Pack Up the Moon

by Rachael Herron

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Thursday, May 15, 2014

  8 a.m.

  Pree should have called Flynn the night before. It had just been so easy to turn the cell phone ringer off, to fall into a deep, dreamless sleep in a strange bed under the open window, the sound of a large house breathing quietly around her. In the morning, the light that slanted through the blinds hit the walls at an angle she didn’t recognize. The blue comforter smelled too plasticky, as if it were new, but she liked the smell of the room underneath it, real and like . . . a home. Something about the scent reminded her of her old room at the moms’ house. Pree wanted to stay, and she wondered briefly if that was part of Kate’s plan: to trick her into never leaving. She couldn’t decide how much she would mind. There were worse things.

  She stretched and reached for her phone, resting in sunlight on a small blue nightstand. Two missed calls and four texts from Flynn. She was surprised, actually. He was normally mellow to a fault, not noticing if she worked till three or four in the morning during a crunch. Apparently he noticed when she stayed out all night.

  She sent one text:

  I’m all right. With Kate. Will call later.

  Then, on second thought, she added: XO. Goddamn it, she loved him. She just didn’t know what to do with him.

  Bringing up a browser window on her phone, she typed, “Greg Jenkins.”

  Yep, almost two hundred thousand matches. Without more specifics from Kate, she’d never be able to figure out which one it was. It looked like there were more than a hundred in Northern California alone. What if Kate had been lying? What were the other reasons for giving up a baby? With one finger Pree flicked through dozens of Greg Jenkinses on Facebook as she contemplated the worst reasons.

  Incest. Pree shuddered at the thought that perhaps she was made of a commingling of an already mingled gene pool. But according to Kate’s wiki, Kate’s father died in a helicopter crash while she was young, so—thank god—that probably wasn’t it, unless there was a barbaric uncle or cousin in the mix.

  Rape. Kate had been sixteen when she’d had Pree. It was possible. It wasn’t like Pree hadn’t had the thought before, after all, imagining herself the product of force and anger. If so, would Kate have given Pree a fake father’s name, just to throw her off the scent? Is that something a woman had to keep her child from ever learning, or was it something that would be on the adoption forms? Did the moms know? They’d kept so much from her for so long, after all . . .

  The anger Pree felt was low grade, sitting on a back burner. She could turn up the gas at any moment, and it would boil over, hurting everyone. Didn’t she get points for trying to play it cool? To understand? Pree wished for the equivalent of a gold star, wished that someone would notice her Herculean effort to understand Kate and the moms. Pree knew—better and better each day—why a woman could decide to give away a child. There were a million reasons, and more for a teenager. But knowing this with the front part of her mind, the logical, rational part, didn’t smother that slow molten flow of anger that Kate—this smart, intelligent, interesting woman—hadn’t chosen her. Childish. She was being so fucking childish.

  Pree stood and draped herself in the long black terry cloth robe Kate had left on the bed the night before.

  The image of the underside of Jimmy’s desk flashed in her mind.

  Ignoring the dull headache that tugged at her temples, Pree wandered out into the hallway wearing the robe over the T-shirt and shorts Kate had given her to sleep in. She craved cereal. Sweet cereal, with cold milk. It was something she never had—Flynn didn’t like milk and Pree normally tried to stay away from processed grains and sugars. It was a leftover from when she’d lived at home with the moms. They’d always believed in starting the day with protein. “A day without an egg is a day wasted,” Marta had said almost every single morning of her life. She and Isi had even talked about getting chickens once, but then they went to a dyke-fest urban homestead party where everyone got to kill a chicken, pluck it, and bring the meat home. Isi, who had worked with dead chickens in every restaurant she’d ever been in, came home pale, and Marta, normally vegetarian, went vegan for three months. Without dying from lack of eggs, too, Pree had pointed out. They didn’t get the chickens.

  Oh, shit, what if this need for cereal and milk was her first baby craving? Did the fetus want carbs? The thought was alarming.

