Moon Child

by Gaby Triana

  Wait.

  Wrapping my hands around it, I closed my eyes. Confusion over relationships. Agony over not seeing my daughter. Wishing I could repair all the damage I’d caused.

  I looked at Macy. “Did my dad live here?”

  Macy and Lucinda looked at each other.

  Nobody answered the question. I needed the truth. Craved it, like a weary soldier craved home. Macy sat. “In the car,” she said slowly, looking at her mother, “we were talking about her dad. Our dad.”

  Lucinda nodded. “Yes…”

  Macy went on, “And I never told her this, but I’m telling her now…” She played with the edge of her mug, sliding her finger around the rim, the way Dad used to do whenever he wanted his whiskey glass to “sing” for me. “I actually met Pablo once before I knew who he was.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  She measured her words carefully. “He used to rent this house.”

  “This house,” I said.

  “Yes. From me,” Lucinda clarified.

  Fragments of my mind flew all over the kitchen, landing on the floor in sticky, imaginary chunks. “Wait…what?”

  “That’s how we met,” Lucinda corroborated Macy’s lost detail. “Miami-Dade sent him this way for work in Volusia—we’re talking years back—and they set him up with a temporary place, since he’d be working here for six months.”

  “So, you’re saying…he stayed here? Like, here, here, in this house?”

  Lucinda nodded. “I’ve owned this property for years. My granddaddy left it to me. I already had my own place to live when I acquired it, so I’ve rented it out ever since. Helps pay the bills. Anyway, your dad was a tenant. Mostly before you were born, but also during his last months.”

  I popped up and absently walked around the kitchen, trying to imagine my father, walking on these old pine floors, climbing those stairs, ruminating about life, going about his daily life within these walls.

  “He was my first tenant before we started seeing each other. I knew he was engaged, Valentina, in case you’re wondering. I suppose I’m guilty for trying to change his mind. It’s just he was so unsure about getting married, and I was young and so in love with him.”

  I listened. She seemed to be under the impression that I was upset about their relationship, but I wasn’t. I was upset that he stopped visiting me, but not about her.

  She went on. “He would tell me how he wasn’t sure he could be the man your mother’s family wanted him to be. He wasn’t a religious man, more spiritual than religious, but you know that. He didn’t make enough money to allow your mom to be a stay-at-home mother, which was very important to your grandfather. Your grandpa was a powerful man. Pablo felt small in his shadow.”

  “My grandfather had that effect on people,” I said. Lucinda was telling me more than my mother ever had. That felt unfair. My mother should’ve told me this.

  “That was the last I saw of him until he came back four years ago,” Lucinda said.

  “When I contacted him,” Macy clarified.

  I nodded again.

  “The house was available, so he stayed a few months before…”

  Before he died.

  “But that one night he was here…you remember?” Lucinda asked her daughter.

  “Yeah,” Macy said with disdain. “I met him and didn’t know it was him. My mom sent me here to find Ernest, our repairman who was fixing an A/C leak your dad reported.”

  Lucinda interjected, “I had a feeling he reported it just so I’d come by and see him, but that ship had sailed. I’ve been married since the moment this girl was born.”

  So, Lucinda never got with my dad in the years I was alive. That made me feel better, for some reason.

  Macy went on, “So, this lady sends me here looking for Ernest, without telling me who the tenant was, right?”

  “I wanted Macy to see him for herself,” Lucinda explained, eyes welling up. “Maybe there’d be some connection between them, even though I knew Daddy wouldn’t like it.” She glanced at her folded hands. I assumed Daddy was Lucinda’s husband, or the man Macy called her father until that fateful day. “How could I tell you, Mace? There was no easy way to do that.”

  “By Daddy, you mean…?” I asked.

  “My stepdad, technically, though I don’t think of him that way. He’ll always be Daddy to me.” She watched Lucinda wring her hands and dab her eyes. “After seeing him, I just knew. Don’t ask me how. I mean, look at me.”

