Half-Moon Manor

by Darcy, A. J.

  She barely remembered Alex. She could not even remember if she had ever met him. She did remember that Alex Bell was the person that Nadine had made her claim that she had cheated on Weston with.

  Melissa voiced what the others were thinking, “Why did Mom want Victoria to give Alex’s name?”

  “Mom hated Alex.” Weston went back to pacing. “He swore revenge against us.” He stopped to think, “I think she had some of his scholarships pulled because he did not fall into whatever box Mother wanted him in.”

  “Pulling scholarships,” Victoria mumbled. “How original.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Present - December

  Olivia was not used to being filmed during a dress rehearsal, but Melissa insisted that it would be easier to get cast copies of the play without having to deal with the noise from the audience.

  “Not that we won’t have a live version filming too. I like having options,” her aunt grinned before handing over the video camera. “Besides, with this filming we can take out several clips and use them as promotional tools.”

  “Great. It’s not like it won’t be the first time a video of me has found its way online,” Olivia exaggeratedly groaned, clutching her hands to her heart. “Kill me now oh gods of the theatre.”

  “I think those are the Muses.”

  “I believe,” one of the stage hands interrupted while carrying a jug of ‘wine’, “that Dionysus is both the Greek and Roman god of wine and theatre.”

  The senior playing Lysander pulled out his phone from where he had hidden it in his costume, “Well, I’ll be. The freshman is right.”

  “I knew that hiring you was the right thing,” Melissa shouted out to her student. “Now, Clark,” she yelled at Lysander, “put your phone up in your bag. The last thing we need is for it falling out of your costume and into the audience during the performance. Now, Stage Left, Act One, Scene One. I want you,” Melissa turned to the students in the sound booth who were in charge of the audio recordings, “to hit play as soon as you see my arm go down. Nod if you understand. Good.”

  Silence took over the auditorium as Melissa raised her arm. This was part of why she loved her job. Watching the students act out their hearts, their souls. Watching would-be thespians putting their all into every performance until things were perfect.

  Signaling to one of the students who had signed on to be an usher, or was it a ticket taker, she watched as the student hit play on the camcorder. Giving a silent count to fifteen, she then lowered her hand and moments later the introduction to the play began.

  ‘This was almost as good as Opening and Closing Nights combined,’ she thought as she watched her niece perform live for the first time.

  If anybody noticed somebody partially hidden in the back row then nobody said anything. Winnie felt like she owed it to Henry to help get him into the theatre for the final dress rehearsal even if he would not be able to say anything to Olivia. At least he could watch her.

  After weeks of barely being able to talk to his best friend, at least he could watch her magically play Hermia. She even made Clark look better than he normally did. Her performance pulled into him the story and made him wish that he was the person she was staring at with imagined stars in her eyes.

  ‘Just a few more days,’ he thought. Counting. Four more days starting tomorrow. Opening Night. Friday. Saturday. Sunday’s matinee.

  Sunday he would get her to talk to him even if it meant barging into her bedroom and making her listen.

  It was really difficult not being able to spend time with or talk to the person you most likely loved, or could love. How could he possibly know if Olivia refused to talk to him over something stupid that was not even his fault? It was frustrating.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Holding her breath, Olivia hid in the curtains, careful to touch nothing and make the curtains move or ruin her costume. Instead she watched, waited, wondered about the audience, and wondered about where her parents were sitting. If they were holding hands like she had frequently seen them doing. She wondered about where Henry was sitting. Would he be front and center or hidden somewhere in the crowd where she could not see him like he tried to do earlier during the dress rehearsals?

  She missed Henry.

  “Now, fair Hippolyta,” the senior playing Theseus began once the spot lights began to brighten on the set for the palace, “our nuptial hour / Draws apace; four happy days bring in / Another moon; but, oh methinks, how slow /This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires, / Like to a step-dame or a dowager, / Long withering out a young man’s revenue.”

  Erasing her non-drama related thoughts, Olivia waited patiently for her cue as the others started to gather around her in anticipation for their own entrances.

  Weston held his breath as he watched Olivia perform her first lines. He watched the senior playing Theseus critically as the character began advising Hermia about her choice and tried to guide her to Demetrius.

  “So is Lysander,” Olivia as Hermia pointed out.

  “In himself he is: / But, in this kind, wanting your father’s voice, / The other must be held the worthier.”

  Weston paused, wondering just how would ever handle a situation where he thought his daughter could do better than the beau she chose on her own. Then he laughed at himself; Henry was already chosen for Olivia regardless his daughter’s firm opinion that only a few more months would confirm or deny everybody’s thoughts.

  “I would my father look’d but with my eyes.”

  Maybe that was what he needed to do. He needed to look at things through his daughter’s eyes. Maybe they all needed to hear what she had been trying to tell them for weeks. She was terrified that if fate decried that her future daughter’s father was not Henry that it would destroy her relationship with Henry.

  Looking down at his hand entwined with Victoria’s, he thought, ‘Not all biological fathers were dads.’

