Losing the Moon

by Patti Callahan Henry

  “He will. He loves you.”

  “I don’t know, Carol Anne. I don’t know.”

  Amy crumpled up the newspaper and threw it on the floor.

  Carol Anne pulled her closer. “Well, you did accomplish one thing. Who in the living island would have thought it would be you and your passion for saving things that would finally turn the town of Darby against Farley?”

  Amy wanted to laugh, but she couldn’t find her sense of humor beneath the tears. She leaned into Carol Anne and allowed herself to be held.

  Friends dropped by with dinners, believing Amy was still in bed with the lingering effects of her brave act. Amy thought that if they knew what she really suffered from—a betraying soul—they would never bring another bite. She wandered the house attempting to fill her days with more than the ache of her own sin.

  The guest room appeared completely occupied by Phil—full of his belongings and smelling of him. Every morning after he left for work, she stood in the middle of the room and inhaled his scent, pushed her face into the pillow where he laid his head at night. He wasn’t sleeping well, although each evening he disappeared into the room as soon as was acceptable or as soon as Molly escaped to her own room. The telltale signs of fatigue lay on his face like a road map.

  SCAD hired a substitute teacher for the remainder of the semester, leaving Amy to wander her house during the day, cook meals that brought them all to the table at night— although both Molly and Phil scattered to the far corners of their own world as soon as the dishes were done.

  She received calls from Norah, Brenton, Revvy and Reese, all congratulating her on her role as the champion of ill-fated Oysterip Island. Molly had brought home the newspaper and waved it around the kitchen like a flag of victory.

  But the island was still lost to development, Nick was lost in his own anguish and she had lost everything positive she’d once believed about herself. Phil was lost to her and she could see nothing good in any of it.

  She sat at the kitchen table, staring at her mug of cold tea—the one she’d made an hour ago and not yet drunk a sip of—and she thought of the stashed telegrams in the tampon box. She hadn’t touched or read the notes since coming home from the hospital; it was time to take them out, discard them. They didn’t belong in her home or in her life.

  They were crumpled pieces of paper that represented so much more than just a bad Christmas party, a “could-have-been” with an old boyfriend. The telegrams now symbolized the possibility of an entirely different life—one not lived, but one that somehow existed nonetheless: a life with Nick. If all the dark places inside of her had risen to be exposed and destroyed, so must these papers.

  Anger swelled, ballooning in her belly, and then sinking into her with an added weight. She ran down the hall into her bathroom, leaned down to the cabinet. She dropped to her knees and threw open the cabinet door hard enough to bang against the wall, dent the plaster. She threw the shampoo bottles, old hairbrushes and unused curling iron onto the tile floor.

  She ripped the yellowed papers from the tampon box and held them up to the light: the damned telegrams. How in the hell could three small pieces of paper change destinies, destroy families? She scrunched the papers into a ball. She kicked the cabinet shut, stomped out of the bathroom, back through her home to the kitchen.

  She opened the pantry door, then pulled out Phil’s barbecue lighter. She sat down at the kitchen table, plopped the papers next to her tea mug. She smoothed the papers before she read them one last time.

  Not once since Nick had returned to her life had she tried to imagine what it would have been like if she’d received these messages twenty-five years ago. She’d only focused on feeling what she’d felt then, in college, letting herself be surrounded by the stored blood and muscle memories of Nick.

  Now she attempted to reimagine her life from the day she would have received the first telegram. She tried to picture herself flying to Costa Rica, attempting to save Nick, to release him from jail. What would it have been like if she had been unable to free him? What if even now he was still in jail for vehicular homicide?

  And what of Jack and Molly? They would not exist. Phil would not love her. No. It was impossible to imagine a different life built from one pivotal moment, from one fork in the road.

  She reread the first telegram and allowed one last imagining of what Nick felt when she did not respond. She lifted the paper, raised Phil’s lighter and flicked it on, touched it to the corner of the paper. The note lit quickly as if it was more than ready to combust. She allowed the ashes to fall to the kitchen table, and as the flames reached the edges of her fingers, she dropped the remains into her mug, where the ashes floated to the top of the cold liquid.

  She lifted the second telegram and it burst into flames as she lit the paper; then she dropped its remnants on top of the other. She lifted the last note—the one that declared his love for her even as he believed she had deserted him. She read that final message: Amy, I love you, Nick, as the flames licked each word, as they were consumed into an irrevocable fire. The paper curled, and then disintegrated, matching the ashes of her life.

  She stood and walked to the sink, poured the liquid into the garbage disposal. She turned the faucet on and the ashes and tea floated down the drain. She rubbed her hands across her jeans and felt oddly cleansed, as if she’d just taken Communion.

  She walked up the stairs to the hall; two closets stood sentinel at either end, the only ones left to be cleaned out. She opened the scratched wooden door to the one next to Molly’s room. Carved into the wood with Daddy’s pocket-knife was MOLLY, slanted and crooked, from the summer she was five years old and first learned to spell her name, then wrote it on everything. Amy ran her finger over the letters. She had plopped Molly in an hour of time-out, lectured the wide-eyed girl about having respect for the house, about defacing the handmade door.

