The Moon Tells Secrets

by Savanna Welles

  “Look, he’s friendly,” Cade said, and I wanted him to be right that it was just a dog. A stray escaped from someone’s yard. It was acting that way, trotting around in a circle, waiting to be petted or scratched behind its ears. A black Labrador, big enough to stand on its hind legs and reach your throat.

  “Don’t touch it!” I said, still afraid, but Cade ignored me.

  “Probably a stray. Could be that dog that was doing so much howling the other night. Did Davey mention it to you? It scared him, he said.”

  I let Cade’s hand go and stepped away from him and from it, searching for what I knew was there.

  Something doesn’t come back like it should, a nose looks like a snout, all wet and thick and nasty; an eye bigger than it should be that can’t be kept closed, claws tipping fingers instead of nails, something will tell you, but you got to see it, Raine, and when you do, take that boy and run for all you’re worth. Don’t leave a clue behind.

  It was the eyes this time. Yellow. Strangely human but dead and empty, pupils round and black, with no expression, like looking into death itself. It went for my hand, quick and fierce like an animal would, white teeth sharp and needle thin, bending backwards—a shark’s teeth made for ripping and tearing.

  Protecting me, Cade jumped in its way, and it backed away. Startled, it growled, gazed around the space, sniffing behind me. It was looking for Davey, but it was waiting its time, patiently like always. And then it turned, nice dog again, sat at Cade’s feet as if he were its master, and that frightened me more than anything I could think of.

  Yet Cade was as surprised as me. “Go! Get out of here!” he yelled, stepping in front of me.

  And it whined as if wounded and slunk away, tail between its legs. I didn’t realize I was shaking until Cade pulled me close to him, and I felt my trembling body against his strong one.

  “Hey, Raine. You okay?” I nodded that I was, but my head barely moved. “I’ll call animal control when I get home and have it picked up. It’s a stray. Probably harmless, but it shouldn’t have gone after you like it did. Hey—”

  I was shaking so hard, I couldn’t talk.

  “Calm down! It’s over. The dog is gone.” He hugged me and I let myself fit into his body, safe.

  “I need to leave,” I said.

  Neither of us spoke on the way home. Him, puzzled by my actions, and me, lost in thoughts I couldn’t share.

  8

  cade

  It was early when Cade dropped Raine off at Luna’s, and he didn’t know what to do with himself; her presence wouldn’t leave him. Luna had asked if he wanted to come in, sit around, have some tea, but he refused. He didn’t want to lose the feeling Raine had left him with, that touch of teenage giddiness he hadn’t felt since Dennie died. He wanted the afternoon to stay untouched in his mind, let it linger as long as it could. But when he came into his house—into its loneliness and silence—he wondered if he should have taken Luna up on her offer—sat awhile, chatted about nothing, made sure Raine was okay, even though the closer to home they’d gotten, the stronger she seemed. He was still puzzled by her reaction to the dog, the trembling that overtook her.

  He hoped he hadn’t made a fool of himself, begging her to stay and talk as he had, despite her obvious discomfort. He’d been more concerned with his own feelings than with hers, which must have been clear to her, too. Yet she sat and listened, every word he spoke seeming to touch her as deeply as they once had Dennie. She listened like Dennie, too, all heart and eyes. He never thought anyone could hear him like that again, as if every word stuck in some pocket of her soul. That damn stray had sure shaken her up, though—both her and the boy must be terrified of dogs—and the way the dog snapped at her hands, close to nipping her fingers, had scared him, too. Damn filthy mutt. At some point, he’d ask her why she was so frightened, maybe when they went out again. On the way home, she’d mentioned a movie she wanted to see, and maybe they’d catch it one Sunday. Just thinking about the possibility made him grin.

  He called animal control as he promised he would, and after leaving a message about a stray dog that might be vicious, sat down at the kitchen table acutely aware of his aloneness. He considered pouring a drink, then changed his mind. Recalling Raine’s words about not being able to imagine him as the wild man he had been made him chuckle in wonder. Wild man and more, that was the truth of it. Not giving a damn about life, love, or limb. Booze, weed, blow—anything he could drink, smoke, or snort to send him into oblivion.