  Giving the mother of his daughter and his current girlfriend’s hand a squeeze, Weston smiled when Victoria glanced over at him. He wondered if he should share that bit of thought with Olivia later or if that was treading into a dangerous territory that he barely understood despite living through it.

  Winnie waited for her cue, waited to perform her first set of lines. These lines had caused to her to think endlessly every time she had to recite them. It made her wonder if her mother had purposely given Winnie the role of Helena.

  Olivia smiled wide, in character, as she greeted her cousin to the stage, “God speed fair Helena! Whither away?”

  Turning to face Herma, “Call you me fair? that fair again unsay. / Demetrius loves your fair. O happy fair! / Your eyes are lode-stars; and your tongue’s sweet air / More tuneable than lark to shepherd’s ear, / When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear. / …”

  Why couldn’t Sophia have been in the play? She would have been the perfect person to perform opposite her during these lines.

  But she was not. Olivia was. And Sophia and Michael were in the crowd, watching.

  But it was different though. Hermia loved Lysander, not Demetruis. And while standing on the stage, reciting the lines she wished she could have been saying to Sophia for most of the six weeks it had taken them to get the production from cold read-throughs to this live performance on Opening Night, Winnie realized something important as she continued her lines. She hoped nobody noticed her mild distraction and that she was acting on auto-pilot.

  Winnie never did love Michael the way that Sophia appears to love him. Michael was a shiny toy that she never would have and she would have been bored with him within a week.

  “The more I love, the more he hateth me,” she acted, dragging herself away from her wayward thoughts. If she continued acting as if she hated Sophia then Michael surely would hate her and then she would have lost a friend.

  “His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine.”

  “None, but your beauty; would that fault were mine!”

  Henry had never tho
ught that he would be watching Olivia shine on stage with half of the school watching her, awestruck. She was even more amazing than she had been during the dress rehearsal that Winnie had helped sneak him into.

  He wished that he had a theatrical bone in his body so that he could be reciting love lines to his best friend instead of the senior playing Lysander.

  He loved her. He loved her with everything in him. It had taken him weeks to realize how much he missed her. He had spent that time wishing that she was by his side while doing homework or waiting for him to pick her after play practice. He would have waited years as long as she was on the other end of the wait.

  That’s what made things so difficult. He loved her and knew that she loved him back, but she wanted to wait until they had the safe guard of knowing. He did not care if the earth shook for somebody else on her eighteenth birthday as long as he was able to spend the next few months by her side.

  Okay. Maybe he did care if she was meant to have somebody else’s baby, but that did not mean that they were not meant to be together. Look at Weston planning on taking care of Victoria’s baby even if the boy was not technically his child. Just look at the hoops they had to jump through before they could be together.

  Henry knew that he loved Olivia and would do whatever it took to protect her.

  He would be in the audience for the next several performances. Maybe he would even give her flowers after the Sunday Matinee performance.

  Why would he know that the single act of presenting flowers on Sunday would put him exactly where he needed to be even as it frustrated Olivia?

  Chapter Nineteen

  The evidence he needed to find them was everywhere. The small-town newspaper had a small online article about the high school theatre production, including a photo that showed Olivia in stage make-up and her costume. Her name was mentioned as one of the leads. Somebody had posted a video online that was taken during a dress rehearsal, probably an attempt to bring in more people to the showings, which featured her.

  The name of the high school. The name of the town. Everywhere. It was easy after that to track them down. An internet search of Victoria’s last name lead him to an address. To a house. Half-Moon Manor. What a stupid name for a house.

  All it took was a simple online search.

  “You can’t escape me forever,” George whispered savagely, taking another swig from his bottle.

  There were bottles scattered everywhere in that apartment. Bottles that were standing upright. Bottles that were on their sides. Full bottles waiting to be opened. Opened bottles that were drained dry. Bottles in the sink, the trashcan. Bottles on the stove, the floor. Unopened bottles stored in the oven. Everywhere the smell of whiskey. It had soaked into the floor and counters where it had been spilled.

  The landlord and the neighbors were afraid to knock on the door. On occasion somebody would hear a bottle shattering followed by a round of loud cussing. Only one person ever entered and exited the apartment. Nobody wanted to do anything about it. It was not their business. They were scared of what a manic George was capable of doing to them in retaliation of their interference. Rent was paid on time. No child or significant other was being abused. Just a lonely alcoholic with anger issues lived in the apartment.

  They never wanted to consider what would happen if a match was lit in that apartment. Nobody rented out the apartments on the other side of his and when it happened they quickly asked to be moved to another apartment after a week. Two weeks tops.

  Nobody wanted to find out why he was angry all the time. The theories were more entertaining.

  Maybe if they had asked then things could have been different. Instead, one day in December George loaded up his car with a few necessary items, including two full bottles of whiskey, and drove two hours to Half-Moon Manor.

  “No,” Olivia pushed. “Go away, Henry.”

  “Absolutely not,” he insisted as he stood on the porch. “You need to talk to me. You have to hear this. I’ve been trying to talk about you this for months but you used the play to push me away. You let Winnie in and now you should let me in!”

