It was a small town, Watersend, South Carolina, nestled where the May River met the wide saltwater bay. The wedding was being held in the 1820s stone Episcopal church, full to overflowing. Although they weren’t church members, everyone in town did favors for the Donohues, even the priest—for Mr. Gavin Donohue, to be specific. Lena watched from the bride’s room window as outside the guests arrived in pairs and clusters. The ancient oak trees spread their gnarled limbs, offering shady protection, and sunlight filtering through the Spanish moss turning it to gossamer.
“A mass migration,” Lena said to her mother, Elizabeth, who was fastening the last of the satin buttons at the back of Lena’s dress. “I bet there’s not one person left in town. If a stranger came through, it would look like a ghost town.”
Elizabeth laughed, a sound as tiny as she was. “Well, you know your dad. He can’t help but invite everyone. If someone walks into the pub, he’s all a-chatter about his oldest daughter getting married to that endearing Littleton fella, and then he’s off inviting them. I gave up counting long ago. The Oyster Shack just decided to cook enough Lowcountry Boil to feed the entire town. It’s a safe bet.” She gazed off. “Still not sure how they’re all going to fit under that tent in our backyard, but . . .”
“It’s wonderful there are so many,” Lena said. “It’s nice that people will witness this promise. It makes it feel more true, more of a sacred commitment. Even if they are mostly here for Dad.”
“They are here for you, too, honey. You and your dad: two peas; one pod.”
Lena studied her mother’s face as she’d done all her remembered life, looking for a sign of what was missing, a gap that she’d always felt, wanting more and finding less. Was this closeness with her dad a source of pain for her mother? Or was Elizabeth merely stating the truth without subtext?
Elizabeth Donohue wore a blue lace dress that fell like waves around her slim body. She was impeccable in her appearance and mannerisms—her Virginia aristocratic heritage surrounding her like a perpetual shine. Lena had never seen her mother unkempt. Even her cotton nightgowns were ironed and coordinated with her robes. Meanwhile, Lena had trouble finding matching shoes.
Everything to do with the wedding planning had been annoying to Lena and she’d only endured it for her mother’s sake—trying to please a woman who’d never had a real wedding. They all knew the story—how her parents had agreed that the money they’d spend on a wedding would go to opening the pub. The justice of the peace in Watersend had married them, Mother in the white dress she’d worn to her high school prom, and Dad in a black suit with a cobalt-blue tie.
Lena hadn’t wanted all the nuptial hoopla; she’d merely wanted to say her vows in a simple dress, throw a huge party at her dad’s pub, the Lark, where she’d spent most of her life at his side, and then hurry on with their adventuresome life. She and Walter had so much planned—children, creative work, travel and family gatherings—and sitting through prim parties and opening gifts with dainty oohs and aahs had not been part of her dream.
Thank God for Hallie, who had not only helped Lena maintain her patience through months of cutesy-pie smiling, but also knew enough to organize the wedding events down to the last toast said and confetti tossed. Lena, her head perpetually in the clouds, as their mother was always reminding her, wouldn’t have made it a week into the spreadsheets and budget calculations. Hallie, on the other hand, dove into the deepest end of this wedding planning pool and arranged every small and beautiful detail. And now it was time; Lena had paid her dues in composure and her wedding day was here.
Hallie and Lena had spent the morning lazing in their childhood tree house, staring over the May River just as they’d done almost every Saturday of their early lives, and secretly during many midnight hours when their parents had believed they were asleep. When Mother had finally called them inside to have their hair and makeup done for the wedding, Lena had grasped Hallie’s hands and declared, “Nothing will change between us. I am here for you and you for me—the Donohue girls forever even if my last name changes.”
Hallie had cried, true-blue tears that wet her cheeks and rolled into the soft corners of her mouth. “It will change—you’ll be married while I can’t keep a guy around for more than six months.”
