The Moonlight School

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  “Ya sound like yor readin’ off a something.”

  Fin frowned. Sometimes, most times, Angie Cooper was jest too quick for him. He had trouble keeping up with her. He tore off his hat in frustration and came near to throwing it down but decided to hang on to it. Good hats being hard to come by. He plopped it back on his head. “Well, like it or not, I’m going.”

  “How’re you gonna make it all the way to Mexico when you cain’t speak a lick o’ Spanish?” Angie smiled smugly, pivoted around, and sauntered off, her head held high and shoulders stiffly back like she thought she was the queen of Mexico. Then he scratched his forehead. Did Mexico even have a queen?

  AMBULO, AMBULABAM, AMBULABIT. I walk, I was walking, he will walk. Angie lay on her back in bed, listening to the sound of the howling wind in the trees. “I still don’t know what parsing Latin verbs gots . . . er, has to do with passing the grade 8 exam.”

  Miss Lucy lay next to her on her side. “It will improve your understanding of grammar. In Latin, verbs include a lot of information about the sentence. The verb tense can tell you the time frame. The verb can tell you who the subject is, even if there’s no pronoun in the sentence.”

  Angie let out a deep sigh of exasperation, but jest for Miss Lucy’s sake. In truth, she was captivated. Parsing Latin verbs felt like a puzzle, and she was good at figuring out puzzles.

  “Do you get many storms like this? All wind, no rain?”

  Angie turned her face toward Miss Lucy. “Now and then, by and by. These storms is, uh, are the worst kind. Knock trees down and create havoc and nothing to show for it.” Feeling restless, she flopped to her stomach. “Miss Mollie sez these storms be . . . um . . . are the work of the devil.”

  “I can appreciate that thought. This wind has a different sound to it.”

  Angie flipped on her side to face the wall. It was easier talking this way. “How’d you talk Finley James into coming back to school? He tol’ me he was running off to Mexico.”

  “I asked him to come back, to help me get through the term. He’s been a wonderful help.”

  Angie frowned. Finley James was making a fool out of hisself—she squeezed her eyes shut—himself. He lost all reason around Lucy. When would that boy come to his senses? When would he realize that Angie was the one who was meant for him? The whole thing irked her to no end. What frustrated her even more was that as angry as she was with Miss Lucy for stealing her boyfriend, she felt even more intrigued by her. Fascinated by her polite manners and show-off fancy talk and fine clothing. It pained Angie to admit it, and o’course she’d never say so aloud, but her world seemed a little brighter since Miss Lucy had started to teach school. “Finley James said you went to a school for lady lessons.”

  “Lady lessons? Oh, he means finishing school.” Lucy chuckled. “The Townsend School for Girls. It was a boarding school.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I stayed there most of the year,” she said, yawning, “and only came home for holidays.”

  Angie flipped over again to face her, bending her arm to rest her head in the palm of her hand. “Your paw sent you away?”

  “Not like that. Boarding school . . . it’s what most everyone does in the city.”

  Angie plopped on her back. “Then I’m glad I weren’t . . . wasn’t born in the city. I couldn’t go to that finishing school to learn to be a lady. My paw would miss me too much.”

  “You’re right,” Lucy said, glancing over at her. “He would.” Her voice held a sadness to it.

  “And the troublesome twins . . . they’d turn into holy terrors without me here to make ’em mind.” The very thought of them without her influence made Angie shudder.

  After a long moment of quiet, Lucy added, “You don’t need finishing school to learn how to be a lady, Angie. You’re already learning. Every day, I see new signs of your maturity. Like a flower that’s starting to bloom.”

  In the dark, Angie smiled.

  2 WEEKS HAD PASSED and Lucy hadn’t seen or heard from Andrew Spencer. She was too busy to dwell on his absence—and surprisingly content in her role as teacher. A role she hadn’t wanted, and a role in which she looked forward to its end, for it took every ounce of her and she fell into bed at night, thoroughly exhausted. But the challenge of teaching was a stimulating one, and it occurred to her that she rarely thought of Charlotte anymore.