  He couldn’t remember those days without a burning sense of shame and embarrassment. He’d even dealt drugs for a hot minute when he dropped out of college. Light stuff mostly, weed, no weight. It was sheer luck and good timing that had kept him out of jail; a dozen times he could have landed there easy enough. Hell, the cops knew he was dealing, but he was too slick to get caught. To this day, there were cops out there who still had it in for him, and if he hadn’t been at work the day Dennie was murdered, they would have pinned that on him, just out of spite. God, he’d been so young and cocky—nothing could touch him. Even his old man’s death wasn’t enough to stop him from drinking, even when the insurance money got him back in school. One snowy night he’d run his truck off Route 17, damn near killed himself. Lucky for him, he’d been sober enough to make it home. Then he’d met Dennie with her serious, trusting, studious self. It had scared him how closely and quickly she drew him to her.

  He’d put up a fight at first, running as fast as he could, back to the women who followed him around, panties falling around their ankles, and he smiled for an instant, remembering how Raine had laughed at the words he so thoughtlessly used to describe them. Loose women? What kind of bullshit was that? Like he’d said, he was the loose one. Three quarters of them had tender hearts he’d taken no time breaking. To this day, he was half-scared he’d run into some woman with a .45 tucked in her bag, determined to shoot him dead for being such a coldhearted son of a bitch. He’d been terrified he’d find some way to hurt Dennie, too, bring her to her knees, down to his level, but cautiously, effortlessly, she had pulled him up to hers.

  He was afraid of Raine the same way, yet it wasn’t wildness but grief he feared would touch her. Better for her to leave him alone, let him wallow in his sorry life. Let him come home. Correct some papers. Get drunk. Watch TV. Fall asleep on the couch like he’d been doing for the past year. How could he pull a woman with a vulnerable kid into the dark smelly world he inhabited?

  Yet there was still that glimmer of hope, the one even sorrow couldn’t snuff out, that Dennie had left burning in his heart. Let her pull you into her world, she would say. Let her pull you into her world like I did.

  But what kind of world did Raine live in?

  Some things are impossible to face. They can kill you.

  What had happened to make her so wary, so frightened of life? Was it—or some man—still tied to her? Could she ever trust him enough to tell him the truth? Why was she still alone after so many years? Surely she was joking or exaggerating just to make him feel better about his own loneliness. It made no sense for a woman with a smile like hers, which could pull you out of your own sorry funk against your will. How could those restless, haunting eyes not have enchanted some man by now? Her son had them, too, those eyes. Angel eyes, he’d heard them called—that peeked inside you and saw the slice of heaven—or hell—that lay there.

  You focus on the little things that make you happy. I call it the “now” in my life. Davey is a lot of it, drawing—I wanted to be an artist once, can you believe that?

  He was willing to believe anything she told him, he realized, and maybe he should focus on his “now” as she did hers. But what exactly was his “now”? He only hoped he hadn’t scared her with all that mess about something inhuman killing Dennie, but God help him, that was what he believed. Only Luna knew what he’d seen, because she’d been there. Neither of them had spoken of it since. What he told his coworkers had been sanitized, and although they knew he didn’t kill
her, there was still a subtle mistrust, a vague suspicion in their eyes that he, through carelessness or neglect, had brought this hell upon himself. He’d even begun to wonder if he was being punished for his past. Yet Raine had listened to him as if he were making sense, accepting without question or suspicion what he said.

  Strangely enough, foolishly enough, he’d had misgivings about a date with a woman other than Dennie, despite all the women he’d been with—been through—in the past. When he was with Dennie, he’d never looked at anyone else. Well, maybe looked, but certainly never touched. Never felt the feelings that brewed inside him when he touched Raine that first time. Just a touch. A tingling like a gentle shock shooting straight down his loins that told him he’d been away from women too damn long. Could just touching a woman make him feel like that? Did she feel it, what he had felt?