“Do not cry! You’ll find your soul mate, too. I know it.” Lena had pulled her sister close. “And look at us. Some things will change, but not us, not you and me.” And Lena had meant it; nothing, not even marriage, could separate her from her beloved sister.
“You won’t be able to meet me at midnight to stare at the stars, watch for the shooting one,” Hallie said quietly. “Not like before.”
“We’ll find new ways.”
It was times like this when Lena would think how much younger Hallie really seemed—not immature as much as naïve. She’d never dated anyone seriously for more than a few months, and her shy insecurity kept her from the wider world, even attending college at the local satellite of the University of South Carolina. Hallie was living at home and finding jobs as a wedding organizer and party planner. Why did Hallie ever need to go anywhere else? she asked when pushed on the subject. She had everything she wanted right there. So, yes, Lena’s marriage was putting a bit of a strain on Hallie’s life cocoon.
Outside the bridal room door, the organ reverberated with “How Great Thou Art,” one of three songs that the organist, a last-minute replacement, knew. “That’s the third time she’s played that song,” Lena said to her mother. She leaned close to the mirror and once again checked her rosy lipstick. She didn’t often wear makeup and her face looked dollish and plastic so she wiped some off just as the door burst open and her three bridesmaids entered bearing a contraband champagne bottle held high.
“You ready?” Kerry asked, her face especially bright and cheerful with too much blush and eye shadow. Count on her to sneak in the alcohol.
It was Sara who popped the cork and poured the bubbly into those plastic flutes that Lena so hated. They always cracked when she drank from them.
“Let’s save it for after,” Margy said. “Can’t have a drunk bride.”
Kerry made a dismissive sound. “One small sip for everyone!” She held her thumb and forefinger a hairbreadth apart and laughed.
Margy handed a flute with one splash of bubbly to Lena. “Let’s cheer to a long and happy life with your great love.”
“To stellar sex and forever together,” Sara said.
“Sara,” Lena said, and pointed to her mother with a laugh.
Sara pretended to whisper. “Oh, no. Doesn’t your mom know about sex?”
Mother took the champagne bottle from Margy and poured herself a small amount into a real glass from the side table. No plastic for Elizabeth. “Oh, that,” she said with a wink. “Our children arrived in pink and blue packages.”
“Okay, enough,” Margy said. “Let’s cheer.”
“Not without my little sister,” Lena said. “Where’s Hallie?”
No one answered, each glancing around.
“Mother, do you know where she is?” Lena asked, taking the champagne bottle and walking toward the doorway.
“Darling, I’ve been in here with you the entire time.” Mother stepped forward and attempted to take the bottle from Lena’s hand. “You’re going to spill that on your dress. You know how you are.”
Yes, Lena did know how she was: klutzy. And how lovely of her mother to remind her at that moment.
“I’ll get her.” Kerry headed for the door, in such a rush she almost knocked over the brass cross on the banquet.
“No.” Lena shook her head. “Let me.” Lena wanted to find her best friend, the other half of her heart. She opened the door to an empty hallway, breathing in the aroma of mildew and incense. The ancient stone walls offered the impression of being in a castle far away, a place she’d never been. She took a few steps out and glanced left and right. “Ha
llie?”
Only “How Great Thou Art” answered her call until Mrs. Martin, Lena’s second grade teacher, stepped out from the ladies’ room and gasped. “Oh, my. Lena! You are so beautiful. Who knew you’d turn into such a lovely young woman?”
Lena laughed and smiled. “Thank you.” One of the vagaries of living in a town you’d never left was the danger that people’s memories of you at your most awkward age might be revived at any moment. Lena and Walter had gone round and round about where to live and had decided to stay in Watersend. He was new in town and she didn’t want to abandon her family—a tight-knit group that both nourished and made each other nutty. His family had disbanded—his word—when he was nine years old and his parents had divorced. An only child, he was shuffled back and forth, here and there, without ever feeling at home anywhere. Until, he said, until he met the Donohue family. This was what he’d been looking for, this kind of deep connection and family life, right alongside the kind of love that swept him away.