  Thoughts of Andrew would push aside other thoughts. Especially when Angie reported, smugly, he’d been seen riding past the Cooper house on his way to Licking River. Lucy responded nonchalantly to Angie, but the information did bother her. She wondered about those strong feelings he’d confessed for her. If he loved her like he said he did, wouldn’t he have stopped by to see her, to check in on her?

  And then one day, after the children had gone home from Little Brushy, Andrew burst into the schoolhouse holding an enormous bouquet of flowers. “There’s my girl!”

  She stared at him. “I’ve been right here. For two weeks now.”

  “You can imagine how busy we are, with all this rain. And besides, when you didn’t come to town last weekend, I figured you needed time to get settled.”

  True, both.

  He set the flowers on her desk and held his arms open wide. She hesitated. “I’m just offering you a hug,” he said.

  Softening, Lucy took a tentative step toward him. His hands went to her waist and drew her to him, wrapped his arms around her. She fit into him perfectly, like a glove.

  “I have exciting news.”

  She had to smile at his little-boy delight. She pulled back to face him but remained in his arms. “Tell me.”

  “I’m getting a promotion! A big one.”

  She couldn’t help but hug him again. “Andrew, that’s wonderful news! Father never said a word.”

  When he didn’t say anything to that, she stepped back and looked at him. “What is it?”

  “Actually, this opportunity is with another lumber company.”

  Her eyes went wide. “A competing company?”

  “You know how it is in the business world, Lucy. Dog eat dog.”

  She didn’t know such a thing. She didn’t understand such a thing.

  She squirmed out of his embrace and went over to the window. The clouds were breaking up and sun rays were streaming through.

  “I’m hoping I’ll get transferred soon to Lexington, to the company’s headquarters.” He came up behind her and put his hands on her elbows. “We’ll be together, Lucy. You’ve always said this job was only for six months.”

  She did. She had said it and thought it often, though less so lately.

  “There’s something you need to know.” When she turned to face him, he said, “There’s pushback brewing in town for this moonlit school notion.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Not everyone is in favor of it. Apparently, there’s been a call for a town meeting.”

  “What? Surely you jest.”

  He lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “I thought you should know.”

  “But . . . what is there to object to?” She studied his face. “Why wouldn’t the people in town want the mountain people to be able to read and write?”

  He took her hands and pulled her to him, slipping his hands around her waist. “It’ll all work itself out,” he said, smiling. “It’s just a meeting to give people a chance to air their grievances. These people love to complain.” He kissed her on one cheek, then another. “Darling, you’re so serious. Can’t you see the humor in it all?” He bent down to kiss her on the lips, and for a moment, she forgot how annoyed she was that he hadn’t come to see her these last two weeks, or that he had accepted a job with her father’s competitor. As he kissed her again and again, murmuring how much he missed her and loved her, she even forgot all about the hullabaloo brewing over the Moonlight Schools campaign.

  Then the wind slammed the school door shut, and it was like something shut down inside her. Lucy pulled out of his embrace. “Andy,” she said, �
��I’m sorry. I can’t do this.”

  He grabbed her hands and held on. “It was just kissing. That’s all.”

  “You’re right,” she said after a moment of thought. “That’s all it is.” Because that’s all everything was to Andy. Everything and everyone. Nothing more than stepping-stones on his climb to the top.

  He squeezed her hands. “Let’s go out this Saturday evening. I’ll take you someplace special! We’ll celebrate my promotion.”

  She hesitated, glancing at her desk. “Thank you, but I think I’d better say no.”

  “You’re tired. You’ve been working too hard.” At the door, he turned and smiled his most charming smile, the one she found hard to resist. “If you change your mind, just sing out and I’ll come running.” He gave her a wink. “I think you will.”

  Would she? She wasn’t sure.

  ONLY THREE WEEKS of the school term remained. Finley James had asked Lucy if she knew any Spanish. She didn’t, but she did start him on Latin. Same roots as Spanish, she told him, and that satisfied him. This week, he found he was able to out-memorize Angie in parsing Latin verbs. His interest in conjugating Latin suddenly skyrocketed.

