Volume Two: In Moonlight and Memories, #2
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In Moonlight and Memories:
Volume Two
by
Julie Ann Walker
From New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Julie Ann Walker comes an epic story about sacrifice, friendship, and the awe-inspiring power of love.
In Moonlight and Memories: Volume Two
Copyright © 2019 by Limerence Publications LLC
Excerpt from In Moonlight and Memories: Volume Three © 2019 by Limerence Publications LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from the author.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, events, and places portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination and are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Limerence Publications LLC
ISBN: 978-1-950100-01-9
Table of Contents
IN MOONLIGHT AND MEMORIES: VOLUME 2
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Acknowledgments
Sneak Peek—IN MOONLIGHT AND MEMORIES: VOLUME 3
More Books by Julie Ann Walker
About Julie Ann Walker
Dedication
To my three older sisters, the strongest women I know. Aren’t you glad I didn’t turn out to be a tumor?
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” ~ Søren Kierkegaard
Chapter Thirty-one
______________________________________
Cash
Dear Cash,
I went to Audubon Park today and sat on the bench beneath our weeping willow. The katydids have hatched. They’re looking for mates, and for some reason their clicking and clacking reminded me of the time last summer when you and Luc cleaned out Old Man Murphy’s shed for $100. Y’all came back covered in chiggers and spent the next week looking like walking advertisements for calamine lotion, pink head to toe.
The memory made me smile.
I think it’s the first time I’ve smiled since you left. And honestly? It felt weird on my face. Like it had no business being there. Like I shouldn’t have the right to smile. Not after…everything.
But I can’t think of that. If I think of it, I might scream.
Oh, Cash. WHY did you go? WHY won’t you answer any of my emails? And WHY did you change your phone number?
I’ve called you every day, hoping to hear your voice, CRAVING the sound of your voice. But all I get is the recording telling me your number is no longer in service.
I don’t understand.
Please, help me understand. Send me an email, a letter, a note in skywriting. I don’t care. Just…please.
Love, Maggie
Sometimes you don’t know what you need until someone gives it to you.
Didn’t know I needed Maggie’s letters until I read some of them this morning. After last night, I was waffling on…well, just about everything. Now I have my head on straight. Back to working The Plan.
Only problem?
That kiss. That deep, wet, wonderful kiss.
“Top o’ the mornin’ to ya!” Luc bursts through the front door, bringing the crispness of the November air and the rich smell of freshly brewed coffee with him.
“You pick up that Irish brogue from watching too many Jamie Dornan interviews?” I don’t bother getting up from the folding chair parked in the middle of the room. “I know how much you loved those Fifty Shades movies.”
“Come on now.” He sends me a pitying look over his shoulder as he shrugs out of his leather jacket and hangs it on a hook by the front door. “More like the Lucky Charms commercials during Saturday morning cartoons.”
He walks over and hands me a paper cup of steaming coffee. Flopping into the vacant chair, he stretches out his legs. Then he pops the top off his own coffee and blows across the surface to cool the liquid.
Spying the blue three-ring binder sitting on the milk crate between us, he says, “Your letters from Maggie?”
I frown. “She told you about them?”
“Got a set of my own.”
Numbness. A time-honored self-defense mechanism when someone or something scratches at my feelings.
Maggie didn’t mention she’d spent a year writing to Luc too. Although, I guess I should’ve known. And I guess I should be happy.
“You read any of them?” I ask.
He nods. “The first six.”
“That’s an odd number.”
“Actually, it’s an even one.” He mimes a three-beat drum solo with his coffee still in hand.
I roll my eyes. “I mean it’s oddly precise.”
He shrugs. “Reckon I’ll read six a day for the next coupla months. It’ll gimme something to look forward to in the evenings.”
“Getting lonely out there in that swamp house?” I ask. It’s never occurred to me he might feel isolated in the bayou. He’s always seemed so at home there. Plus, if ever there was a man comfortable in his own skin and happy with his own company, it’s Luc.
I envy him that.
My skin has always felt too tight, as if I’m stuffed inside a body suit that has shrunk in the wash. And left to my own devices, I get restless. Time alone allows a person to think.
Thinking can be tricky since it inevitably opens the door to old hurts and regrets and…self-reflection—perish the thought.
“Not really,” he says. Then he seems to reconsider. “Sometimes, I guess. But it’s more like I wanna savor her letters, you know? They sound like her, all thoughtful and vulnerable and a bit heartbreaking. Or at least they sound like she did back then.”