It wasn’t just love of family that made them stay in Watersend—logic was also part of their decision. Walter was a builder who could work anywhere and what with the Donohue family connections he could thrive in town while also finding work in both Savannah thirty minutes away and Charleston two hours away. Lena’s job as a writer for the local newspaper would be enough for her until she started getting bigger assignments with more important news sources, which she had faith would happen soon.
Walter. His name made Lena smile, the quiver of rightness in her chest quickening. That he’d chosen her was still a surprise. Yes, they were getting married “too quickly,” having known each other just eight months—six before he knelt on one knee and proposed, and two since they’d begun planning the wedding, which was easy for Mother and Hallie to arrange as just another backyard party. But love is love and this was love. It doesn’t take long to plan a party in a place like Watersend, where the town is waiting at the ready for something just like this to happen, like the night sky waiting for the stars to appear.
Walter’s distant—both in geography and in emotional support—parents argued about which of them would attend, so that, in the end, neither of them were present. His groomsmen equaled Lena’s bridesmaids in number, and all of them he considered “brothers.” Lena measured them with unease as she’d only met them the day before the wedding and found them both loud and annoying with their private jokes and vague assertions of Walter’s partying past life. When Hallie had asked, “Are you sure?” Lena had told her, “You can’t dictate love. You can’t tell it when and when not to appear. You have to grab it when it comes—such a rare and wonderful gift.”
From the moment Lena had met Walter Littleton from Atlanta, Georgia, she’d been adrift in feelings she’d never felt before—most strongly, the desire to share her life with someone else, with this particular someone else.
Lena was twenty-five years old, the age she’d always told her little brother, Shane, and Hallie she would be when she married. When she and Walter had burst through the door of the pub to announce their engagement that January night, Shane had laughed and said, “Right on time.”
Now at the church, Lena’s ballet slippers—she’d refused high heels, convinced that she would fall in them halfway down the aisle—were smooth along the stone hallway as she looked for her sister.
The vestibule appeared ahead and Lena backed away. Legend and lore told that seeing Walter would be bad luck. She wanted to fully experience that moment—the one when she walked down the aisle and Walter eyed her all aglow with the veil wafting behind. Lena wasn’t traditional by any means, but some wedding mythology was ingrained in a girl’s mind, so permanently and elementally etched into the psyche that even she couldn’t resist.
She turned swiftly and lifted her skirts to walk back down the hallway to the bridal room. The organist had shifted to her second song—“Amazing Grace.” The pew dwellers would be getting antsy. It was five past the hour.
Lena pulled open two wooden doors to spy two empty rooms before she opened a third one where two lovebirds were entangled in an embrace so tight that Lena smiled at love so evident on her wedding day. They were kissing, the woman’s face lifted to the man’s. His hand was in her hair, pulling her close. His other hand raised the skirt of her dress so that white silk panties flashed. Lena almost turned away in embarrassment for intruding on such an intimate moment, but something in the scene didn’t allow denial. The man’s lips traveled down the woman’s neck, and the flower crown Lena had created with her sister the night before fell to the floor.
A tiny woman with blond hair in a pink dress and a man in a tuxedo.
He was Walter.
She was Hallie.
Lena’s belly turned to fire, ignited by the truth of what she was seeing. There Lena stood, a walking cliché: the sister betrayed on her wedding day. If it weren’t so stunning it would be laughable. It was the annihilation of everything Lena Donohue believed in: true love, her family’s protection, and her sister’s fidelity. It was death, so why was she still alive?
The champagne bottle shattered on the stone floor, a bombshell of splintered glass and fractured reality as she dropped it in shocked pain. All that had seemed real was illusion; all solid ground fell away; all love dissolved into treachery. Only one pure thought exploded through her mind—This is the end of everything good.
