The Moon Tells Secrets (7 page)

“Pinto!” Luna screamed. Whimpering but obedient, the dog slunk toward her, head down, but his eyes, so wide and friendly before, glared angrily and fiercely at Davey now. Davey was afraid, too. But it wasn't Pinto that scared him. He had seen or sensed something in the room, and I felt his body changing against my own: his limbs shrinking ever so slightly, fist balling, mouth puckering against my breast like that of some beast he knew he would become.

“Don't, Davey.” I bent and whispered in his ear. “Don't. Don't. Breathe like you tell me to do when I'm scared. Breathe to stop it from happening. Nothing is here. I will keep you safe.”

He couldn't speak. His voice was lost somewhere deep inside him.

Pinto growled from across the room, snapping, snarling at the air.

“Stop it!” Luna ordered the dog as she whacked him across his snout, then grabbed his collar, holding him tight.

I pushed Davey into the hall as far away from the door as I could, then stepped into the room lit by the morning sun pouring in through the curtain-less windows. A wedding picture sat on the desk. Cade and a pretty woman with a wide, bright smile. Stacks of paper and unopened folders piled around them, and on a small table in a far corner, dried daisies bunched in a white china vase.

“Go sit on the couch and wait for me, now!” I whispered to Davey.

“No! Mom, I'm scared.” He had found his voice, but it had changed. It was deeper, with a hoarseness to it.

“I'll be right there. Go,” I said, and he left, his body shaking as he tried to control what had begun to happen. Pinto growled again, barking at Davey as he left. Davey looked back at him, and the sadness in his eyes pulled deep into my heart.

“Stop it, you foolish little beast!” Luna snapped, and Pinto, suddenly cowed, kneeled at her feet.

“What the hell is going on?” Cade stepped forward, his eyes wide as he confronted first me, then Luna. “What's wrong with Davey? How come he ran like that?”

I said nothing. An object on the desk had caught my attention, a piece of a claw that lay a few inches from the wedding photograph, bone gray and as grotesque as the one I'd seen at Anna's house all those years ago; the one wrapped in white cotton kept inside a lead box. They do that sometimes, Anna had told me. Leave bits of themselves behind to warn those who need to be warned, scare them before they tell their secrets. It was a token; its spirit still within. You can tell if you feel it, she said as she'd grabbed my hand, making me touch the horrible thing. I was back into that memory now, of her rough fingers grasping mine, of the sharp edge of the thing, which looked like a fingernail, when it pricked my finger, drew my blood. Never forget this, she told me. This is what you must protect him from.

I looked at Cade and fear shot through me. How was he tied to the creature? Had I nearly given him my child? “What are you?” I said to him, barely able to speak.

“What do you mean, what
am
I? Luna?” His gaze, unfaltering and angry, had shot to Luna for an answer.

Luna answered, quietly but firmly. “You two are as bad as this damn dog. Both of you calm down,” she said. “Cade is fine. He's just what he looks like. Children and animals have a sixth sense that picks up things we don't. Something sad or evil happened here, and they know it.”

“What happened here?” I was the one who needed answers now.

“And what do you mean asking what I am, what are you talking about?” His voice rose as he confronted me; annoyance verging on anger was in his eyes.

“Davey is waiting in the living room, and he's scared.” I was afraid of him now, unwilling to answer or even look at him.

“Why is he so scared?” Cade turned to Luna. “How could he possibly know—?”

“Rooms have memories, like people do, that linger even when what happened is over. And Pinto? Spooked by his new buddy's fear.”

A good liar, I thought. Good enough for him, but not for me. The thing on the desk told me that. My first instinct was right—take my kid and run like I always did. Cade followed me as I started to leave and grabbed my shoulder. It was a strange touch, gentle but insistent, an answer to a question that wasn't asked. I faced him, gazed into his eyes, not sure what I would find, and saw kindness and curiosity—no evil at all.

“This used to be my wife's office,” he said. “I found her here after she died. It's been closed a long time. I haven't been able to come in here much. Maybe there was something about it … I don't know. There's a lot of grief still here. Maybe that's still there. Luna's the expert on weird stuff like that, kids and animals sensing sorrow. Maybe there's something to it.”

