not done. It was the necessary end to the bargain she’d made with herself, to leave behind a blank slate and end the Moon line once and for all.

  She laid the empty journal in the box with the rest, then slid her gaze to The Book of Remembrances on the bedside table. What about it? Did it belong with the others, boxed up and forgotten at the back of some closet in her apartment? She knew the answer even as she asked the question—no. Althea might have shelved it beside the others, but it was different. It hadn’t been penned for future generations, but for her, and her alone.

  And what about the rest of Althea’s things? The ebony trinket box on the dresser, the sterling silver hand mirror on the dressing table, the vintage Dresden plate patterned quilt at the foot of the bed, items lovingly collected over the course of her grandmother’s life. What was she supposed to do with all of it?

  The plan had been to pack up the books and a few personal items, then contact an estate agent to handle the rest. Now she realized that was impossible. Because they weren’t just things. They were her grandmother’s most cherished possessions, many of them passed down to her from other Moons. From Aurore, Sylvie, Honoré, Dorothée. Perhaps further back than that.

  Suddenly, she could feel them around her, like the portraits on the parlor wall, a collective presence reminding her that once upon a time they had lived here, and left their mark. They had defied convention, weathered the elements, wrested a living from a rocky patch of soil, created art, raised daughters, healed generations of Salem Creek’s sick, and no doubt endured all manner of whispers before finally giving their ashes to the ground.

  The Moons stuck.

  Until now.

  She’d be the last of them, the end of her line. But that had always been the plan, hadn’t it? To end the line and slip into the life of anonymity she’d always craved. The last of the Moon girls.

  How simple it sounded—and how hollow.

  Overcome by a wave of claustrophobia, she pushed to her feet. There were too many people in the room with her suddenly, the shadows of all those other Moons, invisible, but there just the same, leaning against her heart.

  But there was only one Moon she wanted at the moment.

  Abandoning the half-packed carton, Lizzy crossed to the nightstand, tucked the Book of Remembrances under her arm, and headed downstairs. There was no sign of Evvie or Rhanna as she passed through the kitchen. She was grateful for that. She needed quiet and fresh air, a space free of guilty reminders.

  She settled for the garden bench beneath Althea’s favorite willow tree and laid the book open on her knees, startled to realize that she’d reached the final entry. But perhaps that was as it should be.

>   The waxed-paper packet she had come to expect was there. Keenly aware that it would be the last, she teased it open, stared at what lay pressed within—a simple dandelion with its roots still intact.

  Dandelion . . . for resilience.

  Dearest Lizzy,

  It seems we must part sooner than expected. You mustn’t be sad. We each have our little portion of time, and I have had mine. Harder than some perhaps, but sweeter too, in ways most forget to count. To say I have no regrets would be untrue. Choices have consequences, after all, and there are some I would make differently if I could have them back.

  Still, there’s a kind of peace at the end of a life well lived, knowing that you’ve given what you had to give, loved where you were free to love, that you’ve left nothing unsaid or undone. And with this final entry, that part at least will be true.

  But this isn’t meant to be about my story, Lizzy—it’s meant to be about yours. Each of us comes into the world with a story to tell, a book of blank pages we’re given to fill. How we choose to fill them is up to us, but fill them we must—with our truths or someone else’s.

  History hasn’t been kind to women in general, but it has been especially hard on our kind. We’ve been both revered and reviled, sought for our wisdom, yet spurned for our otherness. We’ve been cast out, hunted, tortured, and killed, blamed for everything from dead cows and failed crops, to hailstorms and stillborn babes. We remember the burning times, and because we remember, we’ve learned to be careful, to keep our own company and trust no one.

  But there can be a cost to keeping your own company, a cost I know all too well. Over the years I’ve seen that cost at work in you. You’ve been hiding for as long as I’ve known you, playing small as they say nowadays, afraid of making others uncomfortable. The world has always been afraid of a singular woman—as it is of most powerful things. It would much rather keep us in the shadows, where it needn’t acknowledge our gifts. But the world has no right to keep us in the shadows, Lizzy. Not without our permission. At some point, we must step into our stories, and claim them for our own.

  Anything else is half a life.

  It won’t be easy. Stepping into the light never is, but it’s what we’re all called to do. To find our truth—whatever that may be—and live it without apology. Each generation has had its burdens to carry, and you will almost certainly have yours. But you will never be alone. When life is hard, when your soul is parched, look to your roots for sustenance—like the dandelion pressed between these pages—and remember those who came before you, their strength and their resilience, their refusal to remain in the shadows and not bother anyone.

  How I would love to say I’m one of those strong, resilient women, that I have always lived according to my own truths, but I am not—or wasn’t when it mattered most. What I tell you next, I have never told anyone. I have kept it hidden, locked up tight in the deepest reaches of my heart. But there is a lesson in it—a lesson for you, Lizzy—which is why I must tell it now, before my pages run out . . .

  FORTY-FIVE

  Lizzy stared at the book, still open on her lap, the world as she knew it—or thought she’d known it—suddenly and irrevocably unshaped by Althea’s parting words. The lines from the journal’s final page continued to echo, a confession, but a cautionary tale too, about the choices we make and how they echo down through the years, until the sand in our hourglass eventually runs out.

  She had wondered once about the thread of wistfulness that crept into Althea’s entries from time to time, but had shrugged it off, unable to imagine her grandmother needing anything more than the farm and her work. It never occurred to her that there might once have been another dream, or a yearning for something lost.