“She hasn’t changed much,” I say. She’s still thoughtful and vulnerable. She for damn sure still breaks my heart. And last night proved she still smells the same, still feels the same, still…kisses the same.
Maggie has a way of using her mouth so deeply and thoroughly I feel like I’m falling. One touch of her tongue, one taste of her sweet breath, and I’m Alice chasing the White Rabbit through the hole in the ground and plunging into a new world. Colors are brighter. Smells are sweeter. Everything is so much more.
Wasn’t until this morning—and a quick read of those first few letters—that reality came crashing down again. Although, maybe it wasn’t the letters so much as the relentless pounding of my head that brought me back from Wonderland.
“So.” Luc sets his coffee on the milk crate and turns to me. “You wanna start tackling the cornices in the front bedroom? I reckon we should—” He stops midsentence, narrowing his eyes a
t my jawline. “What the hell happened to your face?”
I test the bruise with my fingers. It’s painful. But not nearly as painful as the bump on the back of my head. That thing throbs like a second heartbeat.
“Had a visit from Rick last night.” Saying the bastard’s name makes the whiskey in my back pocket send up a siren’s call. Taking out my flask, I add a drop of Gentleman Jack to my coffee.
Luc sits forward, his eyes drilling me. “What did he want?”
“To warn me.”
“About what?”
“About steering clear of you and Maggie. He says Sullivan is coming for you both, and he doesn’t want me getting involved and dragging our good family name through the mud.”
Luc snorts. “Like his shady-ass business deals haven’t done that already?”
I spread my hands. “That was pretty much the point I made.”
“And that made him sock you?”
“Nah.” I shake my head. “He socked me because he’s a sadistic sonofabitch who’s always enjoyed ending conversations with his fists.”
After a brief silence, Luc asks, “You need me to help you get rid of the body?”
He’s completely, dead-eye serious.
I laugh, then wince. It feels like my skull is packed with Semtex, seconds away from detonating. I hate to admit it, but… “Didn’t get in a single punch.”
His jaw drops open.
“Maggie showed up with her letters,” I explain. “You should’ve seen her, coming to my defense like a momma bear, roaring at Rick to get out.”
“Though she be but little, she is fierce,” he quotes Shakespeare. Then he adds a more homespun adage. “When it comes to those she cares about, that woman would charge hell with nothing but a bucket of ice water.”
“Amen, brother.” I salute him with my coffee cup. “It’s one of the things we love most about her.”
He doesn’t say anything to that. Instead, he sits back and stares at the ceiling. “So, it wasn’t all bluster the other morning at the café. Sullivan really is gunning for us.”
“Sounds like it.” I add another drop of whiskey to my cup.
“Damn.” He lowers his chin and tugs at his ear, giving away his agitation.
“What do you want to do about it?” I ask, ready and willing, despite Rick’s advice, to jump in headfirst. Because, you know, fuck Rick. And besides, I’d do anything and everything for Luc and Maggie. They’re the only two people I have left in the world.
“Don’t rightly know,” Luc muses thoughtfully. “Needa think on it for a spell.” Then his lips twist. “’Course, the easiest thing to do would be to leave town, I reckon. It was our coming back here that stirred up this stink.”
My scalp prickles at the mere notion. Leaving in no way fits in with The Plan.
“Wrong,” I’m quick to tell him. “Our making it out of the army alive is what stirred up this stink. Even if we moved halfway around the world, don’t delude yourself into thinking Sullivan would back off.”
He grimaces. “Yeah. You’re probably right.”
“Besides, could you really run out on Maggie again?”
A muscle ticks in his jaw as he stares at me through narrowed eyes. “Could you?”
“No,” I immediately admit.
“Me neither.” He’s quick to agree. “We’re in this thing for better or worse. Question is, how we aim to make sure it’s for the better. So, like I said, I need to think on it.”
I glance out the front window. A couple of tourists looking worse for wear stagger down the uneven sidewalk across the street. It’s early, and they appear to be suffering the effects of a late night. Probably going in search of a good cup of coffee, footloose and fancy-free, except for their hangovers.
How long has it been since I felt that way? Not hungover. Lately, that’s a weekly, sometimes daily occurrence. But not having a care in the world? When was that? Ten years ago? More?
“None of this would be happening if I’d stayed,” I concede quietly. “I fucked up everything by running off that night.”
“Stop it.” Luc points at me. “You did what you had to do. The only person to blame for what happened in that bayou is Dean Sullivan.”
