The house was empty of people but full of the scent of pancakes when I woke, making me nostalgic right from the start. Papa used to make pancakes every Tuesday, because it was a day that needed something special, he always said. Huckleberry corn cakes were his specialty, which he said was more about the process than anything else: Heat an inch of oil on the stove, then spoon in the cornmeal-and-berry batter, turn the heat down right away, and wait for the edges to crisp before the flip. There was nothing quite like the first bite of one of those cakes—the crunch as satisfying as the look on my father’s face.
He hadn’t touched the cornmeal tin since Mama died. As much as I hurt over losing her, Papa had to hurt all the worse. How would it feel to lose your lover of twenty-odd years, know you’d never touch that person’s skin again or kiss their lips, share a hug or even a conversation?
I pulled my suitcase up beside me on the bed and opened it. Inside were a few of Mama’s shirts—old favorites that still held her smell. But today felt like an orange-tank day, so I reached for the top that had only ever been my own and did a quick change in the open because no one was around to care.
Before closing the case, I grazed my fingers over the bag of Mama’s ashes. “I’m sorry. I won’t leave you behind again.”
I sat there awhile longer, until the quiet of the house felt too loud, then walked barefoot to the front door of J.D.’s cabin and pushed it open.
“Hello?” I called.
The sun’s rays felt long and welcoming on my arms as I stepped outside and made my way up the dandelion-dotted hill under which sat J.D.’s home. Soft blades of grass and mounds of furry moss cushioned the undersides of my feet as I marked the curve of the land with careful steps. When I sensed that the slope had started to turn down again, I stopped and sat, believing I was just above the front door—unmissable by the masses once they returned from wherever they were.
I spread my palms out on the ground, turned my face up to the sky, and closed my eyes. There was no evil on this land, no matter what folks might believe. I smelled the scent of rich soil, kneaded by yesterday’s rain, and a hint of worms. Felt the heaviness of the still air, the humidity curling my hair at the ends. Heard the buzz of bees searching for pollen around me—and then my sister’s voice calling my name.
I answered, then heard her approaching footsteps.
“Olivia, good grief.” She cast me in shade as she hovered over me. “I’m in the bathroom for a few minutes and next thing I know you’re gone again.”
“Not gone,” I said. “Here I am.”
She’d changed into sweatpants and a T-shirt that was either pink or light orange, and that I hoped meant she’d shed her storm-cloud mood.
“We need to talk,” she said. “There are things you need to know about Hobbs.”
I stiffened. There was something in the look of her voice that reminded me of yesterday, of Hobbs when he’d said, I’m ruined, Livya. Then I’d been able to escape what I’d sensed, force him away from his thoughts, too, with a diversion. Now it came fully into my consciousness. The affect in Jazz’s voice was something I’d observed with voices once before, long ago, whenever anyone spoke about a particular person.
Jane. A neighbor who’d left. She’d been my age, skinny as a line, with eyes like violets and long blond hair all the girls had envied.
And she was bright. Bright and bold and beaten.
And worse.
Voices decayed when people talked about her, but only in ways I could see. Tiny black holes poked through them, like an echo of people’s thoughts. No one wanted to imagine the full picture; the truth was too dire to process completely.
“I’m sorry again about yesterday,” I said.
“That’s not what I came to talk about.”
Maybe it wasn’t, but I needed to get away from the subject of Hobbs and things I couldn’t process completely.
“Well, I was too tired before to talk much about why I did what I did,” I said. “I want to talk now, if you’ll listen.”
“Fine.” She sat beside me, and sunlight kissed my flesh again. “I’m listening.”
What to say? How to explain running away from what you wanted most to a person like Jazz?
I said, “I think I left everything so important behind me—you and the suitcase with Mama’s ashes—because I’m worried that what we’re doing may not matter in the way I need, even though it’s still what I want. Does that make any sense?”
“Nope,” she said, “which makes this like every other talk we’ve had in our lives.”
A thin red-coil crow of a rooster sounded off from a distance, and I sighed.
“Let’s try this, then,” I said. “As much as I want and need to go to the glades, I think there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to go.”
“Is that so? Can I talk to that part for a minute?”
I smiled, even though I didn’t mean it.
Sometimes you had to go places, but that didn’t mean you weren’t afraid of what might be waiting for you there.
Violet-eyed Jane hadn’t wanted to leave Tramp, or her friends. She’d wanted to leave her abusers. But they—her parents or her older brother, we never knew—were leaving, too, making her go. She couldn’t escape them any more than she could escape her own skin.
What had Hobbs been trying to escape?
What was I trying to escape?
“So what are you worried about?” Jazz asked.
“The easiest answer?” I dug a finger deep into the moss beside me. “That I may not see a will-o’-the-wisp.”
“Well, you’d better prepare yourself for that eventuality,” Jazz said. “Not to rain acid all over your parade, but wanting to see one of those is not going to magically equate with seeing one. And it’s Friday, in case you didn’t realize, which means it’s a day later than I said I’d give over to this insanity. After today’s trip, we’re done. Unlike this will-o’-the-wisp business, I know a job is out there waiting for me, and I need to spend some time getting ready for it.”
