The Moon Tells Secrets (9 page)

And I had other reasons to be wary. I'd glimpsed a woman who looked like Anna walking past Cade's house, but she vanished before I got a good look. As I was driving down the street two weeks ago, I'd stopped for a light and happened to look in the car beside me and saw her again, hair as long and straight as iron, like Anna's had been, and when she turned to look at me, her eyes had been as hard and round but with no glimmer of love like Anna's had had. She raised her hand as if waving or beckoning, and a chill went through me. Could it be the cousin I'd met at Anna's funeral, begging me to stay? Had she found me? Something told me to flee, and I did, driving wildly, turning one corner and then the next until I dared to look in the rear window again. I must have imagined the whole thing, I told myself. Anna was dead; her family—the “filthy pack,” as she once called them—lived far away. I had nothing to fear from them.

The last time was more sense than sighting. There had been a smell that day, lingering in the air. Not unpleasant, a familiar one I couldn't place. A hint of pine trees and wildflower honey touched with the herbs with which Anna used to cook. Davey had been with me that day, walking from Luna's car toward the house, and he stopped short, sensing it, too. He lifted his head as if sniffing the air, a puzzled expression on his face. He leaned his head forward, as he so often did with Anna, listening to something I couldn't hear, but when he saw me watching, he straightened up, all expression gone, and said nothing.

But I was sure I was imagining those things. I couldn't let myself believe anything else. When it had come before, it made its presence known, it wasn't subtle or secretive.

Davey moved close now like he used to do when he was young and believed I was his defending, avenging angel—even though Anna was the real protector. I knew it and so had he as he grew older. But Anna was gone.

“What did Cade say about it?”

“Just asked me if it kept me up, too, howling like it did, and I said it had.”

I pulled away, looking him in the eye because I needed the truth. “You didn't tell him anything about us, did you?”

“No.”

“You know that even if you like somebody, you can't—”

“Mom, I didn't tell him!”

I eased back from his anger. “You know—”

“Mom, you've told me that all my stupid life!”

We sat apart now, not touching, and filling me with sadness. I wondered again, as I always did when this separateness sometimes came between us, what kind of life Davey could lead.

As if he could read my thoughts, he sighed heavily, like an old man does. “I think it got Cade's wife,” he said.

“Maybe not.”

“I know it did, Mom. It got his wife like it got my dad.”

I'd never told him how Elan had died—how could I? Had Anna said something in her determination to protect him, to make him seek vengeance someday?

“It was there in the room that day, you know when Pinto got scared. She died in that room that scared me.”

I went back to drawing the irises in the garden, forcing steadiness back into my hand and voice. “I think she was sick, that was how she died. Did Cade tell you that something killed her?”

His smile came slowly, as if he was relieved, glad I was telling him something he wanted to believe. I rattled on like I believed it, too. “People get sick sometimes and die for no reason. Like your dad did. Just because you heard a dog growl at night doesn't mean it found us. And anyway, we're nowhere near that church where you saw it. And even where I used to work. Nobody knows where we are. We're way across town, not anywhere near it.”

“But what about the room? His wife died in that room, didn't she?”

“What makes you say that?”

“Remember when I went in there, how I got scared, how … how … you know what happened! Don't you remember?”

I took my time answering him because there would be no calling my words back once they were spoken. Davey's mind was like a trap; once something was said, he kept it inside him forever. Like Anna, who never forgot a slight or favor or threat.

It hadn't been that long ago, but I could only remember snatches of that day and what I'd seen in the room. The wedding picture—the sweet-faced bride and happy Cade, the books and papers on the desk. I hadn't talked to Luna about any of it—like the bone-gray thing that looked so much like the one at Anna's house, the bit of itself that had been left behind. I'd told myself I was mistaken. Davey hadn't seen it; if he had, he would have mentioned it. His concern had been Pinto turning on him like he had. He hadn't heard Luna's words about kids and animals sensing evil things. I'd had doubts about Cade that day, and for an instant I remembered the queasy feeling I'd gotten in my stomach when I saw the thing, wondered how Cade was tied to it, if I was mistaken and he was linked to the danger that threatened us.

