Pack Up the Moon

by Rachael Herron

  She didn’t know how to do this. She’d gone through Robin’s funeral without the man she loved beside her, and now he was here, and she wanted more than anything to hand him his son’s box.

  But before she handed it to him, she needed to know one thing. Kate said, “Have you ever visited his grave?”

  Nolan blinked.

  Pree opened and then shut her mouth.

  The ocean grew even more still, as if it were also waiting for his answer.

  Chapter Forty-two

  Saturday, May 17, 2014

  11:15 a.m.

  “Me?” Nolan said. “You’re asking me that?”

  The anger was back, sudden and pure, burning like gasoline through his veins. He’d never seen Kate at the grave, not once. He thought he might see her when he started taking all those walks with Fred, always stopping to talk to Robin, to touch the little Harry Potter figurine he’d found at the comics store down the street. But not one time had he seen her. “I’m there almost every day. Where are you?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You live around the corner. It’s a five-minute walk through a nice neighborhood to get to the front gate.”

  “That’s not what I asked,” she said. “I just didn’t know if you’d been there. If you knew where he was.”

  “Do you go see him? That’s all I want to know.”

  With her free hand, Kate shoved the mass of her windblown hair back. “None of your business.”

  He was right—she didn’t go. And it was his business. He knew why she’d asked. In her typical Kate way, she’d assumed that, like her, he couldn’t go. She’d probably been planning to get mad at him about it, never dreaming that Nolan had never been able to stay away from the cemetery where his child was buried. Nolan knew that if Robin actually still existed anywhere, he’d be glad his father came. But the most important person to Robin had always been, without question or doubt, his mother.

  And she didn’t visit him.

  “That’s crazy,” he muttered. “Around the fucking corner.”

  “Nolan—”

  “Did you always argue like this?” asked Pree, shoving her hair back in the same way Kate just had.

  “No, Pree—” started Kate. “We weren’t—”

  “We didn’t argue. Almost never.” Nolan felt stricken.

  “Whatever,” Pree said. “Mostly people are just who they are no matter what’s going on around them. That’s what I think anyway.” She lightly tapped the top of the rail as if to make sure it was strong enough. She was so like Kate when Kate had been that age—all ragged emotion and long limbs—that it twisted Nolan’s heart.

  He closed his eyes for a moment and felt the sun heat the backs of his eyelids. When he opened them again, he looked through the bridge to Berkeley and Oakland, so far away now. The cities looked sturdy. Friendly. A myriad of red and brown roofs, tilting upward toward them. So many lives filled those spaces, all of them loving as hard as they had, and all of them would end up in the same place with hands full of ash. It was an awful thought, terrible enough for him to want to sail away forever and beautiful enough that he didn’t want to let go.

  “We argued about everything except what mattered,” Nolan said. “Who needed to do laundry. Who left the cheese on the counter so it dried out. Whose turn it was to give him his medicine. Jesus. I thought it was my job. She thought it was hers. We fought about who got to sleep with him. And about what we would do when he was gone.”

  “No.”

  His bait had worked—the lie of his last sentence got to Kate, broke through that look on her face, the one that scared him.

  “We never fought about what we would do when he was gone.” Kate lowered her voice. “We never talked about that. You know it.”

  “We should have. Why didn’t we?”

  Kate laced her fingers in front of her. Sun reflected off the water and dappled her curls. “Who tells you to do that? Who explains that to someone in the spot where we were?”

  “Hospice did.”

  “But I hated them.”

  “You loved them.”

  Kate gave a brittle half smile. “They were angels,” she said. “And I hated them more than I’ve ever hated anyone in my whole life.”

  “They couldn’t have been any nicer. Any stronger. Any more loving. They told us what to do, Kate. They told us to start planning. We should have listened. We owed him that—we owed him more of us. We should have planned for this, for what happened to us afterward.”

  “It’s like you’re blaming me.” The tendons in Kate’s neck were strained. “You can’t do that.”

  “We gave up on him. I should have done more. You should have, too. So damn straight I’m blaming you.” Nolan felt dizzy and reached a hand to steady himself on the seat behind him.

  And it was, finally, time for him to tell her the truth, fuck whether or not she believed him. “It was on purpose. I killed him on purpose.” Something she’d known, of course, but something he had never admitted out loud, not once, to her or anyone. “I never planned it, though. We were just going for a fucking drive. He was hurting and couldn’t sleep. But the drive didn’t help. I had to turn around before we even got up to Skyline. We pulled into the garage, and I put down the door, and then I looked in the rearview mirror, and I wished to hell my baby could just go to fucking sleep. So I didn’t turn the engine off.”

  Kate made a strangled noise behind her hand.