“Mom, are you okay?” Davey called me from the living room. Fear was in his voice because he was as scared for me as I had been for him. The three of us left the room, Luna slamming the door behind her.

“You okay, man?” Cade sat down beside Davey on the coach.

“I'm good.” Davey hid his fear, manning up, the way boys do. His senses about what stalked us were stronger than mine, and he sensed no danger from Cade. His normalcy calmed me down.

Luna, holding Pinto tightly, brought him toward the couch, but it was Davey who pulled away, fear plain on his face. “He's a silly old dog, sometimes,” Luna explained. “He gets scared just like you do. Here, come close.”

“Luna, I—”

“He's fine now,” Luna said. “Let him sniff your hand, and he'll see that you're okay.” Davey searched my face for an answer.

“
Are
you okay?” I asked, and he nodded.

“Here,” Luna let go of Pinto's collar. He hesitated, then ran toward Davey, and when Davey dropped his hand, he gave it an enthusiastic lick.

“Watch him, though,” Luna warned. “He doesn't have good sense. You know what I'm talking about.”

“Okay.” He wasn't sure if he could trust the dog again, and neither was I, but for now things were okay, and the now was all we had some days.

*   *   *

Later that night, after dinner, Davey and I settled down in our room.

“It's still looking for us, isn't it?” he said. He lay in the trundle bed that pulled out, and I sat on the edge of mine, pretending to read a magazine and waiting for him to go to sleep. I didn't need to answer. He was smart, like I'd told Cade; he knew the deal. There was enough of Anna still in him to know the truth. “It's going to kill me, isn't it?”

I found my voice, put some strength into it. “No. I think we've lost it, and if it finds us, I'm not going to let it.”

“But it won't be up to you,” he said quietly and with a certainty that alarmed me. “Are we going to run again?”

“How you feeling?” I wasn't ready to answer that yet.

“Pinto knows, about me.” He turned over in his bed, his voice deep like it gets when he's weighed down by sadness.

“Yeah, I guess he does.”

“But he still played with me—later on, I mean.”

“That was a good thing.”

“So Luna knows, too?”

“Some of it.”

“How about Cade?”

“No, and don't tell him anything either, understand?”

As soon as he fell asleep, I checked my phone for Mack's message. Someone had called him, looking for me, and he wanted to know if he should tell them where I was. I erased the message, not answering back. He thought I was on my way to Baltimore, and as long as I went nowhere near that restaurant, nowhere near that part of town, that was all he had to know. It was up to me to keep our secret.

 

5

cade

The howl, so low and deep in the animal's throat, woke Cade up and sent a shiver down his back. Poor thing must be hurt, he thought. It was three in the morning, but when he looked out the bedroom window, there was nothing to be seen, yet he couldn't get rid of the sound; it echoed in his mind. Could it be Pinto? he wondered. But the snarl at the end of it told him it was a larger animal, a fiercer one, with teeth. Why had that notion occurred to him at all? Why would a bark make him think about teeth, fangs, like a wolf might have?

It was back an hour later, a whimper this time, a baleful cry that twitched his heart because it made him think of how Dennie always threatened to take in some stray, tame it, make it part of their family, and he cried, swallowing sobs because he realized that he was and always had been the stray in Dennie's life; she'd taken him in, opened her heart, then broken his with her death.

So when the growl came back at first light, just as dawn was breaking, he lay still and listened to it, took it in, opening himself up to it like he knew she would have done. Maybe he'd put out some food in the morning, lure it close enough to pet, maybe even tame it. Davey might like that, a dog that was really a dog not a toy poodle like Pinto, bless his heart, with the occasional pink bow fixed on top of his head. The kid needed a rough-and-tumble dog, the kind that could catch a hard-thrown ball, like Blaze used to, the copper Lab his neighbor had had when Cade was a kid. Davey deserved a dog like that, and maybe someday if his mama could make up her mind about coming or going, maybe he'd have it. Here it was nearly July fourth and as far as he could tell, Raine hadn't decided one way or the other. Not a good thing to hang on a kid—not knowing where he'd be the next year or the one following—especially a kid as sharp as Davey. But it wasn't his place to comment.