  There was no sound in Kate’s house as Pree padded toward the staircase. It was already eight, a time when Pree’s own normal routine was already buzzing—she was usually up and drinking coffee while she read the grisly parts of the paper to Flynn as he lay on top of the covers and stretched lazily. Then she’d zoom around their room looking for whatever part of her clothes she’d mislaid that day. By eight forty-five, Pree had to be on the road, headed south to the Peninsula. It was a reverse commute, which was good, but it still meant she sat in her old car for way more than she would have liked. Every once in a while, when traffic got snarled, she’d sketch while driving. She knew this was technically a bad idea, but she’d do it only when the average speed was less than ten miles an hour, and she never looked down at the pad of paper on her lap, never glanced at the tip of her pencil. She drew quickly in the blind, grabbing—stealing—the faces of people in cars around her: women singing along with their radios, mouths open, eyes wide; men scowling and punching their dashboards as if that would make traffic move, obey.

  Pree should be thinking about going to work, not wandering the hall of Kate’s house in clothes that weren’t her own. But that would mean going home for a fresh outfit, facing Flynn, and then facing Jimmy . . .

  Pree touched the smooth rail of the unfamiliar staircase. Nolan, Kate’s ex, had lived here, gone down these stairs a million times. What was he like? Why had Kate loved him enough to keep a child with him?

  The steps ended in an open area of pale wooden floor where a sideboard stood, so cluttered you couldn’t see even an inch of its surface. Mail, books, a pack of red thank-you cards half open—things were spilled everywhere. A pink lamp leaned at one end of the sideboard, and what looked, improbably, like a hat covered in black feathers rested on the top shelf next to five or six votive candle holders. On the floor below, a pile of shoes spread out into the hallway. Pree counted at least fifteen pair. Kate was a clutterer. Like her. Marta said Pree had a problem with stacks—everything she touched she put in a pile somewhere until, inevitably, and sometimes with great sound, the pile tipped over. But it was a system that her brain understood. She knew exactly what pile everything was in. If she’d been forced to use an actual system, she wouldn’t have had a clue where to look for things.

  So she got that from Kate.

  Pree looked over her shoulder as she entered the kitchen, feeling guilty. Maybe she should wait for Kate to get up? But there was something so satisfying about this, prowling around Kate’s house, seeing the way she kept it, without having to keep her face politely composed. She pulled open drawers at random: cutlery, foil, potholders. She found the junk drawer, full of forks with bent tines and knotted pieces of string. Matches and rubber bands vied for space next to thumbtacks and a level. She pulled out three measuring tapes, only one of which let her measure more than four inches without snapping back. A satisfying jumble. Pree had one drawer in the dresser that she and Flynn shared full of exactly the same things.

  She shut the drawer quietly and went back to her mission: cereal. Would Kate have the healthy stuff or the crap?

  Hot damn, jackpot! She not only had Honey Nut Cheerios, Pree’s favorite, but she went one step further: Cocoa Puffs. Years and years ago, Pree had bought a box with babysitting money. She’d hidden it in her room and had eaten it one puff at a time, sitting on the edge of her open windowsill so the smell of chocolate would waft out, not in, so Marta, who would have died a thousand fiery deaths before she’d let something like that cross her doorstep, didn’t find her out.

  Pree filled a blue bowl with it immediately.

  S
he guessed that if Kate did find her at that moment, she probably wouldn’t mind. She might even be pleased Pree felt comfortable in her house. But as soon as Pree poured the milk into the bowl, she felt nervous and jangled, and instead of staying in the kitchen, she stepped out the kitchen door and sat outside to eat on the small side porch.

  Heavy fog dripped from the trees and telephone lines, and she was glad for the thick robe. The wetness of the air weighted down a massive cobweb draped under a low bush. The cereal was sweeter than anything Pree had ever eaten before ten in the morning, and it went straight to her head. The darker thoughts she’d had upstairs dissipated, and a bright happiness as sweet as the cereal filled her brain. It wasn’t until she was almost done eating that she realized she could not only see the corner of Kate’s driveway, but that she could see a guy—a neighbor, probably, waiting to pick up a child—waiting in his car across the street. She felt suddenly skeevy, sitting there in Kate’s clothing, eating purloined cereal.