Chapter Thirty-two
______________________________________
Luc
Dear Luc,
It’s nearly midnight and I’m sitting on Aunt Bea’s front porch swing. The air is sweet with the smell of tea rose begonias and there’s a full moon out. It’s big and yellow and reminds me of the one that shone down on us in the bayou last month.
Lord, that feels like forever ago. So much has changed since then, changed in the worst possible ways so that most days it takes everything I have just to get out of bed. Then again, staying in bed isn’t really an option, is it? No doubt Sullivan is watching me, waiting to see how I’ll behave.
So I pretend. I pretend to care about the long, hot summer days. I pretend to enjoy Auntie June’s cooking even though everything tastes like ash. And I pretend that the only thing weighing on my heart is the desertion of my best friend and my boyfriend.
Maybe “desertion” isn’t the right word. At least not for you. I understand why you had to go, but I don’t agree with that email you sent. I don’t agree that we need to leave the past in the past and just get on with life, especially if that means we can no longer be friends.
Oh, Luc, please know if I could take it all back, I would. If I could go back in time and undo everything, I would.
Unfortunately, I don’t own a time machine. Which means all I can do is sit here and miss you. Sit here and wonder where you are.
Is it possible you’re looking up at this same yellow moon?
I hope you’re taking care of yourself. I know you’re taking care of Cash.
Forever and always, Maggie May
There are some things that happen in life that change you to your core.
That night in the bayou obliterated the green and gullible teenager I was. Then, whatever speck of innocence left in me was stomped out by the army faster than a knife fight in a phone booth.
I know I have to strike first when it comes to George Sullivan. I have to find a way to make him back off. But to do that, I need Maggie’s help.
So here I am, standing beneath her balcony, peering up at the yellow glow inside her apartment. It looks cheery and welcoming. Too bad the thing I need to discuss with her is neither.
Pulling my cell phone from my hip pocket, I dial her number.
“Luc?” Her sweet, clear voice has goose bumps popping up on the back of my neck. “Are you done at Cash’s for the day? Did you get the cornices in the front bedroom finished?”
I don’t answer her questions. Instead, I say, “I’m standing outside your front gate. You got a minute?”
“Uh…” She hesitates.
An unsettling notion occurs. “Are you…entertaining someone?”
She laughs. “Entertaining? Lord, you sound like Aunt Bea. No, I’m not entertaining anyone. Well, there’s Jean-Pierre, but he doesn’t count.”
“Hey now!” I hear an offended male voice in the background.
“I’ll be right down.” She cuts the connection.
Rubbing my hands together, I glance around the quiet street. The sun has long since set. But before it did, the sky overhead was covered by a thick blanket of battleship-gray clouds. Even though it’s too dark to see them now, I know they’re still there because the moon and the stars are nowhere to be found.
“I had a dream about you last night.” Maggie appears on the other side of the wrought-iron gate. She’s wearing a loose hooded sweatshirt, black yoga pants, and a pair of red house slippers stitched with the iconic Harry Potter lightning bolt.
“You and Sally Renee were sitting in my living room,” she says. “And Sally Renee said she was hungry. You said, ‘Here. Eat my finger.’ And she did. There was so much blood.” She shudders. “But Sally didn’t stop. She ate all five of your fingers, then started sn
acking her way up your arm. You just sat there with this stupid grin on your face while I screamed my head off.”
“And good evening to you too, Maggie May,” I say.
She opens the gate. I wince when it squeaks torturously on its hinges. (The humidity in New Orleans is brutal on anything metal.)
“That’s all you have to say? You don’t want to speculate about what my dream means?”
“It’s no big mystery.” I give her a quick hug. “That night at the bachelor auction, I said I thought Sally Renee was gonna do her best to eat me whole. Your subconscious took that statement and ran with it.”
“Hmm.” She threads her arm through mine as we make our way into the courtyard. “And here I thought dreams were supposed to reveal deep, dark meanings.”
“Sorry, Sigmund. Sometimes a banana is simply a banana.”
“Did you just make a dick joke?”
“Me?” I feign shock. “Never.”
She eyes me askance and then sighs. “I suppose you’re right. Still, I was beginning to come around to Sally until I saw her gnawing on you like a stick of beef jerky. Now I think I’m back to square one where she’s concerned.”
Maggie’s insistence on butting into my love life would be annoying if I didn’t know she was doing it because she cares. It’s impossible to be sore at her for wanting to see me happy and settled.