I remembered the dream I’d had—Babka pointing toward Saturday—but didn’t say anything. And I couldn’t get Hobbs’s voice out of my head.
I’m ruined, Livya.
“Do you believe in dreams? That some are wrong and some are right?” I asked, my thoughts wandering recklessly, away and away from ruined.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Does it matter?”
I wiggled my finger deeper into the moss, until dirt wedged under my nail. “Mama thought her dreams were flawed. Almost the last thing I said to her was about dreams—that there was nothing wrong with her dreams. It was me, you know, who was the last to talk to her. I was the last one to see her alive.”
Jazz’s voice turned soft as a dog’s belly. “I know, and that’s rough. I’m sorry.”
I took a chance and reached for her hand. It had been such a long time since we’d locked fingers. When she didn’t push me away, when she squeezed back, I let loose words I’d never have said if my mind hadn’t been a fracture of thoughts.
“There was a letter by her side when she died. I have it.”
“What?” Her voice wilted along with her grip. “What did it say?”
“I never opened the envelope.”
“You didn’t—You found her with a letter and still argue that she didn’t kill herself?”
Jazz tried to pull away, but I clung to her hand, her flesh and blood and bone, as adrenaline spiked in me. What had I done? But I could not take back the words.
“We don’t know what it says,” I told her.
“Olivia!”
“It’s not meant for us.”
“Of course it’s meant for us! Who else would it be meant for? You should’ve shared it to begin with! Now we have to open it after all this time, and all the wounds that might’ve crusted over the tiniest bit are going to split open along with it. What do you think this will do to Dad, or didn’t you ever consider that?”
“The letter’s not for us,” I repe
ated desperately, “because she wouldn’t do it, she didn’t.” Suicide, suicide. “It’s for Grandpa Orin, just like the others. Why don’t we try to find his address, and then we can send them all? You have them, don’t you? The other letters?”
Leaves slapped at one another on a sudden gust of wind. My hands shook.
“Listen up, Olivia Francis Moon. You’re going to give that letter to Dad as soon as we get back. It’s his to have. His to decide what to do with, and that’s the end of it.”
“That’s not what she would’ve wanted.”
“Of course it’s what she would’ve wanted,” she hissed, and I dropped her hand as if it had bitten me, turned into a snake. “It’s a letter. Letters are meant to be read.”
“Not her letters.”
“You’re crazy,” she said. “And you’re making me dizzy, talking in circles.”
I felt crazy. “I was the last one with her.” Me. “I heard what she said.” Me. “I know what she was thinking.” Me. “I was the last.” Me. “I’ll never believe that she did it, that she could’ve. Her life meant something. Dreams and hopes are worth something.” My dark spot throbbed, felt twice its normal size. “It’ll taste like hope.”
“Taste like hope? What are you talking about, the letter? Jesus Christ, tell me you didn’t eat it.”
“The will-o’-the-wisp,” I said, before a rumbling motor cut through the morning quiet.
“We’re about to have company, so we’ll have to finish talking about this later. And don’t think we won’t,” Jazz said, her voice edged with teeth. “J.D. has a truck, and he’s going to take us to the glades. We can go as soon as we’re ready.”
“Go?” I couldn’t comprehend this, as my mind churned with new arguments to try with my sister. Then something snagged my focus. “J.D.?” I blinked. “You mean Hobbs.”
“Hobbs can’t go to a public park, Olivia, you must realize that,” she said, as the noise grew. “There are posters out there showing his face, and it’s not like the guy fades into the woodwork. Besides, I’m pretty sure he’s taking off today, getting out of here while he still can.”
Getting out. Going. Gone.
I had never seen Jane again.
I scrambled to my feet, started to run back the way I’d come, but a sudden sharp pain pierced my right foot, and I crumpled to the ground.
“And that’s what you get for not wearing shoes on a hill full of bees.” Jazz reappeared by my side and pulled my throbbing bare foot out of my hands. “Stingers. Two of them. You never can do things simply, can you? Let’s hope J.D. has some tweezers, because I don’t have nails enough to get those out. Oh, come on, it’s not so bad, is it?” she asked with forced cheer when I didn’t move or speak. “We’re going to the glades, after all. It’s what you wanted, right?”
“Stop talking to me like I’m a child.”
“Stop acting like one,” she snapped.
Somewhere in the distance, the engine cut and a door slammed shut.
“We’re not going this minute, are we?” My heart raced. Everything was moving too fast. “I can’t lose another person. I can’t lose Hobbs.”
“Olivia, you’ve known him for three days.”
“I love him!” I said, and knew it was true the moment the words left my lips.
I loved Hobbs.
No matter what had happened to him.
No matter what or who it was he was running from.
How he’d been ruined.
I loved him.
I’d have to tell him. And hope that it mattered.
As it turned out, I’d stepped on three bees, not two, and J.D. didn’t have any tweezers. I knew that if my skin got soft enough we’d get at the stingers, though, so I stationed myself on the edge of his tub and soaked my foot. Beside me, light from the oil lamp played off the water. I wished my mother would appear in its reflection or come through the uncovered mirror on the wall and tell me what to do about Hobbs. I couldn’t lose him to the edges, to the trains or the sea. If I never saw him again, none of this would ever make sense, and I couldn’t believe my feelings were for nothing.