  Lizzy blinked away tears as she traced her fingers over the thinly scrawled lines, Althea’s pen strokes achingly fragile, yet indelible somehow. Each of us comes into the world with a story to tell. Was her grandmother right? Did she have a story to tell? A book she had yet to begin? And could she begin it here?

  It would mean leaving Chenier. Walking away from everything she’d worked for, and toward everything she’d sworn she never wanted. And maybe a few things she believed she could never have. It would mean stepping into the light, being seen for who and what she was—or at least who Andrew thought she was—the girl with the light inside her.

  The wind lifted suddenly, rustling the leaves around her feet into tiny whorls. It was there again, Althea’s earthy-sweet scent, swirling in the warm breeze. Lizzy closed her eyes and tipped up her face, reveling in the soft caress of it against her cheeks. And this time she knew. It wasn’t wishful thinking. It was a call to follow her heart.

  FORTY-SIX

  Andrew checked the dashboard clock as he exited the Spaulding Turnpike. Nearly six o’clock. Five hours since his phone had pinged with the text from Lizzy’s new cell.

  It’s Rhanna, so don’t reply. Our girl’s getting antsy. Get home ASAP if you want to say goodbye.

  Goodbye. The word had left him gutted, as if a door he’d been feebly propping open had suddenly and irrevocably slammed shut. Not that there’d ever really been a door. She’d made her position clear from the get-go. Her life was in New York, and there had never been a chance that she wasn’t going back to it.

  And yet there’d been a flicker of hope, a flimsy thread he’d chosen to cling to, that something, anything, would change her mind and convince her to stay. He’d been a fool. And now he was playing the fool again, navigating rush hour traffic with a knot in his gut, asking for one more kick of the mule.

  He hadn’t replied to the text. Or dropped everything to hurry home. He’d wrestled with it a bit, playing their last words over in his head, searching for the slimmest hint that there was some opening, something he could say to make her stay. He’d come up empty. He couldn’t make her feel what he felt, or want what he wanted. If slipping out of town while his back was turned was how she wanted to end things, so be it. But he wasn’t letting her go without seeing her one last time.

  His stomach did one of those roller-coaster plunges when he turned the corner and spotted her car still in the drive. He hadn’t been quite sure how to interpret the word antsy, and was afraid she might already be gone. Now, as he pulled up and cut the engine, he realized he should have given some thought to what he actually planned to say.

  He was holding his breath when the front door pulled back. He let it out when Rhanna appeared instead of Lizzy. She grabbed his sleeve, pulling him over the threshold and into the foyer.

  “I’m sorry about the text, but I didn’t know what else to do. She’s been packing all afternoon. I was afraid she’d be gone by the time you got back.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Out back last time I saw her. What are you going to say?”

  He shrugged. “Goodbye, I guess.”

  Rhanna’s face fell, making it clear that she’d been hoping for some grand MGM ending, where the hero drags the heroine into his arms for a bruising kiss as the credits roll.

  He stepped around her, headed for the mudroom door. From the steps, he scanned the yard, the fields, the ridge overlooking the place where the barn had stood. There was no sign of her. But there was a book lying open on the wrought-iron bench. He was moving down the steps, making another scan of the yard, when he saw her coming out of the woods, her head down as she moved toward him. It was the third time he’d come upon her like this, but the effect was no less startling, the way the sun filtered through the trees, bathing her in light, the brief moment of confusion as her head came up and she saw him.

  “You’re back,” she said, going still.

  He nodded stiffly. “I heard you’re heading back soon. I thought I’d come say goodbye, wish you good luck, or safe travels. Whatever it is neighbors do when one of them moves away.”

  “Andrew . . .”

  He shook his head. He didn’t want to hear all the reasons she was going, any more than she wanted to hear all the reasons he wanted her to stay. They
’d done that to death, and he’d come out on the losing end. He had no claim on her. He got that. But it stung that she’d intended to go without a word.

  “It’s not that you’re leaving,” he said, fighting to keep his voice even. “You never made any secret of that. It’s the way you were going to do it. Blindsiding me. I’d come back, and your car would just be gone. Maybe there’d be a FOR SALE sign in the yard, just to make sure I got the message.”

  She stood there looking at him, as if he were some exotic species of wildlife she hadn’t expected to encounter. “Who told you I was leaving?”

  “Rhanna sent me a text from your new phone. She said if I wanted to say goodbye, I’d better get back here pronto. I wasn’t going to come at first. I tried to talk myself out of it. I thought if that’s how you want it—” He broke off, leaving the rest unsaid. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t do this, wouldn’t try to guilt her, wouldn’t ask her to stay. “I wasn’t going to come.”

  She blinked hard, as if fending off tears. “Why did you?”

  He dragged a hand through his hair. Why? It was a ridiculous question. And he had absolutely no idea how to answer it. “When I left for Boston, I didn’t know . . . I thought you’d still be here when I got back, that there’d be time. If I had known you wouldn’t be . . .” He dropped his hands to his sides, abandoning the pretense. “I came because I needed to see your face one last time.”

  The tears Lizzy had been fighting finally spilled down her cheeks. How had she ever thought it would be easy to leave this man? Or that skipping town while he was gone would be less painful for either of them? It seemed incomprehensible now.