Under the Harvest Moon

by Robin Hale

  Under the Harvest Moon

  Robin Hale

  Contents

  1. Laurel

  2. Rhea

  3. Laurel

  4. Rhea

  5. Laurel

  6. Rhea

  7. Laurel

  8. Rhea

  9. Laurel

  10. Rhea

  11. Laurel

  12. Rhea

  13. Laurel

  14. Rhea

  15. Laurel

  16. Rhea

  17. Laurel

  18. Rhea

  19. Laurel

  20. Rhea

  21. Laurel

  22. Rhea

  23. Laurel

  24. Rhea

  25. Laurel

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Robin Hale

  1

  Laurel

  The problem with setting an alarm more than twelve hours in advance was that a lot could change in twelve hours. Where I’d gone to bed feeling optimistic about the day that waited for me, I woke to find that my new apartment had decided it was time to wage war against its oppressor.

  Namely, me.

  My fingers slipped over the harsh metal points of the sink’s cold water knob as I fought to contain the geyser that erupted from the base of the faucet. All the while, Simon and Garfunkel played in the background, describing a gentle sort of start to the day that was nowhere near my current experience.

  “Come on, come on, come on, just close!” I begged the ancient hunk of metal and, with a screech like a dying walrus, the knob turned, the valve closed, and the water stopped.

  “Finally,” I huffed, grabbing a towel from the rack on the opposite wall.

  I should’ve expected the way the metal bar pulled out of the plaster and clattered to the tile floor, leaving a towel in my hands and two ragged holes in the wall. I really should’ve.

  I’d have to deal with that later.

  I darted back into my bedroom, leaping over open boxes and stacks of things I probably should’ve left behind in Nebraska and fumbled for the duffle bag that had all the clothes not shoved into random boxes. Surely I had another shirt in there somewhere — one that was appropriate for an interview, right? What did someone even wear to a job interview at a fast food burger place?

  I paused, head stuck halfway through the neck opening of the shirt I’d pulled from my bag. Did I even really have an interview? The person I’d spoken to on the phone had been a little vague on that point. They’d said something about shift-staffing and having time for a conversation — that was an interview, right?

  The hem of the shirt smoothed into place as I gave it another tug and resolved to hide the fact that I was wearing a t-shirt by layering a jacket and my scarf over top.

  Man, I hoped it was a job interview. I snorted and wound my scarf around my neck, casting a glance in the mirror as I let the dark purple and bronze pattern settle around me with the weight of a child’s favorite blanket. It wasn’t that I aspired to work in fast food, exactly, but if I was going to make this whole ‘pick up and move halfway across the country’ thing work? I needed a job. A job that had been shockingly difficult to wrangle. Well, not so shocking with my scattered work history and a distinct lack of college degree, but I had sort of thought I’d be able to find something.

  I slung my bag over my shoulder and dashed down the narrow steps of my building to the street below. I’d been lucky to find my studio on such short notice, especially when the local university was about to start classes again, but there was something eerie about climbing what were obviously a set of servants’ stairs to get to my little room.

  As the late summer sun hit my face alongside a veritable wall of humid Midwestern air, I felt a rush of homesickness. It looked like Ohio wasn’t going to be much different from Nebraska when it came to sending my hair into frizzing clouds around my head, but it was the first time that I wouldn’t hear my mom laughing at me for saying I ‘looked like a disgruntled poodle’. The absence was a dull ache.

  A sudden gust of wind broke me from the thoughts of home and my mother, and my neck was suddenly, rapidly cooling as the smooth weave of my scarf slipped from my skin to tumble away from me on the air.

  “No!” I called out as if I could get it back into my hands through sheer force of will. I wouldn’t have thought that scarf was light enough to be caught on a draft, but it slid away from me through the air and I lunged forward with my hands outstretched. I’d been doused by a rebellious sink, I’d pulled a rack out of the wall, and I might’ve been pinning all my hopes on an allusion to a job interview at a burger place I’d never even heard of before crossing the state line into Ohio, but I would be damned before I let that scarf be lost or destroyed.

  I ducked around other pedestrians on the sidewalk and lunged forward again, catching my shoe on the asphalt beneath the movement and wrapping my fingers in triumph around the edge of the ornately woven fabric.

  “Got you!” I crowed.

  “What the hell is wrong with you? Get out of the road!” The squeal of tires and jolt of a truck’s horn shattered my moment of victory and I spun around on my heel, unsteady with surprise.

  Oh shit.

  A car whizzed by scant feet from where I stood, its wake whipping at my clothes and hair, the unmistakable smell of exhaust choking the otherwise pleasant scent of the late-summer morning. Asphalt crunched beneath my shoes and my eyes went wide — I’d chased my scarf into one of the heavily-traveled streets around my apartment and found myself staring up at a pickup truck that belonged on a farm rather than the middle of Cincinnati’s uptown.

  I lifted my scarf in a half-shrug that was a completely inadequate explanation.

  The driver didn’t share my excitement over retrieving my scarf. She leaned out of the cab of her truck, bicep swelling and silver necklace dangling as she propped herself on the door and scowled. “You’ve got some kind of death wish? Fine. Keep it away from me. And watch where you’re going.”

