The Moon Tells Secrets (8 page)

“So what do you think about studying with a few other kids?” he'd asked, closely watching his reaction.

Davey stiffened and shook his head, staring down at the board. “My mom wants me to do that?”

“No, it's my idea.”

“Naw, that would be weird,” he'd said to the board, chin propped in his hand as he concentrated. “And they'd probably think I was weird.”

“Weird? How come they'd think that?”

“Because I am.” An amused glint sparkled in Davey's eyes behind his new glasses. He'd recently replaced his Harry Potter specs with “cooler” glasses.

“Not any weirder than anybody else,” Cade had said, painful memories from his own childhood shooting through him. His shame about his father had made him too shy to reach out. He was also small for his age, and easy to bully. “Weird” would have been one of the nicer things kids called him. “Everybody is weird sometimes.”

“Not weird like me.”

“So what makes you weirder than anybody else?”

Davey shrugged, and Cade continued. “It's not because you're biracial, is it? Everybody has a little bit of everybody else in them. Like the president. Look at him! Be proud of every part of you.” Cade wondered if the boy knew much about his Navajo heritage and was thinking that might be a good thing for them to focus on in their studies. “My wife was into Navajo history and mythology. That was what she was studying.”

“For real?”

“Yeah.”

“But she died, right?”

“Yeah. She did.” Davey's question had surprised and puzzled him.

“Check!” Davey said, skirting his bishop to challenge Cade's king and change the subject. When they first began to play, he'd let Davey win nearly every game. Not anymore.

“Not quite!” Cade defended his king with his queen, and Davey chuckled with an impish grin. “Good move, though.”

They'd played in silence for a while, Cade thinking about Dennie and wishing he hadn't brought her up. He glanced at Davey, tried another question.

“So do your
friends
think you're weird, too, or just the plain, run-of-the-mill kids?”

Davey took a sip from the glass of apple juice sitting on the table beside the board. It was a tiny sip, and Cade smiled to himself. He'd never seen a kid who could make a glass of juice last so long.

“Plain, run-of-the-mill kids.”

“But not your good friends, right?”

“Nope, not them. But, like, I only had, like, two
good
friends here. Plus, I never showed them my weird side.”

“Have I ever seen it?”

Davey shrugged. “If you saw it, you'd know it.”

Cade waited a minute or two, and then asked, “How would I know I was seeing it?”

“You just would.”

“Like, what school were you at, anyway?”

“Across town,” Davey said too quickly.

“Where across town?”

It had been a cheap attempt to find out more than was offered, and Davey wasn't fooled; he shrugged again. Cade knew enough about kids to leave it alone, but still wondered about a boy so full of secrets and if he'd ever trust him enough to share what was bothering him. And Raine, too. Something was always eating at her, seemed like she was always just a beat away from turning tail and running. He'd noticed that when she'd linger for a quick chat about Davey's progress after their sessions.

He'd never inquired about her future plans, and she didn't offer them. Once, he'd casually asked what school Davey was registered to attend in the fall, and she told him she hadn't yet decided. If it's around here, I'd be glad to reach out to his teachers, he'd said, and she cut him off, smiling shyly, studying her cup of tea as assiduously as Davey studied the chessboard, a glass of apple juice, or his hands, when he had no other prop. She'd let him know when she decided, she said, and that had been that. He knew she wouldn't. He feared Davey and Raine would probably leave his life as quickly and unexpectedly as they'd entered it.

Truth be told, he'd begun to look forward to tea with Raine as much as he did his time with her son. He admired her interest in her son's progress, so different from many of the parents whose children he taught during the year. She hungered for every detail: what he liked and didn't, if he paid attention, if he was on the same level as other kids, and he was happy to assure her that he was at or above level and reading on a high school level. She grinned when he said that, a lopsided happy grin that delighted him. Davey has always been a reader, she said, just like his father was; she'd let that slip, then stopped, unwilling to reveal anything else.