  Macy was a beautiful blend of Lucinda’s dark skin and my dad’s light. I didn’t know what her stepfather looked like, but I bet she had questions.

  “The moment I turned eighteen, I did it. I took the test.”

  “And Lord, did the shit hit the fan,” her mother said.

  Macy smirked. “Anyway, fast forward, Lucinda and I are good now, but we weren’t for a while.”

  “Too long.” Lucinda pressed a napkin to her eyes. “Valentina, I want you to know I loved your father, but I respected his decision to marry your mother, which is why it’s been hard for me all these years. I didn’t want to keep a secret from you, baby,” she said to Macy, “but I didn’t have a choice.”

  “You had a choice, but I understand.” Macy turned to me. “That’s when I contacted him and told him about me. He told your family, and that’s when he came to live here for the last time.”

  “Until the end.”

  They nodded.

  It made sense. He hadn’t just come to Yeehaw Springs because it was a nice town in the middle of Florida—he’d returned because Lucinda was here. So was his other daughter.

  “He wanted to meet you,” I said, swiping my eyes. “I can understand that. My dad never shirked his responsibilities.”

  “Right.” Macy nodded. I could sense the resentment evident between her and her mother. “And then, the Sunlake Springs took him.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  “Took him?”

  Macy grabbed her mug and drank down the entire thing. “When Cami got here all pissed, saying you were spending time at that hotel, that things were getting dangerous, I wasn’t sure what she meant. After she left, I called Lucinda. I wasn’t expecting her to tell me what she did. Mom?” She sat back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest.

  I knew what Lucinda would tell me.

  My father had died there—at the Sunlake Springs—not here in the house he’d lived in. And not of a heart attack either. All the time Dad had stayed here, I never knew. He visited me in Miami every other weekend at first, but he never invited me to wherever he was. I always assumed it was because his living quarters weren’t up to par. In my mind, I always visualized the sad, empty apartment of a divorced dad, but that hadn’t been the case. He hadn’t wanted to invite me to Lucinda’s house.

  He hadn’t wanted his two worlds to collide.

  “Go on,” I said.

  Lucinda took a deep breath. “I came by every so often to check on him. We conducted all rental business through email, but he wasn’t well, and I wanted to make sure he was alright. Your mother was understandably upset with him. You were upset with him. The whole family was upset. He’d tried staying near you, but your grandfather sent him away. Threatened him if he didn’t leave town.”

  “My grandfather?” I imagined Cuco telling my dad to get the fuck away from his family. He’d always had an overprotective streak. My father and he never got along, but I found it hard to believe that Cuco would outright threaten him.

  Lucinda cocked her head like she was showing restraint. “He wasn’t nice to Pablo. So, your father figured he’d come here. I suppose this house always felt like a safe space to him. He got a job with Volusia, since he’d done work for them on the side anyway. They gave him a project—at the Sunlake Springs.”

  “Doing?” I leaned on the sliding door. Every muscle in my core felt weak.

  “Surveying, assessing property damage, the usual. Other than that, I’m not sure. I know he was always obsessed with the place since he was a
child.”

  I knew my father was originally from the Orlando area, but I didn’t know he knew about the Sunlake Springs, and I definitely didn’t know he was obsessed with it. All he ever mentioned was that the Biltmore Hotel in Miami looked like an old favorite of his.

  “He never told you about the time he stayed there?”

  “What? No.”

  Lucinda got up and entered the dining room, as I raked my memory for any mention of the Sunlake Springs from my father.

  She returned carrying a small box, which she unfolded. What she pulled out made my heart ache in the most agonizing way. In her hands was the little stained-glass sun ornament, the one that hung by his bedside window at home, the one he took with him when he left.

  “Where did you get that?” I gasped.

  “He left it here. Did he ever show you this?” The next item she pulled out was a yellow flower made of tissue paper and green pipe cleaner for a stem.

  My lungs froze. I heard my heartbeat whoosh through my ears.