  “I had to let Winnie in!” Olivia started to pace the porch. “She’s my cousin! We were in the play together! I saw her every single day and she knew that if she even mentioned you that I would ignore her.” Turning to face him, “Go away!”

  “No!”

  From the window, Weston looked over Victoria’s shoulder at the teenagers. “Should we be concerned?”

  “No. Henry is just as stubborn as our daughter.”

  Turning her around as quickly as he could manage, Weston smiled and kissed her. “I think that is the first time you called her ‘our daughter’ to my face. What happened?”

  “I’m tired of fighting Fate and the Mason Curse,” Victoria leaned against him, wrapping her arms around him as much as she could with her belly in the middle.

  Weston turned just a little, well aware of the curse she was referring to, and smiled at her as he managed to pull her closer to his side. “Finally,” he sighed.

  “You are still going to have to work on your relationship with Olivia. I’m sorry I kept her away from you for so many years.”

  “You didn’t,” Weston stated. “My mother did.”

  Seconds later a shout from the porch broke them apart and had returned their focus back on the teenagers arguing outside in the cold.

  “I don’t care! I don’t care! I don’t want to hear it! Go home, Henry!”

  “You do to care! You wouldn’t still be mad at me if you didn’t care!” Henry reached out to get her to face him.

  “Don’t touch me!”

  “Why are you mad about this? Is it because you think I didn’t wait for you? Will you listen for a second? It’s a rumor that Winnie started! She started it to help get Savannah to leave me alone. What is so difficult to understand? It’s a rumor! What part of a rumor don’t you understand! It never happened!”

  But Olivia did not hear him. She didn’t want to listen. She knew all of this; Winnie had told her everything already. Olivia was simply not ready to face what she felt for Henry and the unsettling fear that he might not be her forever. “Just go home, Henry.”

  “No! I’m going to sit right here on this porch and wait for your pride to cool down and for you to listen to what I’m trying to tell you. I don’t care that it’s December. I don’t care that it’s cold. I’m going to sit right here and wait for you to calm down.” He plopped down on one of the old rocking chairs that was right next to the door while Olivia disappeared inside. She found no relief by slamming doors as she encountered them as she left him alone on the porch.

  “I’ll remind her not to stress you out,” Weston whispered. “Then I have to go to work.”

  Victoria kissed him lightly before letting him go. She wandered off to the where she finally ended up sitting down in a chair. Weird little flashes kept appearing that let her know that some vision was beginning to form but that somebody had not completely made up their mind yet. This usually only happened when things were close to happening.

  She really did not want to know what was about to happen and the flickering vision was hindering her ability to concentrate on making dinner.

  “What am I going to do?” George kept mumbling to himself, driving through Jackson without a problem. He had ideas. He had plans. Nothing was coming together. He only knew he had another hour to plan whatever it was that he was going to do.

  It was not until he pulled into the driveway and saw a teenager on the porch did he have a flickering of an idea.

  “Ring the doorbell,” George demanded of Henry, somehow steadily holding onto the knife in his hand as he dropped the half-full bottle of whiskey he was trying to drink.

  Henry just stared at the knife before deciding that a drunken man would not be able to do too much damage with a knife. All bets were off when George pulled a gun out of the car and put it in his pocket. That changed things a bit. Hitting the buzzer, he pushed it several tim
es and hoped that somebody would get his sense of panic.

  When Victoria managed to open the door, she nearly fainted. The sight of George with a knife was enough to make her panic.

  “Get inside,” he nudged Henry with his free hand. “Hello, Victoria.” Looking down at her expanding belly, “When were you going to tell me about the baby?” Not waiting for a response, “Call Olivia down here,” he demanded, leading them into the living room. Not giving anybody a chance to follow his orders, “Olivia! Get down here!”

  Olivia looked up from where she was curled up on her bed. “George,” she whispered. Grabbing her phone, she went ahead and dialed 911, knowing that George’s arrival was not good. That there were too many things that were out of place; the buzzing forming in her head was enough to tell her things were about to turn sour. “My mother’s ex-boyfriend is here and I don’t think he’s up to any good.”

  “Okay,” the dispatcher said. Half of what the dispatcher said was going in and out of Olivia’s ear as she heard herself being called again. “Stay on the line.”

  Instead, Olivia placed the phone on the staircase where hopefully George would not hear it and where the operator could still hear everything. She feared what would happen if she did not follow his command.

  “Hello, George,” she whispered, eyes widening when she saw the knife pointing at Henry.

  Grabbing her arms, George pushed Henry away. He landed behind Victoria and quickly scrabbled to his feet. “Don’t move,” George demanded as he glared at Henry. “Hello, sweetheart,” he smiled at Olivia. “Did you miss me?”

  Chapter Twenty

  Olivia stood stock still as her body refused to move a single muscle. She felt like she should have sensed this coming, but how could she? Nothing about this moment felt right. Nothing was located where it was supposed to be and that was what her talent screamed about the most. It did not care that so many lives were in danger and just that things were out of place.