The Moon Tells Secrets (12 page)

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, Officers. 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.”

“Absolutely sure?” The older one had taken over the questioning now, his eyes suspiciously focused on Cade as if he could squeeze out the truth if he stared at him long enough.

“Yes.” Cade made his voice firm, unequivocal. Without saying anything else, the older one handed him his card, and Cade wondered, foolishly, if they had given him a card that night, if they had bothered.

“If you can think of anybody, anything that connects them—Mr. Mack and your wife—please call me.” Cade nodded, took the card, shoved it into his pocket. He watched them walk down to the sidewalk, climb into a black Ford sedan, drive away.

Only then did he get down the bottle of Jim Beam that waited for him, pour himself a full glass, gulp it down quickly, pour another, and then call the one person in the world who might know more than he did.

 

9

raine

Mack had been dead three weeks before Davey and I found out. There had been no reason for Cade or Luna to mention it, since I never told them about Mack, my job, or how much we loved him. The thing about secrets is that you couldn't stop keeping them. They held you tight, even when you wanted to break loose. Mack was one crooked piece that didn't quite fit into my puzzle, part of our secret life nobody knew about, and I ended up paying for it. When Luna told me about her talk with Cade the night the cops came, she mentioned it only because she was concerned he was drinking again, and it worried her. She didn't give any of the details.

Cade and I had been out a lot since that first date—for coffee, to see movies, mostly just to walk and talk. I knew he still struggled with the urge to “drown his sorrows,” as he jokingly put it. He'd mentioned it one night after a movie when I had a glass of wine and he had black coffee despite the hour. He was staying away from alcohol because he'd drunk more than he should have a couple of weeks ago, he'd said, and when I asked him why, he told me because he'd been sad and scared. Are you sad and scared a lot? I'd asked, curious about what he wasn't telling me, and he'd smiled that shy, hesitant way he had, and said not as much as he used to be, thanks to me. Thanks to me and Davey, that old bottle of Jim Beam had been untouched since then. You make me happy, Raine, he said, and I haven't been happy since Dennie died.