  She grabbed her bowl, and carried it in, thankful she hadn’t accidentally locked herself out, something she hadn’t even thought of until she felt how easily the lock flicked closed when she got inside.

  Then she scurried back upstairs to wait to hear something. When she heard Kate get up, she would pretend she’d slept in. As she pulled the blanket again over her and looked out at the fog wreathing the willow, she felt a sudden joy floating inside her, as if she’d swallowed a sweet balloon. She felt safe. It was misplaced, of course—you had to admit that feeling safe just because you were near your bio mom was pretty dumb, especially when she was the one who’d abandoned you so long ago, that she was, actually, the prime mover of your whole unconventional life (lesbian moms! artistic tendencies! attachment failures!).

  But the feeling was good, and she drew it closely around herself, determined to lie in the warmth of it as long as she could.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Thursday, May 15, 2014

  8 a.m.

  Nolan rubbed his face with his hands and then rested his wrists on the steering wheel. Fred Weasley rumbled low in his throat next to him on the passenger seat. Not in the almost year he’d been out had Nolan been by the house, not until now. There were guys he worked with who treated spying on the ex like a game. They took a grim delight in coming to work and relaying what a whore their ex-wife was, how she was out banging some dickwipe while a sitter stayed with their kids. My kids, they’d say, shaking their heads before pulling on their work vests. Mine. The single guys avoided those conversations, and the married ones looked horrified, but all the divorced men leaned in and listened, Nolan had noticed. They couldn’t help it.

  And now here he was.

  If only he could figure out how to get out of the car. Go knock on that thick strong door he’d loved so much. But so far, he couldn’t.

  Mr. Foster, a grumpy retired English teacher from the local high school, stepped down off his front porch to pick up his newspaper, dressed in that same old ratty green robe he’d always worn. There was no reason he’d look at Nolan other than simple nosiness, which he did. But Nolan’s old beater wasn’t anything Mr. Foster would recognize and Nolan kept his shades on as he pretended to look at his phone.

  Nolan had to admit the outside of the house looked good. From his parking spot, he couldn’t see the claw-foot bathtub in the garden. Of course he couldn’t. That was the whole point. She must have kept the gardener, that much was obvious. From jail through his court-appointed lawyer, he’d hired a guy sight unseen to take care of the front and side yards in his permanent absence. Kate had always loved having pretty grass and joyful flowers, but she had absolutely no talent when it came to gardening. Watering once a week was too much to remember, and for her it was just like cleaning the house: something she never noticed needed doing. Yeah, he’d left her well taken care of, at least. He’d signed over the deed to the house and had moved all his money into her account before taking his name off it. He’d refused to pay for an attorney, saying the state-appointed one would be good enough. Nolan was a lawyer, after all, and he could have worked with the young guy more than he had. He hadn’t, though. He’d let the kid do the best he could in court, which wasn’t bad, actually. Nolan hadn’t fought a thing. Not a single goddamn thing. He had no ground to stand on to fight—he was in the wrong. If he’d had to live through it, he also had to be punished, he knew that. Even a lifetime in prison wouldn’t be long enough to fully punish him. He’d hoped for the death sentence—prayed for it, courted it like a lover, imagined what he’d whisper to Kate as they dripped the poison into his veins—even while knowing in California the state would never kill a man who’d mercifully killed his terminally ill, suffering child.

  This was the real punishment, this right here. This was what he’d signed up for. Looking at their house, wondering if she was alone inside. For all he knew, Kate had a man in the house with her. Loving her.

  Would another man be able to make her laugh the way Nolan had? For a selfish, dizzying moment, he allowed himself to remember the sound of her laughter. No one in the world sounded like Kate, he’d decided long ago, while still in high school. It didn’t matter what she was actually laughing about as her voice trilled up and then went so satisfyingly back down again. It was solid. You could rest a cup of coffee on that laugh. He’d just wanted to hear it, to be in on the joke. And he’d always, always been in on it. He missed her laugh more than he missed sex.