That made Cade wonder about this father whom Davey never mentioned and Raine avoided talking about. What had happened to him? How had he died? Several days later, he'd approached Luna. Their backyards were separated by bushes, now summer-green and free of lilacs. He spotted her watering herbs and flowers in her backyard and called out to her.

“So why don't you just straight-out ask her about him?” she'd said through the hedges as she trimmed the tops off an odd-smelling plant with a name he couldn't pronounce. She was dressed in a pink gingham sundress that looked like it came from the 1950s, something he'd never seen her in before. It was a sunny afternoon, surprisingly hot for the end of June, one of those rare occasions when Davey and Raine had gone out—to the mall, Luna told him, because Davey had outgrown his clothes and needed things for the summer.

“They both seem uncomfortable talking about him.”

“What exactly did you ask them?” He could barely see her face through the bushes, and he was tempted to go into her yard but sensed closer proximity would do no good.

“Well, nothing, exactly. They just made it clear they didn't want to talk about him.”

“People tell you as much as they want you to know and leave out the rest. If and when she wants you to know more, she'll tell you.”

“So
you
know, then?”

“You're a big hit around here, I'll tell you that. Davey was bragging last night at dinner that he beats the hell out of you every time you play chess,” she'd said, gracelessly changing the subject.

“Well, not every time.”

“Thanks for taking them in.” Luna had come closer and peered at him through a break in the bushes. Her eyes seemed tired, sad. “Didn't I tell you that more people needed you than you thought? You need them, too, don't you?”

“Well, I—”

“I'm sick of seeing you sit around that house by yourself. Dennie wouldn't want that.”

“No, she wouldn't.” The mere mention of his wife's name had darkened his mood.

“I'm usually right about stuff like that. Why don't you take Raine out for some coffee somewhere or a drink? Away from that house and this one. Davey can stay with me. It will do you all good.”

“Raine mentioned that people in her family have a gift, she called it, knowing, sensing things that most people don't, but she said she didn't have it,” he said, not responding to Luna's suggestion.

“Really?” Luna chuckled. “The women in my family do have gifts, and if Raine had it, she'd know it … and so would you.”

If you saw it, you'd know it.

“So you obviously have it, that gift Raine was talking about?”

“You don't know the half of it,” Luna muttered, and went back into her house.

*   *   *

Cade remembered Luna's words now, as he waited for Davey to ring the bell. Maybe he didn't need to know the half of it. He'd decided to barbecue some ribs on the Fourth, something he and Dennie used to do even though most of the time, she called herself a vegetarian. But he could always tempt her with a chicken leg. He smiled when he thought of that, how he loved to tease her. He wondered if Raine was a vegetarian, too. He knew Luna wasn't. Despite her love of herbal teas and vegetarian soups, he'd seen her gobble down ribs with the best of them. He glanced at the clock. Davey was late today. He was picking up the phone to call when the doorbell rang.

Something was different about the boy today; a shadow hung around his eyes and made Cade wonder if he'd gotten enough sleep or was coming down with something.

“So how you doing?” he asked, trying to sound casual as they sat down at the kitchen table. “Did I give you too much homework?”

“No, it was okay.” Davey wouldn't look at him.

“Okay, let's get started. Let me see what you got.” Cade took the papers the boy had stuffed into a folder and quickly evaluated them. The writing was sloppy, common for boys his age, but the report on Severus Snape, from the Harry Potter series, was insightful and clever. His choice of Snape, the complex half-blood wizard, was revealing, too, confirming his suspicion that there were layers to Davey's life he kept deep inside.

That, too, reminded him of himself when he was a kid and his shame about his old man's drunkenness haunted everything he did, and yet at the same time he'd loved and worshipped his father as only a boy can, despite his failings. That had haunted him, too. When he was Davey's age, he'd told more than one of his few friends that his father was dead, killed in the war, never saying which one. Kids love their parent no matter how bad they are, Dennie, the explainer of all contradictions, would tell him, but Dennie, blessed with charming, loving parents, had no sense of what an ugly childhood could be like. Raine said that Davey's father had died before he was born; maybe her love for Davey's father was as colored by shame as his for his father had been.