  He felt guilty, then heard Dennie’s voice the way he could if he listened to the silence in the house, to the space inside his head.

  How long do you plan to put yourself through this?

  Until I’m through.

  I’m dead, my darling, let me go!

  Could those be her words, her voice? If only he could hear it again, once more before he died.

  He felt like a drink again, like getting drunk out of his skull, but he couldn’t. Proving something to Raine, that he wasn’t that man he’d once been, that she believed he could never have been?

  What the hell was he thinking? He hardly knew the woman!

  Now, I can’t believe that, that you were once a wild man.

  Prove himself to whom? To himself, to Dennie?

  He put on the kettle to make himself some tea. In honor of Luna. How often had he and Dennie joked about that—in honor of Luna—when she spooned chamomile leaves into the teapot and filled it with boiling water? They would settle down on the couch, sipping tea sweet with honey that smelled of flowers, download some mindless flick from Netflix, then slip into bed and make love.

  To hear her voice again. Just once.

  He remembered the digital recorder he hadn’t set eyes on since her death. Turning off the kettle, he put the cup and teapot—a dainty blue one Luna had given them—back into the cupboard and snapped on the light in Dennie’s study. Everything rushed back—Davey screaming, running like the devil was chasing him, Raine dashing after him, Luna taking the whole scene in, watching, listening, saying nothing. Despite it all, he forced himself into the room to the desk and went through her papers, studying, but just for an instant, their wedding photo. The digital recorder was in a plastic bag in the desk drawer, near the thing that gave him the creeps. He felt a sense of dread as he pushed it aside, grabbed the bag, careful not to touch it.

  Dennie had always been a meticulous researcher. Some of the recordings had already been transcribed, and he knew if he looked through the folders, he’d find each labeled with the time and date of transcription. He used to tease her about it, how carefully she recorded and labeled things, to which she would tell him, as serious about this as she was about everything else, that she was a scientist, too, solving mysteries others thought unsolvable. He picked up the digital recorder—the most expensive he could find when he’d bought it, replacing the fifty-dollar piece of junk she’d used since grad school—loaded it with new batteries, and took it back into the kitchen, quickly closing the office door, like something might get out, he thought, then laughed at his own foolishness. He pulled his laptop out of his briefcase, and plugged the recorder into a USB slot.

  Was he ready for this? What good was her voice without her to speak it? Better to give the damn thing to her advisor with the rest of her papers. Let somebody who didn’t love her listen to her voice. Yet even as he thought it, he knew he could never let the recorder go, not with a piece of her inside. He couldn’t take the chance that he might wake one morning and not be able to recall her voice, so low and just this side of sultry, always hiding a chuckle begging to break out.

  He chose a day at random. July 6—his birthday. He hadn’t bothered to celebrate it this year, hadn’t remembered until it was over. So this would be a belated gift to himself—the sound of Dennie’s voice. Putting on earphones, he closed his eyes, turned on the recorder, and there she was, as close and clear as if she were sitting across from him. Notes…, she began, then stopped and giggled. The sound of that girlish, flighty laughter tore at his heart. He didn’t think he could continue, but then came her voice, solid and soft, followed by his own, and he remembered that afternoon in all its color and high spirits.

  He’d come home early from work that day, found her in her study, notebook open, recording something for further investigation. She did that sometimes, recorded reminders to herself. Easier than writing, she said, her thoughts came easily. What was she laughing at? Him? He listened to his own footsteps entering the room.

  What are you doing home?

  Getting in your way.

  It may be your birthday … but …

  More laughter. He’d grabbed her, kissed her, teasing her lips with his tongue. He remembered the softness of her skin, the tenderness of that kiss.

  Early birthday present.

  Down payment?

  Promise?

  Okay, let me finish this first. Her professorial voice took over, the one that spoke so authoritatively to her students, dictated comments for her dissertation, interviewed subjects. He’d left and gone into the kitchen to correct homework.