  “He made this as a little boy,” Lucinda spoke as though through a tube. Distant and disconnected. The little boy on the hotel veranda had a craft flower that looked just the same. “He was there the night his mother died at the hotel. You’ve heard about the fire that killed your grandmother, yes?”

  “No, I…”

  For years I’d heard my grandmother had died in an accident. I never met her. She’d passed away when my dad was little, but it never registered with me. My mom’s family was the only family I ever really knew.

  Lucinda handed me the flower. “Here.”

  If I took it, I would see things.

  Did I want to see any more? My heart was already breaking.

  With a deep breath, I accepted the flower.

  Immediately, I “saw” the love my dad had for his mother, her long brown hair in a cascading braid, the halo of sunlight around her head, her blue-green eyes, how peaceful and accepted she’d felt at the Sunlake Springs surrounded by like-minded friends. They’d lived an idyllic life in those last days leading up to her death. Then came the kitchen fire. She, along with several other women, preparing meals for the rest of the guests, were trapped when the double doors locked. She burned to death.

  My grandmother was the smiling, waving kitchen ghost.

  The flower trembled in my hands. “Why… Why wouldn’t he tell me all this? About the Sunlake? About my grandmother dying there?”

  “Maybe he did,” Macy said. “Honestly, and no offense to you, but maybe you just didn’t pay attention. You know how parents talk about family, and half the time, kids don’t listen.”

  No. No, I would’ve listened. I always wanted to know more about my father’s side. He just never wanted to talk about it. He made it seem like there wasn’t much to tell.

  “Trauma,” Lucinda added. “He was there when it happened. The rumor is that he watched his mother die.”

  “My God.” I jumped to the sink, breathing deep to hold down the sickness threatening to come up. Not only did my grandmother die there, but he perished there, too?

  What did that mean for me?

  “Vale, that place is bad news,” Macy said. “Lots of deaths over the years, rumors of malpractice, rumors of arson, theft, patients admitted never made it out…”

  Lucinda nodded. “Hate crimes, persecution of Black folks…”

  “Hate crimes, persecution of Black folks,” Macy repeated. “Not that there’s a shred of evidence, mind you, because that’s being Black in America.”

  Wilky’s quest. His granduncle. The KKK. Visions of torches out by the Devil’s Tree bobbed up and down through my mind. Yes, the place had a terrible reputation. Much too much darkness had enveloped the Sunlake Springs Resort.

  “The list goes on,” Macy sighed, rubbed her eyes.

  “There’s no proof at all?” I asked in the hopes I might bring back a “shred of evidence for Wilky and the others.

  Macy looked at me sideways. “Sis, listen to me, the state has done a bang-up job of covering it all up to make Florida look good to tourists. Tourism is our primary industry. If people think of our state as a dangerous, racist, misogynist, hate-filled wasteland, they won’t come spend their hard-earned dollars. Smiles, beaches, dolphins, and seashells. That’s what people want to see.”

  I nodded.

  “So, when you arrived and asked what was there to do around here, I deliberately did not tell you about the Sunlake Resort. ‘Cause I did not want you going into that historic hell trap.”

  I needed space to breathe and stepped out, leaving the slider open. The rain was starting to fall in heavy, fat drops. So much I’d never known.

  “Vale,” Lucinda said. “There’s something else. He probably didn’t want to talk about it, because your mother’s side is so religious. Like I said, he was already on thin ice with your grandfather.”

  “What is it?” I asked without facing her.

  “I heard stories. He told them to me, of course, because I never judged him. He didn’t need more accusations of witchcraft hanging over his head than he already had.”

  Witchcraft?

  I searched my brain for the bits of info I had. I knew my dad’s mother had been a hippie. I had seen exactly two photos of her in my life, and in both of them she’d dressed like one. I knew my grandparents did not approve of the way my father had been raised, outside of the church, so pagan, practically a heathen. I knew my grandfather had a habit of squashing any belief that wasn’t of his own faith.

  So, this meant…the little boy running gleefully around the hotel, holding his crepe paper flower, was my very own father—baby Pablo in his happy place where his hippie, New Age mother, had once spent a peaceful summer with friends.