*   *   *

They met three times a week, he and Davey—Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays—which surprised Cade because sitting around with a tutor was the last thing most boys would want to do on a Saturday afternoon, not with balls to toss and races to run and general mischief to plan. Raine suggested four times a week, more tutoring than any boy should endure, as far as he was concerned, so they compromised on three. He could tell Davey looked forward to their sessions, and truth be told, so did he. Cade missed the routine of school, the spirited horseplay and giggles of the kids he taught. The house was too damn quiet, too filled with sorrow for him to enjoy his solitude. And Davey wasn't a typical child. He was mature in surprising ways and even though he was a kid, good company.

Most of Cade's friends were married and had quietly deserted him after Dennie's death, and his single friends—obsessed with fast women and faster sports—had little to offer in support or real friendship. Luna was his best friend these days, and he suspected even she grew weary of the burden of his grief.

Davey usually showed up a half an hour ahead of time, eager to start his lessons early. After working at the kitchen table, they'd sit around the living room to watch a ball game, play video games (definitely not on the list of things teachers were supposed to encourage), and more recently, a game or two of chess. The boy was a quick study, picking up various moves and openings faster than any kid he'd ever seen. He, himself, loved the game. His father had taught him to play, one of the few things they'd done together when his old man wasn't drunk—and sometimes even when he was. He'd been thinking about his father more than usual these days; Davey's presence, even for this brief time, had brought his father back in ways that surprised him. He'd even dreamed about him recently, a pleasant one, not like so many of the others. They'd been sitting on a porch (he had no idea where that came from; they'd never lived in a house), playing chess, talking about nothing, and he felt a grinning kind of happiness, the kind he'd never known as a kid.

His father was the reason he had volunteered to become an advisor for the chess club at school, and when he taught Davey strategies and moves, he found himself using some of the same words and examples his father had with him. It was clear the boy had talent, just as he had. His father used to say he'd be the first black Grandmaster. He hadn't gone that far, but Cade held his own in tournaments, the same way this kid would if he put his mind to it.

The queen, the most important piece on the board, was the predictable favorite of most kids—his father liked bishops. Davey preferred knights and pawns, the weakest pieces.

“So how come you like those guys?” Cade, puzzled by his choice, had asked.

“Because a knight can move in weird, secretive ways, and a pawn—well that guy can be a queen, and then you got two.”

“It takes a lot of luck for a pawn to make it to the eighth rank,” he'd cautioned. “But you're right about one thing: Even a weak piece can have more power than his enemy realizes, if the player plays the piece well, uses his head more than his heart.

“A good player lures him in, plays him for a fool. Lets him have your bishop so you can get his queen. You've got to see at least four moves in the future, four moves down the board, so you can win.”

“Pawns should get more props than they do,” Davey said as he pushed his black pawn into position to challenge Cade's white bishop, which made Cade grin. “It can kick your ass before you know you been kicked.” Amused, Cade chuckled at the boy's choice of words; he was sure Davey didn't use them around his mother.

Like most boys his age, Davey spewed curse words as much as he could after testing Cade's response, and he'd recognized that for what it was—the stuff kids usually did around their friends. But as far as he could tell, the boy didn't have any—no kids came to visit, no video parlor dates, nothing. Davey and Raine rarely left Luna's house, and when they did, it was always in the early morning, and that puzzled and worried him. Kids needed to be around other kids, to curse, bounce ideas, brew up trouble, and this kid was lonely and hungry for company and that made him vulnerable.

Last Saturday, he'd asked Davey if he would like to join a study group. There were several kids from last year's class whose parents had begged him to tutor, and at the time, the thought of prolonging the school year and dealing with unruly preteens was more than he could handle, but now it didn't seem such a bad idea. Davey was smart enough to hold his own with boys his own age; it would do them all some good. He'd ask Davey first—kids, particularly lonely ones like him, could be possessive, and he didn't want to put a strain on their relationship. When their session was over, they'd started a game of chess. Davey had just captured one of his rooks, taking him by surprise.