I looked my son squarely in the eye. “No, I don't know exactly what happened that day, why don't you tell me?”

“I was scared.”

“I remember that. Why were you scared?”

He looked perplexed. “I don't remember. I started shifting then, and I don't remember stuff when I shift. It takes over my mind.”

“I think it was because of Pinto's foolishness, remember? Because of the way he turned on you.”

Puzzled, Davey nodded after a moment. “But I felt something else, too, Mom. I knew it had been there. I know it's here now.”

“But have you seen it, actually seen it?”

“No,” he said in a voice I could barely hear. I shrugged, forced a smile. “Every time you hear a dog bark, you don't want to get scared, do you? You're too old for that, right?”

“Then we don't have to leave?”

His fear of leaving was right up there with his fear of it. “Let's just wait and see.”

His eyes grew doubtful again. “How long?”

“Let's just wait and see,” I said, forcing another carefree shrug. Leaving it alone, I went back to my drawing. After a while, Davey went inside, and I heard him talking to Luna, and when they both began to laugh, I took one of Davey's breaths, telling myself we would be okay after all, that growling dogs come and go. But I knew I needed to find out exactly what had happened to Cade's wife.

So later that night, I joined Luna in the living room for her evening cordial, as she liked to call the drink she had before she went to her room to watch TV and read. It was usually a glass of malbec or cabernet (only one, she'd always say, to be drunk after seven o'clock) sipped peacefully and silently as she sat on the couch, staring into space. Sometimes it was a cup of chamomile tea—always in a fancy china teacup streaked with silver and roses with its matching saucer—and every now and then, when she'd had a hard day at the small accounting firm where she worked part-time, it was a Bloody Mary lavishly flavored with Worcestershire sauce and a thin slice of lime. It was tea tonight, which always put her in a meditative mood.

Luna smiled when I came into the room. Come and sit with me she said, and I told her I would and that I needed to talk to her for a minute or two. I rarely joined her at night. When Davey was in bed, I usually settled down on my bed to read magazines or the paperback mysteries Luna kept in abundance. I tried to give her as much space as I could. She'd taken us in with no request for money and no clear sense of when we planned to leave. Yes, we were family, those folks who couldn't be turned down when they showed up at the door, but I knew we must be an inconvenience even though she never said it. Davey, in a growth spurt, was eating everything he could get his hands on, and Luna made sure he was well fed. I'd asked her more than once to let me help out with the money, but she refused. You got other things to think of, she'd said, and she was right, I did.

When Anna died, her cousin Doba begged me to stay with her in Anna's house, but I had too many memories and needed to leave. The look in her eyes when she stared at Davey told me she'd try to control us the same way Anna had, for the good and the bad. If I was ever going to be on my own, I'd have to go now. She'd put the money Anna left us in the bank, and told me when I needed it, all I had to do was let her and the bank know. My plans were to let it sit there and grow until Davey needed it for school, and in all the years I'd been running, I'd only asked that cash be wired a couple of times—last time being six months ago, around Christmas. Maybe it was time to do it again.

When I asked Luna about it now, she still wouldn't hear of it. “What did I tell you before?” she said, and I thanked her again, although I wasn't surprised. I poured myself a cup of tea before I asked her my next question, the one I really needed her to answer.

“How did Cade's wife die?” I said after a few long sips.

Surprised, Luna's eyes fastened on me like mine had been on Davey earlier; then her gaze dropped down to her cup. “Why don't you ask him?”

“Because I'm asking you.” I took a sip of tea and Luna did the same, but her hand shook when she placed it in her saucer.

“Nerves, that's all,” she said, but I knew better. She brought the cup back up to her lips, hand as steady as ever, proving steadiness to herself as well as to me.

“You don't want to talk about it, do you?”

“I'll tell you the same thing I told him last week. You got your story, he got his. Best thing for you both to do is to talk to each other if you want to know each other's business. It's not mine to tell.”