  “And for just a moment, I planned to kill myself, too. I thought I couldn’t live without him. But Jesus, just like thirty seconds later, I looked in the rearview mirror and saw that he was asleep, and I realized I couldn’t leave you like that. I could never have left you like that, Katie. The last thing I remember was panicking, fighting to undo my seat belt, but I couldn’t get my thumb to work right. It just happened so fast. I never knew it would happen so fast.” He gulped painful, salty air. “I would never have left you. Don’t you know that?” That had been the worst part—that she hadn’t believed in him. “You’re the one who left me.”

  Chapter Forty-three

  Saturday, May 17, 2014

  11:20 a.m.

  Kate felt as if the boat dipped out from below her feet, leaving her standing on nothing but wind. She was dropping, falling. Everything around them disappeared. Pree wasn’t watching with her careful eyes; Brian wasn’t there. There was just him—just Nolan. And the box she held, the box her boy was in.

  Nolan looked as if he were going to pass out. Fuck, she wished she couldn’t read him so well. She wished she could go back to where she’d been just minutes, seconds before.

  “Nolan. You don’t remember what happened. You never remembered.”

  He shook his head. “I remembered in prison.”

  She could only stare at him. The doctors had said then that his short-term memory of that day might come back spontaneously, or it might never return. Then did he know . . . ?

  “I remembered every minute until I passed out.”

  “Jesus,” she said.

  Finally, he spoke, and the sound was dusty, as if the words had been so long unused they creaked. “Tell me.”

  Pree moved silently toward the back of the boat, as if she knew this was just for them. Brian made himself busy with a manual of some kind.

  “I left the search window open.” Kate took what felt like the last breath of her life. “The cops used the back button and found where I’d been.”

  Without a sound, Nolan mouthed, No.

  But he knew. She had to go on. She’d done this to him, brought him to this. She had to finish it. “‘CO poisoning.’ ‘Garage death.’ ‘How long does death take?’ ‘Murder-suicide.’ It was all there. They could see every search I’d done, all the way back to the original one: ‘mercy killing.’”

  “They didn’t care I tried to commit suicide—that was only a crime against myself. But those searches were why I got convicted. When I didn’t have my memory, I thought I’d looked them up. But it was you.”
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  “You planned to fall asleep. With my boy.” They were weak words.

  “I never planned it. That’s the point, Kate. I would never have planned it.”

  No. No more of this conversation. It was too much, too awful . . . She was crying then, and she didn’t want to be. The grief felt new again, and that kind of sorrow should never, ever feel new. It wasn’t fair.

  Nolan’s arms went around her. She felt him shake so hard she thought he might break apart. Against her ear, he said, “I never would have left you.”

  The fingers of her left hand dug into the flesh above his shoulder blades, her right hand still clutching Robin’s box. “You wanted to die,” she said. “With him.”

  “I never would have left you,” he said.

  Why did he keep repeating that? Grief and guilt felt like a dizzying leap, a twist in her stomach, a lurch she couldn’t recover from. “Did you think you were the only one who lay awake at night wishing that you could take the pain from him? I did the math while you were sleeping. If someone had told me that I could trade another little boy’s life for Robin, you know what? I would have done it. If I’d had to pull the plug myself, if it would have saved Robin, I’d have done it while I watched the boy’s mother throw herself onto his bed. If someone had said, ‘Here. Flip this switch, and a van full of six children will die in a fiery crash but Robin will live to see his twenty-first birthday’”—Kate’s voice failed but she kept speaking—“I’d have done it. In the middle of the night, I decided I couldn’t consign a whole village full of starving children to death as a trade. That’s where my line was. A whole fucking village. But six kids? I could have killed six of them for Robin. I would have.”

  Nolan pulled away and rubbed his temples. There was a streak of gray in his hair she hadn’t noticed, and it hurt her heart to look at it. “I feel like I’m at the bottom of a well. I know there’s a top up there, and I know where I fell in, but I can’t ever see daylight. There’s no light at all. I’m trapped, and I can’t get out. I can’t help him. I can’t help you.”

  She leaned her forehead against his chest. He smelled like Nolan, like soap. Like duct tape and pencils and, now, cold salt wind.

  Nolan spoke against her hair again. “You should have told me the truth.”

  Her fingers tensed against his back. “I know.”

  His hands came up and pushed gently at Kate’s upper arms. He put her away from him, and there was an agony of space between them. “That’s why you didn’t fight for me.”

  “What?”

  “You chose Robin.”

  “I—”

  “Of course you chose him that day, when you brought us out. I knew you gave him CPR, not me, and that was exactly what you should have done. That’s what I would have done, too. But then, later. You never chose me, and I never knew why.”

  “I stood by you every minute of the trial—”

  “As I went down. I had no memory of what had happened—I assumed the search terms were mine. You didn’t testify for me. You said you couldn’t.”

  She’d always been a bad liar. He knew that. “I was so confused. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “I needed you to fight for me, like you’d fought for Robin, and I didn’t understand why you didn’t. You were so strong, and I needed you to do battle for me.”