  Kate probably wasn’t missing sex. Nope. A noble part of himself wanted to wish her the best in this—to hope her lover was skilled and handsome and kind. And the base part of him wanted nothing more than to storm into his old house, up the stairs, and drag out any asshole who might be in her sheets and beat the living shit out of him, to have the satisfaction of hearing him wheeze after a well-seated blow. He flexed his fingers and knew he could do it. Right now.

  But Kate wasn’t his to fight for, though. Not anymore.

  Nolan probably didn’t have too much time left here on this street before someone got interested in why a guy was hanging out in his car with no obvious reason. The neighbors all had their local beat cop on speed dial, something this part of Oakland could boast, and one of the biggest reasons he and Kate had bought here. The annexed city of Piedmont, a few blocks away, had a response time of under three minutes for all medical emergencies and felonies, and the rich citizens of this part of Oakland insisted on a similar response even while the deep east and west areas of the city were still torn by violence.

  A woman getting in her parked Buick in front of him raised her perfectly plucked eyebrows and glared through his windshield. The look appeared to be directed at Fred Weasley, however, not at him. Fred tucked the top of his head under Nolan’s chin and pressed the rest of his long, shaggy body as hard as he could against him, sitting sideways on the emergency brake. Nolan wrapped his arm around the dog as Fred shook in paroxysms of delight.

  In front of him, the Buick pulled out, the woman casting one more glare over her shoulder. It was time to start his own car. Drive away. He told himself to turn the key, but it was harder than it sounded, especially since he was dying to know what Kate had to tell him, what was so important she’d come looking for him. But there was no way he could make himself go up that walkway. No way in hell.

  At that moment, as he reached to turn the key, a girl walked out of the side door. Really, she snuck out, as if trying to avoid being noticed. Had she broken in? She was young, and had something in her hands, but she didn’t look like the burgling type. She was wearing . . . was that Kate’s robe she was wearing? The one he’d given her the Christmas before Robin died?

  Nolan sucked in his breath and leaned farther forward. There was something familiar about the girl . . . She was young, maybe late teens or early twenties? Maybe she was one of Kate’s friends’ kids; Vanessa Hutchins at the gallery had a girl who would be about that age now, didn’t she?

  His heart started racing, thumping uncomfortably in his chest, and he had
no idea why. A fine trembling started in his right hand as he touched the car key. Turn the key. Just leave. It was time to go. Fred was due for his day-off ramble on the beach.

  But the girl. So familiar. That brown hair, curled like . . . Those shoulders—they reminded him of . . . Shit.

  Nolan shook his head and rubbed his eyes again.

  He’d been seeing Robin everywhere lately. At the grocery store the other night, he’d almost run after a little boy he’d seen rounding the end of the cracker aisle. He’d been there only a second, and Nolan had just seen the back of his head. But that split second of knowing it was Robin was both the best and the worst second of his life in recent memory. The very highest hope, followed almost instantly by crushing despair.

  The hope had made it worth it.

  The girl picked up the bowl she’d placed on the porch.

  In that moment, he saw it.

  She didn’t just remind him of Robin. She was Robin, an alternate version of his son. Nolan could see it in the set of her head, the pointed slope of her shoulders, the way her left foot turned in as she stood, as if she was about to trip.

  And he had no fucking idea who she was. A child she’d had with someone when they’d been apart during their early college years? That was impossible.

  Nothing could be more impossible. Kate didn’t lie to him.

  Wasn’t it impossible? He did math as quickly as he could—if she’d had a baby while they were apart, that child could be anywhere from eighteen to twenty-one. Shit, fuck, hellfire, the girl looked as if she’d fall into the age range.

  She disappeared into the house through the side door, and Nolan closed his eyes and rested his forehead on the steering wheel. He tried to think, but his brain was spinning too fast for him to grab and tease out any single discrete thought. Robin. Kate. Robin. Robin . . .

  While they were apart, Kate had given birth to a child. Shit, fuck, shit, what the hell was going on?