  Her dark eyes glinted in the morning light, echoing the strands of her close-cropped hair and highlighting the way her cheekbones rose from her face like a threat, like they were blades rather than features. Something soft and silvery was painted over her skin, on her cheeks, her neck, down her arms — tattoos? My eyes snagged on the filigree and I couldn’t drag them away.

  My tongue dried up inside my mouth, all of my pithy responses — or hell, even apologies, since I did run out in front of this woman — fleeing from my brain in the classic ‘roaches from a lightbulb’ move. All I could do was stumble backward, returning to the sidewalk and lifting my scarf again, this time in some sort of vague apology that the scowling truck driver obviously didn’t find compelling.

  She glared at me until I was a full three feet back from the street. As soon as I was out of her way, she looked over her shoulder and pulled back into the flow of traffic, disappearing into my new city with the drama of a disapproving ghost.

  “Are you okay?”

  I spun toward the voice, still holding my scarf in front of me in some sort of shield, and saw a petite woman standing in the doorway of what appeared to be a bookstore. A concerned frown lined her face and darkened the blue behind her pale lashes. Suddenly, her eyes widened and her mouth went round.

  “Olivia?” She asked, something in her voice echoing disbelief and fragile hope.

  “Er, no?” I responded, finding my voice at long last only to utter the dumbest thing I could’ve come up with. “Laurel.” I felt a tiny wave of regret over disappointing her, like if I’d tried a little harder I could’ve been Olivia. “Sorry,” I added with a cringe.

  “Oh, no, that’s…you reminded me of someone.” The sandy-haired woman waved off the apolog
y. She reached out toward me and beckoned to the door behind her with her other hand. “Looks like you had kind of a scare. Come on inside and I’ll make you a mug of tea.”

  “That’s super nice of you, but I’m kind of on my way to this thing. A job interview? I think? It might not be.” The words poured out of my mouth like the water from my sink that morning, in spurts and sprays that doused rather than flowed.

  “You almost got hit by a truck. You want to go have a job interview rattled from something like that?” She quirked a skeptical brow. “Chamomile, I think.”

  She was right. I could feel my pulse racing and my thoughts spinning in my head — there was no way anyone would put me behind a grill or in front of customers with the way I was feeling right that second. A bell jingled as the blonde held the door open for me, a soft smile replacing the concern that had marred her features, and I followed her inside.

  The unmistakable smell of books wafted over me in a hug, and tension sapped from my shoulders even before my host pressed a steaming mug into my hands. I looked up at the blonde in surprise.

  “I already had the kettle on,” she shrugged. “And it’s a good thing, too. That looked kind of rough.”

  Heat rose in my cheeks as I realized that literally everyone on that street must’ve seen me running into traffic like an idiot chasing after that scarf. “It’s been kind of a day, you know?”

  A wry smile teased over the blonde’s friendly face. “It’s nine o’clock.”

  I startled myself when a laugh forced its way from my throat and I took a sip of my tea. “Yeah, well. My sink tried to drown me this morning, my towel rack flung itself out of the wall, and my scarf tried to run away. I’m not very good company today.”

  “Bad day for a job interview,” the blonde mused. “I’m Jean, by the way.”

  “Laurel,” I said again and nodded to cover my wince.

  “New in town?” Jean asked and made her way behind the tall front counter of the bookstore.

  “How could you tell?” I cocked my head to the side.

  “You have that look.” Her eyes slid away from mine and toward the computer screen in front of her. Her fingers flew over the keys of her keyboard, and the machine chirped and beeped as it spun up into life for the day.

  “I look like I’m new to Cincinnati?” I laughed, but Jean seemed serious. “Well, you’re not wrong. I just got into my apartment a few days ago. Moved here from Nebraska.”

  I took a sip of my tea and let the floral taste wash away the lingering, acrid tinge of panic. It was easy, somehow, to let what had happened outside slip away from me while I sat there. It seemed far away already.

  “What brought you to the Queen City? Here for the university?” Jean’s voice was carefully casual.

  “Other than my little hatchback?” I paused and let the weak joke draw a smile from the blonde. “You’re going to think it’s ridiculous. Even sillier than chasing a scarf into the street.” I cringed. I hadn’t thought I’d need to explain it. I figured I’d be able to disappear into the crowd of college students and no one would think it was strange that I’d come.

  Jean looked away from the screen, interest in every line of her face.

  “Have you ever felt like you weren’t where you were supposed to be?” I asked, voice soft as if I could keep from sounding absurd by speaking quietly. “I sort of…Nebraska was always my mom’s home, my mom’s place. She fits there, but I never did. Couldn’t manage to make friends, never found anything that seemed right for me — or that I was right for it. So I decided to leave. It just…it was the right time for an adventure, you know?”

  The corner of Jean’s mouth lifted into a smile. “And what made you pick Cincinnati? Your mom?”