Cade glanced up as Davey yawned, head dropping down to his chest.

“Hey, man, wake up! Didn't you get enough sleep last night? That crazy dog howling like a fool must have kept you up, too.” His scolding was playful, but the terror on Davey's face at his words startled him. “Hey, come on, you're too old to be scared of an old whiny dog.”

“You heard it, too?” Davey's eyes pleaded, searching for an answer.

“Sure I heard it. Probably woke up half the neighborhood.”

“Wasn't just a dog.” Davey's voice was dull, frightened.

“Yeah it was, Davey. You been watching too much Chiller TV.”

“Don't tell Mom, okay? Please don't tell Mom!”

“About the TV? Cause you were scared? Listen, Davey, stuff scares people all the time. Grown men, like me, get scared by stuff.”

That was for damn sure. That was for goddamn sure.

“No, about the dog. Don't tell her about the dog!” There was a tremor in the boy's voice, something he'd never heard before.

“Why?”

“Just don't.”

“Okay, so I guess it didn't wake her up?”

“Just me.” The darkness that had shadowed Davey's eyes spread to his face.

“And me,” Cade added with a slow smile. “Don't worry, Davey, your secret is safe with me.”

They worked awhile longer, until it was clear that Davey was too tired to keep his eyes open. When he went to the bathroom down the hall, Cade heard him pause before the closed door—the one to Dennie's office—hesitating as if listening for something inside, until his quick, hurried footsteps echoed down the hallway. The boy's eyes were red when he returned, as if he'd been crying.

“Let's call it a day,” Cade said, and Davey nodded. Without answering, he gathered up books and papers and headed out the door. There would be no chess or even apple juice today. “See you tomorrow?” Cade yelled before the door closed, but it was too late; Davey was across the front lawn to Luna's house, head bowed low as if studying the ground on which he walked.

Please don't tell Mom.

Later that night when Cade lay in bed, he could still hear the terror in Davey's voice, and he listened for the howl of the dog that had put such fear into the boy's eyes.

 

6

raine

“It found us,” Davey said.

I never wanted to hear those words, and they pierced my heart like a stab.

I was sitting on the rusty swing in Luna's backyard, sketching the irises blooming in the middle of Luna's small garden. Once upon a time in the beginning of my crazy life, I was going to be an artist, that was what I called myself the day I met Elan. What do you do? he'd asked, and I, so sure of everything in life, said, I draw things. I'm an artist. And that was how he always thought of me. Drawing still brought peace some days, taking down what I've seen, putting it on paper. So I kept my eyes on the flowers and the branches that tipped across the fence into the yard next door—Cade's backyard.

“How did it go at Cade's?” I asked, ignoring what he'd said.

“Mom, are you listening? Did you hear what I told you? I heard it last night. It was outside the window. I heard it growling, and it's coming for me, for us, I know it is.” He squeezed next to me, his voice and eyes angry and frightened, and then he began to cry. It had been years since Davey let me see him cry, but he did now, breaking into sobs that shook his body. I put down my sketch pad, grabbed him tightly so nothing would happen, so he wouldn't begin to shift.

“Mom, we tried to run away, and it
still
found us.”

“Maybe it was just a dog,” I said. “Just some foolish old dog howling at the moon.” But I knew better than that; we both did.

“That's what Cade said. But it wasn't.”

“Cade heard it, too?” I stiffened.

“Yeah. So I know it's real.”

I had begun to feel safe here with Luna and her occasional sprinklings of white ash around her house and yard, her burning of incense and rubbing of oil. I didn't understand what she did or why she did it, but I felt it protected us, and when she'd uttered those words about “figuring something out” all those weeks ago, I tried to believe her. Just sitting here and swinging back and forth in her creaky old swing made me feel as if Davey and I
could
lead a normal life. He felt that way, too. Luna's backyard was one of the places we both loved. I wasn't ready to risk Davey's life, though. Anna's words about not trusting anybody, the warning to keep running, were etched too deep inside me.