  She desperately wished she could hold her five-year-old again. A deep longing for then, when none of this had happened, when she hadn’t wandered lost into the land of wanting to know about Nick, overwhelmed her. She lifted a pile of Molly’s old Cinderella sheets, buried her face in them, and fought back tears. She opened her eyes and automatically sorted the towels and sheets—knowing instinctively which ones to keep or discard.

  She emptied everything out of the closet except for the boxes and shoes. In the back corner, underneath a boot box, she spied a pink silk jewelry box she’d given Molly for her tenth birthday. She yanked it from the bottom of the closet and lifted it to her face, rubbed the worn silk across her cheek. She remembered that when you raised the top, a small, rail-thin ballerina would pirouette in endless circles on one toe. Once upon a time, the ballerina would dance around and around while Molly organized her ten-year-old’s jewelry, hid her favorites under the pink flannel false bottom.

  Molly had been so excited to have her own jewelry box, but she’d been even more excited about her first piece of jewelry: a small silver cross she’d found in the bottom of her mother’s jewelry box.

  Amy took a quick breath.

  She’d given it to Molly. She hadn’t lost it.

  She pulled at the false bottom, yanked the square out with a cloud of dust as a fake pearl flew from the side of the box. She scooted out to the light and stared into the cushion of cotton on the bottom. There it was: her necklace, her cross. What she thought she’d lost was still there.

  She picked up the chain and held it to the light. A sudden discernment came with a wave of nausea, a flash of silver: what she’d been looking for all along was not Nick, not what they’d had, but the part of her that was once with him, the pieces of herself that she’d sequestered when he’d left her. She hadn’t lost Nick, she hadn’t lost her small silver cross—she’d given them away.

  I lost . . . me.

  The thought was as clear as the silver cross dangling from her fingers. She stood and ran down the stairs, looked up a
t the clock: six in the evening. Phil would be home soon.

  She sat at the kitchen table, the old necklace held lightly between her fingers, and waited.

  Phil walked in the side door from the garage, looked at her. She stood and went to him. The sides of his eyes were crinkled, his head tilted in question. She held up her hand, held up the cross and threw her arms around her husband’s neck.

  “It was me . . . me I lost. It wasn’t anything else. It was never him.”

  Phil pulled away from her. “What?”

  She took a deep breath. Of all the things he should hear—he had to hear this. “There is a part of me that I still have . . . the part I thought I lost is still here.” She held up her necklace. “The part of me that doesn’t love just for safety, but loves the way I once loved him—recklessly, with all of me—the part of me that loves you and Molly and Jack—is still here. It’s not Nick I love. He just made me remember . . . it’s not him at all.”

  Phil crossed his arms as a shield across his chest and backed further away. “We were safe . . . just safe . . . ?”

  “No, Phil, that is not it. I was trying to be safe, afraid that if I loved with all of me, I’d get hurt, abandoned again. I know I’m not making any sense, and you still may not be able to hear it, but of all things—I need you to understand how much I love you and Molly and Jack.”

  He closed his eyes and turned away. “Go ahead. I’m listening. I don’t understand what you’re saying, but go ahead.”

  “I got lost. I thought that part of me was gone and that I needed to get it from somewhere . . . else. And now I know. I was out there looking for what is already here in me, with me.”

  “Lost—where Amy, where?” He slammed the counter with his fist. “In the marsh, in the woods, in him, in what, for God’s sake?”

  “I don’t know how to explain it. I got lost in remembering that other Amy, the one who loved like that. And I thought it was him. . . you know? That it was all wrapped up in him—but it was in me . . . still in me. I never lost it or even gave it to him—”

  “You think it’s that simple? You find an old necklace . . . tell me you got lost, just old memories . . . that it’s that simple and the explanation will cure everything?”

  “No . . . God, no. I don’t think it’s simple at all. I’m trying to explain. I’m standing here, humiliated, ashamed, knowing you’ll never believe in me the same way, that I’ll never think the same of myself. I’m standing here knowing all the terrible parts of me are showing and I’m so scared that you’ll never love me again. I’m trying to find my way back to something I don’t deserve—that I know I don’t deserve—and I’m asking you to see . . . to listen. I’m trying to show you why and how I got lost. To ask you to forgive me.”

  The front door slammed and Molly’s footsteps pounded up the stairs on the other side of the house. Phil looked at Amy, whispered, “What you did . . . It can never be the same.”

  “I know. Don’t you think I know that? It couldn’t be the same, because if the bad stuff—if what I did—doesn’t matter, then the good stuff doesn’t matter, either. And it all matters, it all counts—all of it. I chose you—then and now-—and I choose you and it all counts: you, Jack, Molly, me—we all matter.”

  Phil turned away from her and leaned against the counter; his shoulders sagged. She touched his back. He turned to her. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  She nodded and touched his cheek.

  Molly ambled into the kitchen. “Mom, what in the world did you do in the hall upstairs?”

  Amy went to Molly and hugged her. “I found your Cinderella sheets.”

  Molly laughed. “Oh, great. I’ll just pack them for college now.”

  Amy held up her hand. “Look what else I found. It was in your old pink jewelry box.”