And what would I do about the letter? Why, why, why had I opened my big mouth and told Jazz about that?
“Where’s Livya?”
My stomach twisted with a fresh wave of nausea when I heard Hobbs’s voice in the other room. Hobbs, come to say goodbye. Seconds later, footsteps. And then he was there, beside me, and the words I’d wanted to say locked up as if my throat had been bee-stung, too.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
Boots hit the floor, and then he swiveled around and added his bare feet to the water beside mine. “You all right?”
“Bee stings aren’t the worst news of my day,” I said, and noticed the pull of his mouth.
“We both knew this would happen at some point,” he said. “I’d go my way, you’d go yours. And now, with everything going on with my old man, well.…” Dark pinpricks marred the curve of his voice again. “We can’t keep Red Grass locked up forever,” he finished.
I should ask about that—how things were with Red Grass, if he’d admitted to anything or if they’d learned any more about Beckett. But I didn’t care much then.
“Whatever happened in your past won’t change how I feel about you,” I said. “It doesn’t change anything.”
He laughed, but there was no humor in it. “It changes everything, all the time. But I want you to know that I’d go, Wee Bit, if I could. I’d go to the glades with you.”
My eyes pricked. “What if I said I wanted to stay with you? You said once that I might be cut out for life on the rails.”
He rolled his foot in the water. “I shouldn’t have said that. A girl like you doesn’t belong in this sort of life for keeps. It’s not the way of it. It’s not the way of me, either. I like to go it alone, and that’s the truth.”
“But that’s because you’ve had to,” I argued. “You don’t have to anymore.”
“I do have to,” he said. “Doesn’t mean we haven’t had fun, though, right?”
It’s been fun. It was such a Stan thing to say.
When his foot grazed mine, I pulled away, reached up into my hair and separated a handful into pieces.
“Come on, Livya.” He bumped my shoulder with his. “This might be our last time alone. Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad.” What I felt was more complicated than mad or sad. What I felt was disillusioned. Robbed. “You were supposed to be all of my next days.”
“What?”
“You tasted like tomorrow.”
Awkward seconds passed as he said nothing. And then the light distorted in the water as he pulled out of the tub, left me there with a swollen foot, and words of love wilted like a dying bud on my tongue.
April 4, 2008
Dear Dad,
I just finished watching a television show on reunions. One after another, people were invited onto a stage, and settled onto a comfortable couch. They wore their best clothes, and had their hair fixed up. And then they were introduced—reintroduced—to someone they’d lost. A mother went concave around the daughter she’d given up for adoption as a fourteen-year-old. Twins separated at birth, who’d maintained a startling number of identical behaviors throughout their lives, met their mirror selves for the first time. A brother and sister in their eighties, who’d had a fight about one thing or another more than fifty years ago, decided to bury the hatchet. Most touching, a prisoner of war was reunited with his wife. She’d already been told that he was alive, but she thought she’d been invited to the show to discuss her feelings. When he walked onto the stage, she stood, and I swear it seemed her legs would give out. He ran up to her and hugged her, and they had to cut to a commercial, because everyone was too busy sobbing after that to talk.
They were saying all these things that resonated so deeply with me that I scrambled to find a pen and wrote them down on a napkin:
“You can tell yourself to let it go, berate yours
elf every time your thoughts swing in that direction, but some people are as essential as skin and bone.”
“He is all parts of my past. He’s the hope of my best self and the fear of my worst. That’s why I couldn’t face him for such a long time. I didn’t know what I’d see.”
“I know I hurt her when I chose another life over her. But I think it also hurt her, because it seemed I was choosing one version of myself over another.”
“I felt him like a missing limb all those years. Now I’m whole again.”
I turned off the television after that and thought about us—how you are, as others before me have said, like a missing limb. How you are both there and not there, all the time, and how I feel your presence even when I don’t want to.
But here’s the part that might surprise you: I also thought about Mom.
“She doesn’t exist anymore, Bethie. We won’t give her that power over us, will we?”
Do you remember saying that? I remember. Those words imprinted on me after she left, the way you imprinted on me as the everlasting root in my life, the only foundation I had left. I wonder now if that’s what you told yourself after I married Branik, when—like it or not—I chose one version of myself over the other: that I didn’t exist anymore, and you wouldn’t let me have power over you.
I wonder what Mom is doing now. If she’s alive. If she ever thinks of us. If you ever think of her.
I wonder if she ever reached out to you to have you cut her off.
I wonder if she ever tried to contact me.
And I wonder, Dad, if you ever think of me, even if you don’t want to—if I’m like your missing limb, or even your tsunami. What would you do if I sent you a card today, right now, filled with pictures of your granddaughters? Would I be able to face you after all this time if you suddenly reached out, or would I feel like that woman on the show—afraid of what version of myself I might see?
Beth
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Plague
The Moon Sisters: A Novel Page 20