Giulietta blew a kiss. She said something to the attendant that made him laugh and pretended to need his help to climb into the plane.
The house was unbearably empty, a hollowness Susie tried to fill by getting underfoot. In Toad Hall, where her scent lingered, Giulietta had propped a drawing in the buttery suede chair: a colored pencil sketch of Els, her copper curls a squiggly mane, her eyes more blue than gray. She was wearing the blue bead and persimmon shawl, and, though she wasn’t smiling, her eyes held a spark of joy. Across the bottom Giulietta had written “figlia” and “daughter.” The tiny gardenia drawn in the corner had no tear.
CHAPTER 48
During Friday’s hectic dinner service, so many customers inquired after Giulietta that Els worried the appeal of Horseshoe Jack’s might be dangerously diminished by her absence. When the guests were finally gone, she spotted Eulia at Jack’s grave and climbed up to find her sitting with Peanut asleep in her lap, her tear-slicked face gleaming in the moonlight.
“Jack must love the view from here,” Els said.
Eulia moved over to make room for her. “You pick a good writing.”
The new grave marker read:
HORSESHOE JACK
JULY 30, 1949 – SEPTEMBER 21, 1998
How strange this fear of death is!
We are never frightened at a sunset.
—GEORGE MACDONALD
“It’s from an author he loved,” Els said. “Me as well. I hope it’s not bad juju that I pointed his feet west, but he’d take a sunset over a sunrise any day.”
Susie lolled on the bare earth. A fog-like wisp wreathed the stone and assumed greater density until Jack took shape. He smiled at Els. “Well done, sweet. On all counts.”
Eulia gasped and pulled Peanut closer. “Move from me, Jumbie.”
“I’ve waited only for this, my love,” he whispered. His white linen shirt was diaphanous in the moonlight. His hair was tidy, his eyes pleading.
“Oh Lord, oh Lord, I too frighten,” Eulia said, and pulled Peanut so tightly against her that he squirmed and muttered.
Els started to stand up, but Eulia clamped onto her wrist and forced her back onto the bench. “You seein’ this too? We both crazy?” She sheltered Peanut’s face.
“I treated you savagely,” Jack said. He stepped closer. When Eulia put up her hand, he stepped back again. “I did it to protect you.”
“From you cussin’ me? All you had to do for that was stop gettin’ drunk.”
“Tell her, sweet,” he said.
Susie stood up and nudged her nose under Els’s elbow. Els stroked her ears, silenced by the fear that she might squander Jack’s chance. His eyes were pleading. Finally, Els looked at Eulia. “Jack lied to you. He learned he had AIDS and was terrified you’d get it, so he pretended not to love you.”
Els thought of Eulia in the study that first visit, the sadness and bitterness in the girl’s face. Jack leaned against the headstone, gazing at Eulia and Peanut.
“He decided it was best to . . . end it, end himself, rather than put you in further danger.”
Eulia touched her forehead to Peanut’s. “They can test everyone now,” she said. “I didn’t catch it.”
The frogs’ urgent cries filled the air.
“Safe sex means he gotta throw heself into the sea?” Eulia said. “Make my baby grow up never knowin’ he daddy?” She looked at Jack. “You the biggest fool I ever know.”
“Guilty,” Jack said. He held her gaze. “But I never stopped loving you.”
“Lovin’ my baby is the only way I can still love you,” Eulia said.
Water from the afternoon’s downpour gurgled in the ghaut, carrying some of the mountain into the sea.
Peanut opened his eyes and Eulia tried to turn his face away, but he wriggled free, stared at Jack, and said, “Ma?”
Jack smiled at him. “He’s got my eyes.”
“Let’s hope he got my brain,” Eulia said. She sat Peanut up. “That man just visiting, baby. He doan live here no more.”
Jack reached out as if to caress his son’s brassy curls, smiled ruefully, faded, and was gone. Peanut blinked and pointed to where Jack had stood. “Ma?”
Susie barked once.
Eulia looked around. “He come and go just like that, poof?”
“When he damn pleases,” Els said.
“He comin’ back?”
Els pulled Susie close, looked out to where a lemon slice moon cast a glittering path over the sea, and said, “I think we’re done.”
On the kitchen table, under a bottle of olive oil, was a note scrawled on a bar napkin: Where are you? Guests cut charter short to spend New Year’s Eve at Sunshine’s. Come sailing—no guests for four days. Champagne aboard. Bring Susie and bathing suit. He’d scratched out the bathing suit. I’ll show you where the blue bead came from. ~Liz. The Z was extended, spiked, and curled into a lizard’s tail.