  Meditating, moon-dancing witches in their “safe space.”

  Witchiness ran in my blood.

  I sank to the ground and sat there, letting drops of rain soak into my clothes. It felt cleansing. It washed away the blanket of lies. “What else?” I asked. I needed it all at once, so I could absorb it all.

  “That’s pretty much everything,” Lucinda said. “Last I heard, Pablo was visiting the Sunlake every day to take notes. He was adamant the building had to come down. It was unsafe. According to him, it’s a time bomb waiting to go off.”

  “I didn’t know that part,” Macy said to her mom, glancing at me. “I didn’t. I would’ve told you not to go had I known. Vale, come inside. Please.”

  But the rain, the rain exposed layer after layer.

  “Leave her,” Lucinda whispered. “The last time I saw him, I asked why he continued to go there if it was so bad. He said he had to go back. He had to double-triple check the measurements. They changed day-to-day. He wanted to make sure he wasn’t going crazy. One day, a wall would be nine-feet-three inches, and the next it’d be nine feet, and that’s when it happened.”

  I swiveled toward them. “What?”

  Macy was in the doorway. “Vale, let’s take a break from this a bit. Why don’t you go upstairs, take a nap, while I—”

  “No. I’ve lived my whole life in a fog. I want answers.”

  Lucinda’s gaze held mine. “He didn’t come back after that. I didn’t hear from him; he never paid the rent, which he always did on time. When I drove by that last time, his car wasn’t here. I told my husband, and even though Bill wanted nothing to do with him, he came with me. Together we drove to the hotel to check on him…”

  I bit my lip and imagined the whole thing, silently thanking Bill for his act of kindness.

  “We saw his car and went inside.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “It didn’t take long for us to find him. He was…”

  When she didn’t continue right away, I entered the house and sank into a chair. Lucinda came over to me. She rested a hand on my shoulder, but I didn’t want to see my father through her touch. I didn’t want to “see” what she saw when she entered the Sunlake Springs and found my father dead.

  I pushed her hand away.

&nbs
p; She sniffed. “We called police. They came out quickly, followed by an ambulance. They took him away.”

  “Why the scream?”

  “What scream?” she asked.

  “My friend said, in his vision, that he was screaming. Why?” I insisted.

  “I don’t know. When I got there, he was already gone. I wish I knew more. I would tell you if I did, but that’s all I got.” Lucinda fell apart on her daughter’s shoulder, as I shattered into a million broken dreams.

  So, that was it. My father had killed himself at the Sunlake Springs. In the atrium, no less. So, the man I’d seen had definitely been him. My dead, broken father with the snapped neck and bulging eyes. My father’s heart hadn’t stopped from stress or heartache or any such bullshit. He’d committed a mortal sin by any Catholic standards—he’d committed suicide.

  Shame upon my family.

  An hour later, I stood on the front porch of a little green house in Cassadaga with Macy. I didn’t mind her coming along to see Citana. Her story was just as much my story, except from a different side. Our stories had intersected, but we both needed truth.

  I kept thinking back. After my father’s death, it took a long time for his burial to take place. People kept asking when they could pay their respects. I hadn’t realized it then, but I was now sure the church was trying to decide whether or not to allow him a Catholic burial.

  Suicide was a mortal sin—an act against God’s will. According to our faith, he should not have been allowed into the Kingdom of Heaven. None of this sat well with me. My father may have been upset over the way his family fell apart, but he wouldn’t have left without saying goodbye. My father would’ve given me a goodbye. Even if he was suffering from depression.

  At my feet, Bob Meowly plopped onto his back for a tummy rub. Macy bent to scratch him. I kept my eye on the peephole.

  “Where are we?” Macy whispered.

  “A friend’s house.”

  A shadow appeared through the fisheye lens, then the door opened. The old woman stood there, holding a plate of avocado. “Mori’s friend! You need more dinner? I need more time to prepare it.”