  “Your necklace that you gave me—that’s what you were looking for?”

  “Yes. Yes, I guess I was.”

  Nick slammed the front door, then walked into the living room. Eliza was bent over a sewing machine, hemming Alex’s school-uniform khakis. She didn’t look up.

  “Eliza,” he said loudly.

  She didn’t respond.

  “Eliza.” He slammed his hand on the sewing machine, knocked the pants to the floor.

  She looked up at him. “What is it, Nick?”

  “I haven’t been home in three weeks and that’s all you have to say?”’

  “I don’t know what else to say.” Tears filled her eyes.

  Sorrow washed over him; the pain he’d caused was evident everywhere he turned—his own shattered heart, Eliza’s anguish, Amy’s broken spirit. He didn’t know if he could look at any more of the havoc his desire had wreaked. He asked what he’d come to find out—it seemed vital to resolving the situation.

  “Eliza, why do you love me?”

  “I always have.”

  “That is not what I asked.”

  She threw the khakis on the couch and stood. “Why do I need to answer that? You left—why do I need to answer that question?”

  “I need to know.”

  “I don’t know, Nick. I love your strength. I love your eyes. I love . . . Why are you making me say this? It hurts.”

  He grabbed her shoulders. “I want to know why. If you think I’m so terrible—a killer . . .”

  “I never, ever said that.”

  “You’ve said it without saying it. Tell me out loud, then—do you think I would have missed that woman if I hadn’t been drinking?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Answer me. Do you think I would’ve killed her if I’d been sober?” He squeezed her shoulders, each word a staccato beat.

  She lifted her hand and pushed his hands off her shoulders. “No. I don’t think you would’ve hit her if you’d been . . . sober.”

  “So you think I killed her because of my drinking? That the other six of you who also drank the shots of tequila that night weren’t responsible at all?”

  “That is not what you asked. I protected you because of that. So did they. You asked a question. I answered it. I don’t have anything left to give. And I need you to leave. I don’t want you here if you don’t want to be here. Go to her. Leave.”

  She turned away from him and sat back down at the sewing machine.

  “Nick, why do you love me?” she asked without looking up.

  “What?”

  She kept her face down. “Only fair—you asked me. Why do you love me?”

  He backed away. He had no answer at all.

  She stood and grabbed his arm. “You want to know why? I’ll tell you why. Because I love you—completely. You only loved me for the way I loved you. You never really loved me back. You only loved what I did for you—how I loved you.”

  The bitter taste of truth rose in the back of his throat; he was ashamed, humiliated that Eliza had to be the one to tell him this truth. He had never been able to accurately define his feelings, but even he had not recognized this fact. His love was built on the fragile basis of how she loved him. He turned away from her.

  “When you found out that I hid the telegrams, you believed I screwed up, and the last of your love for me disintegrated. Do you know how exhausting it’s been all these years, trying so damn hard not to screw up so that you’d keep on loving me?” She choked on a sob. “Go, Nick. Now.”

  Her footsteps echoed up the stairs as she walked away. “Eliza.” Her words wrapped around his throat and sorrow rose.

  “Go, Nick.”

  He turned away from his wife, walked to the front door of his house and kicked the baseboard as the smells and sights of his home assaulted him with blinding force.

  He walked out the front door, across the lawn to the driveway, and climbed into his pickup truck. He sat for a long time, head back against the headrest. Eliza had told the truth, and it was humiliating, distasteful. He could ratio
nalize his yearning for Amy, but Eliza’s declaration of how little he actually loved her, how poorly he’d loved, mortified him.

  Now he knew what his wife had said when she’d first discovered Amy Reynolds was Amy Malone, the words she’d mumbled as she’d walked into the bathroom. He heard them now as plainly as if she spoke them into the window of his truck. Now we’ll pay for what we’ve done.

  And he was paying now, wasn’t he? For killing a woman, for never truly loving his wife, for loving another man’s wife.

  Eliza was paying for her manipulation and lies.

  Amy paid for all of them with her wounded spirit and shattered family.

  Guilt consumed him, and he bent over with the force of it. The two things he’d avoided most of his life—how he loved and blood guilt—now sat in the cab with him as unwanted guests; he turned to them, acknowledged them.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  A push of Amy’s feet kept the porch swing floating back and forth with the wind on a balmy Saturday afternoon. Jack and Molly were home and their hollers and footsteps sounded out the open upstairs window in a muffled song of family. The air was warm and clean after a two-day rain. Phil had opened all the windows as spring teased them with its late arrival. The daffodils he and Molly had planted last year poked their heads out, opening their petals to the sun.

  She closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of her family, to the pleasant dissonance of the various birdcalls. Hope—that was what she felt. Spring represented hope. The undercurrent of sorrow beneath her breast would be a constant reminder of what she’d done, of how she’d almost discarded her soul in a search that ended on her front porch. Yet spring and hope both existed.

  Carol Anne’s car pulled up to the curb. She jumped out and waved at Amy, then leaned into the backseat and pulled out a pile of papers.

  She climbed the steps to the porch and sat down next to Amy, dropped her parcel on the porch. “I need your help.”