She went up to the bar and splashed a little rum into a glass, toasted Jack’s jaunty portrait, and stepped onto the gallery. A perfect gardenia sat on the railing. She closed her eyes and breathed in the scents of this land—the sea, the gardenia, the damp earth in its endless cycle of fertility, something always blooming, something always dying. The night air pressed on her as if crowded with spirits, Jack’s and all the others she’d loved and lost. She picked up the gardenia. In the moonlight, its petals gleamed like silver.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It’s impossible to thank by name all the people who have encouraged and helped me during the prolonged birth of this novel, but a few deserve special mention. My agent, April Eberhardt, whose enthusiasm for my work and whose energy propelled me through dark days and twisting paths and eventually into the arms of my publisher, She Writes Press. The SWP team of Brooke Warner, Lauren Wise, Krissa Lagos, and Barrett Briske. My Vassar writing teacher, the late Bill Gifford, whose sly smile offered the first encouragement. My Vineyard teacher and editor John Hough, Jr., who decades later helped me claim my voice and hone my craft. My editor, Rebecca Faith Heyman, who showed me how to reshape the narrative and gave me the title. My Italian translator, Lori Hetherington, and my Scottish and Nevisian sensitivity readers, Ruth T. Pollock and Isabel Byron, respectively, who together brought realism and sparkle to my characters, dialects, and settings. My readers Arlan Wise, Jimmy Rubens, the late Karen Harris, Jennifer Tseng, Carol Newman Cronin, Larry Hepler, and the many members of John Hough’s Indian Hill Writer’s Workshop, who gave me the huge gift of their honesty. My tough-love critique partners Sue Hruby and Elle Lash, both gifted writers and acute listeners, who helped me kill darlings and mourn their loss. My talented neighbor Laurie Miller, for decades of friendship, cups of tea, and the beautiful map of Nevis that graces the front of the book. The welcoming and generous people of Nevis, led by Kay and Henry Loomis, whose Seahorse Cottage has been our Nevis home and whose garden inspired Jack’s, and Louis de Geofroy and Karen Overtoom, whose home in Cades Bay was our introduction to the island in 1996. Our Anguilla hosts Roy and Mandy Bossons, Claire and Patrick Lynch, and the whole Roy’s crew, whose hospitality sustained me during annual retreats for writing and editing. Patricia MacDonald Bourgeau, who lead the way for decades. And never last nor least, Larry Hepler, who couldn’t avoid a front row seat for the creation of The Moon Always Rising and who rarely complained about foregone holidays and beach afternoons, distracted conversations, late dinners, and occasional temper flares and anxiety binges. A story he told me in 1996 inspired Finney’s character. It all unspooled from there.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Author photo © Sharona Jacobs Photography
Alice Early’s career spans academia, international executive recruiting, commercial real estate, career transition coaching, and always writing. All her life, people have entrusted their stories to her to shape and share. Her studies in creative writing and counseling and her decades of work easing clients’ career and life transitions have all contributed to her writer’s ability to see and listen, and to touch others. The Moon Always Rising is her first novel. Alice and her partner have visited Nevis annually since 1996 and otherwise share a hand-built life on Martha’s Vineyard in view of the sea.
Alice is available to meet with your book group, virtually or in person. For book group and readers’ guide information, please visit www.aliceearly.com.
SELECTED TITLES FROM SHE WRITES PRESS
She Writes Press is an independent publishing company founded to serve women writers everywhere. Visit us at www.shewritespress.com.
A Drop In The Ocean: A Novel by Jenni Ogden. $16.95, 978-1-63152-026-6. When middle-aged Anna Fergusson’s research lab is abruptly closed, she flees Boston to an island on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef—where, amongst the seabirds, nesting turtles, and eccentric islanders, she finds a family and learns some bittersweet lessons about love.
Play for Me by Céline Keating. $16.95, 978-1-63152-972-6. Middle-aged Lily impulsively joins a touring folk-rock band, leaving her job and marriage behind in an attempt to find a second chance at life, passion, and art.
Size Matters by Cathryn Novak. $16.95, 978-1-63152-103-4. If you take one very large, reclusive, and eccentric man who lives to eat, add one young woman fresh out of culinary school who lives to cook, and then stir in a love of musical comedy and fresh-brewed exotic tea, with just a hint of magic, will the result be a soufflé—or a charred, inedible mess?
A Cup of Redemption by Carole Bumpus. $16.95, 978-1-938314-90-2. Three women, each with their own secrets and shames, seek to make peace with their pasts and carve out new identities for themselves.
Anchor Out by Barbara Sapienza. $16.95, 978-1631521652. Quirky Frances Pia was a feminist Catholic nun, artist, and beloved sister and mother until she fell from grace—but now, done nursing her aching mood swings offshore in a thirty-foot sailboat, she is ready to paint her way toward forgiveness.
Magic Flute by Patricia Minger. $16.95, 978-1-63152-093-8. When a car accident puts an end to ambitious flutist Liz Morgan’s dreams, she returns to her childhood hometown in Wales in an effort to reinvent her path.
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