  He cut it off. Rewound to the voices. Found the laughter, playing it over and over again, and then, finally, came to what happened next: an interview with an expert on Navajo witchcraft, research from some famous anthropologist, Clyde Kluckhohn, whose work she admired. He skipped to another date, two days later. Notes from research by scholars and cultural anthropologists even he recognized: Margaret Mead, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Zora Neale Hurston. If Dennie had lived, she would have been one of the great ones. If Dennie had lived … He turned off the recorder, but still her voice lingered, inside the folds of the curtains, the plaster in the walls, within his mind.

  The bottle of bourbon sat patiently waiting for him in the kitchen cabinet. He could see it, smell it, taste it even, something to ease the trembling that had come over him as violently as Raine had shook when that damn dog nipped at her hand. Raine. It wasn’t like he’d promised her anything—but her words came back.

  You strike me as the kind of guy everyone depends on, like Luna, like Davey does.

  How long had it been since anyone depended on him? He put it from his mind, that bottle of Jim Beam. Jimmy B, his daddy used to call it in disgust, because he wouldn’t touch it. The memory of that and his father made him wince. No. At least not for tonight.

  He placed his laptop, digital recorder still attached, in his briefcase and pushed it underneath the desk in the living room, where he corrected papers. (Dennie had the real office; they’d decided that when they bought the house.) He got out the pasta salad he’d bought a couple of days ago, sniffed it to make sure it wasn’t spoiled, then pulled out what was left of the rotisserie chicken he’d bought yesterday at ShopRite. Good enough for tonight.

  The doorbell rang as he was pulling off a chicken leg. Raine was his first thought, and he wondered why. He’d just left her, after all, what could she want … except it was he, he had to admit to himself, who wanted to see her. Thinking of her put a smile on his face even though he knew it was probably Luna come to check on him, always looking out for him, bringing some food. So much for leftovers.

  His smile dropped abruptly when he opened the door and saw who it was. Forgotten feelings came back then: how he felt about cops, the memory of himself in those days.

  “Cade Richards?” The old one spoke first. He looked like death turned over twice, acne-scarred skin dotted with flesh moles, a voice scratchy and deep, the kind that came from smoking too many Lucky Strikes when you could find them. Cade tried to place his face but couldn’t; he’d remember a face and voice like that.

  “Good evening, Offi
cers. How can I help you?” His voice was the formal one, schoolboy neat and proper, the one he’d pulled out when he spoke to the police all those years back.

  “Can we step in?” There were two of them. The junior partner was losing his hair, too young for that, Cade thought. He stepped back, knew better than not to. The two stepped inside, peering around like cops did in unfamiliar places. Cade’s hair crept up the back of his neck.

  “How can I help you?” Same tone, overly formal, calm but Cade knew something was up, something to do with Dennie.

  Had they found out who killed her?

  “Just a question or two.” The other one spoke. He was younger than Cade, late twenties, nervous. He glanced toward Dennie’s office and swiftly brought his gaze back to Cade, who knew then that this one had been in the house before, the day Dennie died. “There was a murder across town, last night. Restaurant owner, Walter Mack. Do you know him?”

  So they hadn’t found out anything new, after all. Cade’s stomach dropped. He couldn’t make himself respond to the question.

  “He was … uh … well … uh … murdered in a manner that closely resembled how your wife was … murdered.” Brutalized. Mutilated. Desecrated. Cade knew what he meant. Nobody could walk into a scene like the one in that study and not have it seared into his memory forever or easily find words to describe it. “We wondered if there was any chance that you or your late wife knew him, were acquainted with him?”

  “The same way?” Cade felt sick. It took him a while to find his voice.

  “Yeah.” The young cop looked at the floor, avoiding his eyes.

  “When?”

  “Last night.” Cade realized they’d told him that before.

  “Walter Mack? No. I don’t know him. Never heard of him.”

  “Can you think of any way that the two of them … your wife and the deceased, could be connected? Anyone they knew or had in common?”

  “No … I don’t think so. I’m sure, no.”