“He wanted to know something about
me
?” Anxiety swept through me as it always did, and I didn't bother to hide the suspicious tone. “You didn't tell him anything, did you? About Davey? About—”

“Of course not!”

“What did he want to know, exactly?”

“Ask him.”

I paused to put some honey into my tea. “That day when we were in the room, the room where Davey got scared, you said something sad or evil could linger in a place. Was she fatally ill? His wife?”

It took Luna a while to answer that, and when she did it was with a sigh that came out slow and heavy. “No, only if you believe that curiosity can kill a cat.”

“Curiosity?”

“That's what I said.”

I waited before I asked her more. “Cade said you and she were friends.”

“Friends then, still are,” Luna added with a half smile meant to leave me wondering; I knew better than to ask. Luna was younger than Anna by more than twenty years but had the same reserved, secretive ways, the ones that hinted you had to be more grown than you were to share her thoughts. I'd learned not to resent it with Anna, and I didn't now with Luna. You took her as she was or not at all. So I sipped the rest of my tea in silence, patiently waiting for her to say whatever she was going to add.

“She was a kind lady with a heart and mind bigger than it should have been. Always one to take in lonely beings, like middle-aged women new to a closed neighborhood, and anything else that needed a home.”

“She was a teacher like Cade?”

“No, she was in school herself. A cultural anthropologist, interested in Native American myths, old stories, stuff that makes no sense in the world we live in. We had a lot in common.” She smiled her half smile as if remembering something pleasant.

“Davey thinks what killed his father killed her, too,” I said, throwing it out fast, studying Luna closely for a reaction.

Luna's eyes changed, looked away and then into mine, and then she gave a weak smile. “Is that what Davey said? Your boy has more of our people in him than you think,” she said finally. “All I really know about Dennie's death is what I saw the night I went there. It wasn't illness that killed her.”

“Is Davey right?” A chill went through me.

“I don't know, but he might be.”

“It's time for us to leave,” I said more to myself than to her. “We can't stay here anymore. If it killed his wife, it's closer than it should be.”

“Dennie died a year ago.”

“But somehow these things must be tied. Dennie's wife, us living next door. Something is drawing it to us.”

“Talk to Cade before you drag that boy all over kingdom come again,” Luna said gently. “Think about what you're doing. He's going to need his strength to fight it, and he's got to find it here. From you. Everybody else is dead. I sure can't teach him. He'll learn from you, Raine, to stand up like he has to. You're the only hope he has, Raine, and maybe Cade, if you give him time to get involved in the child's life.”

I was stunned by her words, but there was tenderness in her eyes, too, when they met mine. “He might know more than he thinks about his wife's death, something that will help you, and you may have less time than you think.”

“Why do you say that? About the time?”

“It's the way things work, in patterns. Dennie died in April a year ago. Full moon the night of her death, I remember that,” she said, not fully answering my questions, then continued. “You two—you and Cade—are tied in some essential way, I know that. Nothing happens in life without a reason, and you've found each other for reasons that neither of you know. But both of you need the courage to find out what it is, decide for yourselves. I can't do it. That much I do know. Call him. He's still up. I know that, too.”

Without another word, she picked up our cups and went into the kitchen and I heard the clang of the china cups in the sink. It was hard to tell whether she was annoyed with me, Cade, or the world in general. It was like that sometimes with Luna.

But I did call Cade and we agreed to meet for coffee at the Starbucks down the street the next day.

Davey had moved into his own room earlier in the summer, and Luna had insisted that he fix it up any way he wanted to. He'd always had a room of his own. I slept on a pullout couch in the living room and let him have the bedroom in our apartments, but we'd never been able to paint or hang things on the wall, which he did here with abandon. The walls were navy blue, nearly black at night, with red trim on the windows and sheets and blankets to match. Posters of his favorite heroes—Harry Potter, the Olympians, had lately been replaced with those of heavy metal bands I'd never heard of—hung on the walls. His books were neatly stacked on a bookshelf in the corner, and Luna's old computer was on his desk. Pinto had abandoned Luna's room for his, and slept most nights on a pillow next to the closet.