The Moon Tells Secrets (13 page)

That was true for me, too, but I wasn't ready to tell him yet; I was afraid of what might happen. When he kissed me that night, it was not the gentle touch I was used to, but a full-hearted passionate kiss—a lover's kiss—that went straight down my spine.

We often held hands, cautiously at first, which added to the sweetness, like kids on the run, scared of letting go or getting caught, and that's what we were in a way—scared of what was chasing us finally catching up. Sitting in dark, close theaters, chomping popcorn, sipping Cokes, walking to Starbucks for an iced latte late in the day. I had begun to feel like everything was normal, okay. Davey had grown to trust Cade, and grew closer each time they were together. He was hoping for normal, too, even if it was only for a couple of hours every day. Neither of us had seen or sensed Anna, if that's what that fleeting, elusive vision had been. And the dog? I'd decided it just might be a stray, like Cade said. Funny how your heart could put your mind under a spell.

His deep, tender kisses had begun to ignite feelings unfelt since Elan's death, and when I'd close my eyes at night, I'd imagine Cade lying beside me, his lips and fingers caressing my breasts and parts of myself that I once allowed to enjoy such feelings. And I'd think about how I'd kiss his lips, so full and sensual, the corners of them turning up just the slightest bit, even when he frowned. I'd imagine how it would be to draw close to him, feel him lying strong beside me, helping me keep us safe from harm. Those tender places I'd only allowed Elan to know, to touch—were awakening again. It was the same for him; I knew that, too.

But Mack dying like he did for the reason he had, ripped all that foolishness to shreds.

The morning I found out had started peacefully enough—Luna frying bacon for breakfast, baking buttermilk biscuits for Davey. She'd just put them in the oven when Davey screamed—once, twice—not like a kid does but a painful, woeful cry that tore straight from his throat. He was clutching the morning paper to his chest, and I snatched it from his arms when I saw what was in it. It was about Mack, and how they were still looking for the murderer who had killed him three weeks ago. They suspected it must have been someone close—a family member, spurned lover, angry partner—because of the violence inflicted upon his body and the nature of his wounds. I knew what that meant. So did Davey.

“It got him, it got Mr. Mack like it did Cade's wife, like it killed my dad.” Davey's voice faded into a low, bitter whisper. I was used to Davey crying, screaming in fear even, but I'd never heard that tone before, coming from somewhere I didn't know.

Walter Mack, sixty-two, had been “hacked” beyond recognition, the paper said. Hacked was wrong; if it did what had been done to Dennie, to Elan, that was beyond any word the cops or papers could come up with. When Davey screamed, Luna rushed into the living room, biscuit dough on fingers, flour dotting her face. She picked the paper off the floor and quickly read it.

“Raine, did you know this man?” Her eyes were wide, frightened. I nodded, too stunned to speak. “Is he connected to … the boy's family? To Anna?”

“No.” Finding my voice, I glanced at Davey, who had settled on the couch, staring straight ahead. I knew he was trying to keep his body under control. I could see him struggle, and I turned my head, giving him the space he needed to find and settle back into himself. “I worked for Mack. In his restaurant, before we came here. He was my friend … Davey's friend.”

“More than a friend!” Davey's voice was hoarse from the scream. “You know that, Mom, that he was more than just a friend!” Luna shot me a look, her eyes nearly as wide as his.

“How long had you worked for him?”

“Most of the time we were here. Mack called me at the beginning of the summer. I didn't call him back.…” My voice faded with shame and guilt.

“You didn't call him back! You didn't tell me?” Davey screamed, out of control again, but there was nothing I could say; I had no excuse. I took the paper from Luna, unfolded and studied it because I didn't want to look into my son's face and see the accusation in his eyes.

It was an old photograph, one Mack's wife had taken years before she died, one he had always been proud of, but the years had changed him. It looked nothing like him now, which was why he said he loved it, though he still had that quick grin, eager for a prank or joke, eyes that gleamed with good humor. He was a thin man with a bony face and a head, always clean-shaven, that seemed to take up more of him than it should have. He was too slight to have put up much of a fight.