  Lucy was doing all she could to shore up Fin’s learning before he quit for good. She doubted he’d make it through the grade 8 curriculum before the school term ended, but at the rate he was going, he could definitely plow through sixth grade. Maybe seventh.

  Late one afternoon, as Lucy returned to the Cooper cabin after a long day of school, she saw Angie at the clothesline and asked if she could help.

  Angie barely gave a glance in her direction. “Don’t need no holp.”

  Lucy rolled her eyes. There’d been a little thawing out in Angie, it seemed, but not after Fin started beating her in Latin. Angie was peeved. Too bad, Lucy thought, turning to head to the cabin. That’s just too bad if you don’t win at everything.

  “If you want to help, then take that basket into the house and put them—those—clothes away.”

  Lucy pivoted and picked up the basket of folded laundry. Inside the cabin, she put the boys’ clothes away in their cupboard. Some of Angie’s clothing was folded in the bottom of the basket. She carried the rest of the clothes up the loft. The dress she hung on a wall peg, but she wasn’t sure what to do with Angie’s undergarments. Such things could make her so touchy! But Lucy knew she shouldn’t always react to Angie’s ridiculous overreactions. She opened the drawer to set the undergarments inside. The top drawer was full of sweaters, so she closed it and opened the bottom drawer. Stuffed in the back corner was something pink. Lucy pulled it out, thinking it belonged in the top drawer. It was a toddler’s sweater, made of soft pink wool, and as she unfolded it, a small sack fell out. She picked it up, thinking she should put it away before Angie came in and snapped at her, but as she fingered the sweater, something vague and unsettling stirred inside her.

  She glanced out the window and saw Angie cross the yard to head to the barn. Setting down the undergarments on the bed, she took the sweater and sack over to the window to look at them in brighter light. Her heart started beating as she fingered the buttons of the little sweater. She held it to her face, breathing in deeply. With trembling fingers, she opened the sack and shook it upside down. In the palm of her hand rested a woman’s ring made of ruby red chips. She felt something shoot through her, a jolt, a shudder. It took a moment before she registered what she held in the palm of her hand, what it could mean, and the shock was so severe that her shoulders began to convulse.

  Her mind swirled with confusion. How? How could that even be possible?

  She tipped her forehead against the windowpane, eyes closed. She wasn’t sure what to say, what to do, what to think. From the first moment she had met Angie, in spite of the blatant hostility of the girl toward her, she sensed some kind of connection to her. A tender feeling for her that defied explanation.

  She shook her head. “No. Impossible. Angie Cooper is not Charlotte.”

  Her fingers closed in a fist, wrapping the ruby ring in its hold.

  But she could be.

  Twenty-One

  PUT THAT DOWN!”

  Lucy spun around to see Angie glaring at her from the top rung of the loft ladder. She stared into the girl’s face and was met by steady, blue eyes. Even while Lucy stared, she tried to read familiar features. Her own, or her father’s or . . . was that her mother’s face? Perhaps. Maybe. It could be. She uncurled her hand and held her palm out. “Where did this ring come from?”

  “None of yor business.” Angie stomped toward the window and grabbed the ring out of Lucy’s hand. “I’ll thank you to stay out of my things.” Eyeing her coldly, she practically hissed the words.

  In as calm a voice as Lucy could muster, she repeated, “Angie, do you know where that pink sweater and ring came from?”

  “They be mine.”

  “You wore that sweater as a baby?”

  Angie ignored her, tucking the ring carefully back into the sack and folding it up into the sweater.

  “Angie?”

  She looked up at her with an expression pinched with distrust. “The ring came from Maw. She said it belonged to me.” She lay the sweater into the bottom drawer of the cupboard. “Didn’t expect you’d stoop so low as to go pokin’ through my things. You’re more trouble than the boys.” She slammed the door shut and stood, fists on her hips, as if waiting to hear more.