  “Oh, no. My mom hasn’t left Nebraska…ever, I don’t think. But she’s always been super supportive of me figuring this stuff out.” I slid onto a tall stool at the end of the counter and wrapped my hands around the mug. It was hot outside, not quite cooling into fall yet, but I still felt a shiver that the tea soothed away. “She adopted me when I was really little and I think she always thought that was why I felt unsettled. But that’s not it. I never felt like I didn’t belong with her, you know? I just never found my community there.” The words slipped out before I could stop them, and mortification mounted in the back of my mind. Was it nearly being hit by a truck that had me spilling my life story to a stranger? Or was it all because Jean seemed so kind, so earnestly helpful?

  “And Cincinnati?” Jean asked again. Well, she didn’t act like she thought I was being an enormous weirdo. Maybe I wasn’t.

  “I threw a dart at a map.”

  Jean’s laugh was a brash, loud sound that echoed in the bookshop. “Really? I didn’t think anyone actually did that.” But there wasn’t any mockery in her voice. Only delight.

  “I couldn’t pick and I was pretty much at ‘anywhere but here’,” I admitted, fighting back a self-effacing grin.

  “Well, I can certainly understand wanting to find your own place,” Jean mused. There was a long pause, then she leaned forward on her elbows and considered me over the rim of her mug. “Work here,” she said at last.

  “I’m sorry?” I sputtered. I choked on the sip of tea I hadn’t quite swallowed and tried to juggle my disbelief without spitting chamomile all over myself or the woman who had just offered me a job.

  “I’m serious! I just took this place over from my folks.” Jean’s hands flew through the air, encompassing everything in the space from the bookshelves that filled the front of the store, the stacks of paperwork that covered the counter, to the open door of an office that overflowed with inventory and ledgers. “And I’m drowning in it. I need help and you need a job. So work here.” She tilted her head to the side and gave me another long, considering look. “I think you’d fit in perfectly with the regulars around here. This might be your place, Laurel.”

  I was stunned. Flabbergasted. Gaping like a landed trout. And in the grand tradition of Midwesterners before me, I tried to save her from making a terrible mistake by being kind to me. “But you haven’t even seen my resume.”

  “I don’t need to!”

  “I don’t have a degree,” I insisted. I’d always intended to go to college. I’d always thought that I’d do well in a business program — the administrative end of running a business had always appealed to me — but going to college somewhere would mean tying myself to a place and I hadn’t been able to bring myself to do it. Not without finding somewhere I fit in.

  “That’s fine. Mine was completely unrelated to running a shop.” Jean’s narrow shoulders shrugged, casting off every roadblock that had kept me from a job in Cincinnati like it was irrelevant.

  “You should at least run a background check!” I gestured through the air wildly, coming precariously close to sloshing chamomile tea over the rim of my mug.

  “Keep the drugs out of the shop and let me know if it’s a liability to have you driving the company van.” Jean was typing up a storm, and an ancient printer whirred to life behind her. “Fill that out and I’ll get you directions to Barleywick.”

  “Barleywick?” I echoed. What was happening? Had I actually gotten hit by that truck? Was my brain providing me with a nice blonde friend to make my final moments before death slightly more pleasant?

  “Yeah, I was going to run over there today to pick up an order, but I’m swamped. So now you get to go!” Jean said brightly, passing me the printer-warm page of basic employee information and a ballpoint pen. “This is going to be great, Laurel.” Jean’s smile was luminous, enthusiastic, and exactly as genuine as it was incomprehensible.

  Belatedly, I wondered if I had wandered into the home base of some sort of cult and would find myself sacrificed to an elder god before my first paycheck.

  I hesitated only a heartbeat, thinking of my dwindling checking account and my upcoming rent payment. Well, if I was sacrificed, I wouldn’t need to pay rent and if I wasn’t, I’d be able to pay.

  I signed
my name at the bottom of the form and accepted a hastily scrawled set of instructions from my new boss.

  “She’ll probably be in the greenhouse or the workshop. Don’t bother with the house at the front.” White teeth and blue eyes flashed in a grin as Jean sent me back out of the shop in a flurry.

  2

  Rhea

  I’d always liked the sound of my truck’s tires on the gravel drive. It was like shifting tectonic plates. The rumbling of a long-buried monster surfacing from some forgotten prison. Or maybe that was just me coming home again. Either way, the sight of the hand-painted sign in front of the big house settled the unease that had filled my gut since I’d set out before dawn that morning. It never felt right to be away, even for a handful of hours.

  I hopped down from the cab of the truck and swept a scrutinizing glance over the front of it, making sure that it was no more dinged up than it had been when I left, even though I knew that the woman who’d darted in front of me hadn’t so much as breathed on the front bumper.

  It was a matter of principle.

  I hauled bags of fertilizer out of the bed of the truck and slung them up onto my shoulder in a fireman’s carry, letting the weight of them press my boots into the damp ground, holding me down, keeping me steady until I made it back to the greenhouses and my workshop. Habit kept my eyes on the path ahead, leaving the specter of the main house looming barely out of sight. I hardly even noticed that I did it anymore, but maybe that was because I didn’t need to see the house to be reminded why I worried about leaving.