The paper must have gotten the photograph from one of his kids. No grandchildren, which was why he used to say he felt so close to Davey. Stepgrandson, he used to call him. Davey called him Mr. Mack, and he was the closest thing to a grandfather he would ever know. I was grateful for that.

Luna's gaze switched away from Davey and back to me. I sensed there was something she would tell me later because she didn't want him to hear it.

“You don't know that,” she said. “You don't know how Mack died. It could have been somebody who hated him, like the paper said. All you know about Mack's life was what he let you see. It could have been someone from years back. Don't take it on yourself like that. Don't—”

“I know what it was, Luna.” There was a fierceness in his voice, in the way he held his body that I'd never seen or heard before. Luna sat down beside him on the couch, put her arm around him, yet barely touched, giving him the space she sensed he needed.

“He's gone,” she said so softly, I barely heard her. “Don't think about how he died. Just remember what you loved about him. About the gift he gave you.”

“I know how he died.” Davey's eyes brimmed with anger. “I owe him.”

“Owe?” I said, troubled by the tone of his voice, the rage in his eyes.

“Owe. Because Mr. Mack was my friend.” He glared at me, daring me to defy him, a half smile forming on his lips. “Don't worry, Mom. I'm not ready yet, but I will be soon.” Those were Anna's words, speaking of revenge for blood sins, Anna's voice coming out of the mouth of my eleven-year-old boy, and they chilled me because I knew what they meant. I'd tried to forget he would ever say them, and they reminded me that she and Elan were half of him the same as me, and I would never fully understand what dwelled inside him. Someday he would be ready, like Anna said he would, to become that creature that could fight, take revenge on what had killed his father and his friend and what always threatened us. He was months away from adolescence, and those words, so firmly spoken, filled the room with tension and my fear.

“You're a kid,” Luna said, brushing his words aside and breaking the mood. “Someday it will be your fight, but not today.”

“Then when?” Davey stood up, backing away from both of us, and I noticed not for the first time just how much he had grown in three months, shaping into a teenager, not the boy I knew. Some of it was the influence of Cade, the impact of a grown man on the life of a boy whose father is gone, and I realized again how much my son had missed Mack, how essential he must have been to Davey in ways I never fully realized.

“When the time is right, you'll know it,” Luna said. “And so will your mom.”

I warned her with my eyes not to go on with this, feed into whatever he was feeling, but she shot me a look that said, Leave it alone, let it be for now, okay? Without answering, Davey walked upstairs, his foot heavy on every stair, slamming the door to his room.

Luna and I didn't speak for a good five minutes after he had gone. “Breakfast is ready, but this is definitely not the time to talk about biscuits,” she said grimly. The irrelevance of breakfast and her words, delivered with such deadpan irony, made me laugh and just as suddenly cry, tears rolling down my face as I remembered Mack, thought about Davey and the battle he was so determined to wage.

Don't trust nobody. Not family. Not friend. Don't let it get him like it got my son, not until he is ready to meet it. And remember that blood must pay for blood. A debt must be paid. Your boy can never forget. That is his destiny.

Anna's words, taunting me as they had every day since she left us.

“I can see the change in him, too.” Luna broke into my thoughts, her expression as somber as her words. “I've seen it for some time. You know he's not going to let you run away this time. You've got to come up with something else or he will.”

“I need more time, Luna. He needs more time to grow into whatever…” I couldn't finish the sentence, because I didn't know what it was. The thing that killed his father? Dennie? Mack? And in that moment, I thought of Cade, how he would view Davey when he found out that the “weird” part of himself had been planted inside along with his beautiful eyes; it was as much a part of him as the smart, funny kid who loved to play chess. “I don't have a choice, Luna. I have to go. I can't face—”

“Face what?” Annoyance creased the space between Luna's eyes in a tight line. “Yourself? Davey? Cade?”