  “You asked me to put these clothes away.” Lucy’s voice, even to her own ears, sounded shaky.

  “Then how come you look so guilty? All white faced like you’d jest—I mean, just—seen a ghost.”

  Maybe she had. She took another look at Angie. No, she couldn’t be. She wasn’t Charlotte. Or was she? She needed fresh air. She needed to think. Dazed, she climbed down the loft ladder, her head spinning with what-ifs.

  IN THE DIM LIGHT OF THE BARN, Arthur Cooper looked older than he was, which was forty-one. Lucy knew that to be a fact because she’d seen it written in the Cooper family Bible. He was bent over a barrel, scooping oats into a bucket, as she interrupted him, and he straightened up in surprise. “Howdy, Miss Lucy.”

  “Arthur, I happened to notice that there’s not a birth date entered for Angie in your family Bible. The boys have one, but not Angie. Her name is entered, but without a date of birth. I just wondered why.”

  He seemed baffled, as if such a thought never occurred to him. But then, he couldn’t read nor write. Perhaps he didn’t know it was missing. Slowly, he covered the barrel with a wooden lid. He took his time responding to Lucy, as if gathering his thoughts, sifting through them to decide what he wanted to say. “Angel’s adopted. Aria couldn’t have no more children, not after the first one.”

  “The first one?”

  He dropped the scooper in the barrel and wiped his hands on his overalls, then sat on a hay bale. “Our first baby died. A little girl. A stillborn. It was a hard birthing, and afterward, the doc said Aria couldn’t have no more babies. That was real bad news for Aria to hear, and she didn’t cope well.” He paused, his chin tucked to his chest.

  Lucy held her breath, willing him to continue, worried he wouldn’t.

  “One day I found her up on the slope, digging away at the baby’s grave. She kept saying she didn’t want to live no more, and it scared me, the way she was talking. So scared, I went to her folks, and they sent her to a place to get some rest.”

  “A sanitarium?” There were a few sprinkled around Kentucky. A large one in Louisville.

  Other than a curt nod, Arthur didn’t pick up where he left off for another long moment, and Lucy thought he might not finish the story. But then he began again, and this time he sounded weary. “She was gone for a long time. When she came back, she brought Angie home with her. Said she was an angel, sent from heaven, meant jest for us. That’s what we named her. Angel.”

  Lucy’s heart started to pound so loud she was sure it could be heard in the rafters. “But . . . what had happened to Angie’s parents?”
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br />   He rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t exactly know.”

  “You never questioned your wife?”

  He shook his head and looked away. “Aria told me that this little angel needed our love.”

  “That’s all you knew about her? Nothing more?”

  “No need.”

  “Arthur, did it occur to you that Angie might have had a family of her own?”

  She saw the Adam’s apple bob in his throat. “Aria said she was a motherless child.”

  “And you believed her.”

  “O’course I did. Why wouldn’t I? Aria weren’t capable of telling a lie.” He pushed himself off the hay bale. “Angie and the boys don’t know they’s adopted, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

  “But . . . there must be others who know. Friends and neighbors.”

  “Mebbe so, but people of the mountain know to keep themselves to themselves.”

  “May I ask, what is the background story to the boys?”

  “They’s my brother Bob’s boys. He got kilt in a timber accident, and his wife couldn’t manage them two. They’s the littlest of twelve. At Bob’s funeral, she asked us to take ’em and raise ’em as our own. So that’s what we done.”

  “So you never formally adopted Angie or the twins? No legal documents?”

  “Those children belong here. I’m their paw. Don’t need no documents to tell me that.”

  “But did it ever occur to you that someone might have been looking for Angie?”

  “No,” he said firmly. “I don’t think so.” He frowned. “If someone was careless enough to lose a child, well, I think mebbe they deserved to lose her.”

  Trembling now, Lucy felt a chill, though the day was growing warm. She pulled her shawl around her. “I had a sister. I was supposed to watch her, but I got distracted. She wandered off while I was reading a book. We never found her. She just . . . disappeared at the train station in Louisville. She’d be about Angie’s age.”