Chapter One
May you never forget what is worth remembering, nor ever remember what is best forgotten.
Irish proverb
TEN YEARS LATER
The problem with memories, Colleen Donohue often thought, wasn’t with the ones she couldn’t let go of, but with those that wouldn’t let go of her.
She was no longer called Lena; now she was Colleen. She had long ironed-straight hair, bright red lipstick, a loft apartment in New York City and scant vestiges of a Lowcountry river running through her veins. Gone were the curls and the sundresses, the flip-flops and fishing poles.
Her apartment in Brooklyn was a studio—functional, sunny and chic. Once a Presbyterian church, the stone building had years ago been divided into apartments. Colleen lived in the smallest unit, in the far top corner overlooking Arlington Place. She’d once found faded photos of the church and believed her studio had been part of the old choir loft.
That August morning she knew better than to leave the apartment. Although the air conditioner strained, it still kept her space at a lovely seventy-two degrees. Outside, the city was almost intolerable, the heat roasting the garbage and wilting anything green and lovely. No one talked much of that, but it was why New Yorkers who had them left for their Hamptons homes or their seaside cabins. Colleen had neither; her job as a freelance travel writer kept her out of the city most of the time anyway. Yet she was home that day, having just returned from Mexico.
The rainy morning was sluggish and insolent, having its own personality it wanted to impose on Colleen.
She needed coffee.
It was ten a.m. Colleen wasn’t exactly the type to jump out of bed and make a run for the day. She brought the day to herself on her own terms, slowly and carefully. How many office jobs had she turned down merely because she’d have to rise to an alarm, dress in something presentable and chat inanely with colleagues over the tops of cubicles? Here, she rose at her own internal clock—sometimes early but usually not—and poured coffee before launching into her writing.
With her coffee cup and a stale croissant beside her, Colleen set to work on an article describing the Mexican resort. It was coming slowly. Too slowly. She hadn’t yet found a hook for the reader, an overarching narrative that might turn a run-of-the-mill tourist trap into something special. They’d paid her to go. She’d indulged in the Presidential Suite and the spa treatments. She’d met a guy at the bar and enjoyed an easy flirtation. She’d taken the ecotour and suffered through a slide show. She’d drunk the house margarita and tolerated the mariach
i band. Now she needed to craft words to turn it all into an exotic journey.
She tapped her fingers on the keyboard and words scrolled across the white space. Music from the apartment next door vibrated the wall—her neighbor’s teenage son was home alone, obviously skipping school, and listening to the Grateful Dead. She rose from her chair and banged on the wall, knowing the gesture would be ineffectual. She turned up her own music, Nina Simone, coming from the wireless speaker on the kitchen counter version of her family’s old turntable in the kitchen at Watersend. Why she wanted to re-create a place she’d rejected, she left that to her subconscious.
She glanced around her apartment and smiled. This place made her happy. As happy as the May River? her brother had asked her one day over the phone. Yes, she’d said, although it wasn’t really true. Yet and still, this space soothed her. It was all one room—with a curtain that hung between the bed and the living space and a kitchen area with a long bar made of honed black marble. One couch of cream linen faced two bright blue upholstered chairs. The narrow windows framed in iron looked over the lanterns and sidewalks of her neighborhood streetscape. Everything inside her studio was in its place, unlike the cluttered family house in Watersend where the collections and remnants of years of Donohue life needed dusting and organizing. Here, photos of the exotic locales she’d visited were set on tables in matching white frames and hung in pleasing arrangements. The kitchen was stocked with pale blue plates and appliances. This space belonged to Colleen.
Two hours until her deadline. Procrastination usually spurred her toward productivity, but not now.
Hearing her phone ring and seeing her brother’s name on her cell made her jump up to answer. God, she loved talking to Shane, hearing his voice across the miles; he and Dad were her last ties to the Lowcountry and she wanted to hold tight to both of them.
Losing the Moon Page 33