I didn't answer, and the air again grew heavy with her doubts and my secrets.

“You're family, Raine,” Luna said after a moment. “No matter what. You're blood, and Mama told me to look out for you. That's why she carried on about that church like she did. She knew you needed family.”

“What about Davey?”

“You know better than to ask me something like that. At this point, you two are the only family I've got.”

“But we've got to leave, Luna.”

“He'll have something to say about that,” she said, nodding toward the stairs.

She was right, and I went back to my own thoughts, trying to figure out how I could explain to Davey that we had no choice but to go; that he wasn't ready for whatever fight Anna had been talking about, wouldn't be for years, even Anna would know that. As far as things went with Cade, it would be best to slip away as quietly as we'd come. Drop out of his life as quickly as we'd dropped in.

I thought about what he'd said yesterday, about me making him happier than he'd been since Dennie died, and how I'd be leaving him like I left Mack and half the other people who had welcomed me into their lives, without a good-bye or backward glance.

“What choice do I have?” I said as much to myself as to Luna.

Luna scowled, with frustration or anger, I couldn't tell which. “To tell the truth, Raine, I don't know. This one is on you. But I'll tell you this: Whatever the hell you do, stay or leave, you've got to do it soon. You don't have much time.”

There was urgency in her voice and the way she couldn't quite look at me puzzled and alarmed me. I was learning Luna's ways, and she could be as inscrutable and balky about things she knew and didn't want you to know as Anna had been. Sometimes it was amusing, almost endearing. Occasionally it got on my nerves; this was one of those times, and I didn't hide my irritation.

“What are you talking about? You hide so many things, Luna. You don't tell the whole truth, or everything you know. What the hell are you talking about?” Suddenly I was as angry as Davey had been when he stomped up to his room—about Mack, Davey, Cade, everything that was coming to a head—and my rage had nowhere to go; Luna was the closest target. “Why don't you say what you mean? You've never told me what I needed to know about Cade, about the way his wife died, about the impact it could have on us. I told you about Davey and you knew about his wife, yet you sat there, sipping your goddamn tea, burning your incense, not saying a goddamn thing!”

“Raine—”

“And don't say it wasn't your place! Don't tell me that again. You knew what was going on. You're like some master manipulator—throwing us together, watching things spark, and then keeping what we really need to know about each other's secret. Who are you really, Luna? What kind of woman are you.” I was on my feet then, screaming like a kid waiting for a parent to put her in her place, say something, answer my accusations.

Luna studied me for a minute, then opened a drawer in the coffee table in front of the couch, pulled out an ivory case containing Marlboro Lights, and lit one. “Told Mama I would give these things up before she died, but I kept a few just in case,” she said as sweetly as if she hadn't heard a word I said. “You're right, Raine. Right as rain, huh?”

“Cut it out!”

“Listen to me, and I'll tell you the truth.”

“Do you even
know
the truth?” I said, so angry at her, I couldn't bear to look in her direction.

“Yeah, I know it—more than I should, half the time—and I'm never sure what's real and what's not. That comes with the territory of my mind, the same way Davey has to deal with his ‘gift,' if that's what it's called. I've got to deal with mine, and half the time, it's more a pain in the ass than a boon, which is what your aunt Geneva used to call it. Ask your son about his. That's one thing Davey and I have in common.”

A strong bond had developed between the two of them in the past few months; she was telling the truth about that. I could see it in the easy, comfortable way they were with each other, how easily they talked and laughed. Like he'd been with Anna, a connection I would never have.

“Shit comes in and out of my head from no particular place. The thing about folks like me and Davey is that we have no idea what to do with what comes and goes. Davey's is physical, with his body and soul. Mine is in my head, which explodes more times than I care to say. So what I
do
say is only what I know. In black-and-white, what I know to be absolutely, undeniably true.”

I gave her a reluctant nod of acknowledgment because I understood some of what she was saying, about herself and our family, too. We were a family of secrets, and secrets never did anyone much good.