  “But you didn’t fight for yourself—”

  “I couldn’t. That’s when I knew you were gone. It broke what little I had left of my heart.”

  “But you’re the one—” Kate broke off, scrabbling in her mind for anything she’d done right, but she couldn’t think of a single fucking thing. She’d thought lying to him was her only choice. She glanced at Pree at the back of the boat. Always a lie, always. “But you’re the one who filed for divorce from prison. You sent me the papers.”

  “Which you signed. You never protested. You never fought for me.” His voice broke. “And now I know why.”

  Too much. He was totally right and at the same time completely wrong. Turning, Kate called to Brian, “Can we go back, please?”

  Brian looked up, confusion on his face. “But you haven’t—”

  “I’m not going to. This was a terrible idea.”

  Brian said, “What if you just—?”

  “Fine,” she said. “Fine.” She picked up Sonia’s box and opened it. Ripped into the plastic. Dumped it carelessly, in one heavy whoosh. The bag slipped from her fingers, and she regretted that part of it immediately, that she’d just thrown a toxic oil by-product into the ocean. She also did feel lighter, having tossed the ashes, but there was no way she was letting Robin leave her that way. She put his box safely under a seat. “I can’t put him here. That’s the thing. Robin loved the ocean, but I hate it. It’s cold. It’s rough. It’s not safe for a boy his age.”

  Nolan looked past her, over her shoulder, as if she weren’t even there. Standing this close to him, standing as close to her heart as she had in years and years, Kate had never felt so alone.

  She’d lost him. Again.

  Chapter Forty-four

  Saturday, May 17, 2014

  11:50 a.m.

  On their way in toward the bridge, the rocking motion made Pree feel ill again. Something huge had happened in the front of the boat, something devastating. Kate and Nolan looked as if they’d just lost their son only minutes ago, not three years before. And Pree couldn’t do a damn thing except wait for the invisible storm to pass.

  Thank god she hadn’t been able to hear everything, not above the slaps of the waves against the hull. But Pree shouldn’t even have to see this. Didn’t they know they should keep this private?

  But she’d signed up for it, she supposed. She’d chosen this by getting on the boat. Her father. That had come as a surprise. It wasn’t as bad as she would have thought, though. Nolan . . . he seemed kind. A man who’d loved a child as much as it seemed he had . . . maybe it would be okay to get to know him. A little.

  Maybe. Maybe not.

  The marina drew closer, and Kate came back and sat next to her quietly. Her hand slipped into Pree’s, cold and small. Pree almost pulled away, but Kate’s grip seemed to help the queasiness. Nolan, looking wrecked, sat silently on the other side of Pree.

  Pree kept her eyes on the Berkeley hills.

  The night before, she and Flynn had broken up. She’d told him about Jimmy. Flynn had flipped out, way more than she would have predicted. He’d shouted, his voice going more coral-colored than she’d ever heard it. Practically Isi-colored. He threw one of his shoes through a closed window. He said he would fight for her, that he’d go to the ends of the earth for her. Then Pree had said she cared for him; she just wasn’t sure she loved him.

  “Did you ever?” he’d asked, tears wobbling, unshed.

  “Yes.”

  “Fuck, Pree. That makes it so much worse.”

  He’d wanted things she couldn’t promise anyone. Not anymore. His voice went pale again, back to its normal simple pink, and she felt it, just like that: he’d given up on her. Really, it was what she’d wanted him to do. She didn’t love him, not like that.

  Why did it hurt so badly, then, when he left?

  Flynn didn’t say where he was going or when he’d be back. Her heart had broken then, walloping her with a thudding pain she could feel now in the backs of her eyes. Pree didn’t want Flynn—she really didn’t. But she wasn’t sure how to live in a world without him.

  She’d called Isi and Marta, crying frantically, and she’d told them everything—all of it, from the pregnancy to Jimmy to forcing Flynn away. They were driving up now. They had said they would try to meet her at the dock, if traffic allowed.

  They were coming.

  She checked her phone. A text from Isi:

  We’re here.

  And at the pier, Pree saw them. Miraculously, the moms were there. Waiting.

  Her Marta. She looked windblown and ragged. She had a white look under her eyes, a pulled tightness Pree had never seen before. Pree had put t
hat look on her face, and she regretted nothing more. Isi, her crew cut bristling in the wind, looked as if she were about to throw herself into the water and swim to her. She kept her gaze squarely on Pree, as if pulling the boat toward her with the power of her mind.

  Pree came down the ramp first, flying at them. They were there.

  They were there for her.

  Isi caught her in a hug so tight Pree could barely grab her breath. Then the moms were apologizing, and Pree couldn’t figure out why. “I’m the one who let you down, and you’re saying you’re sorry?” That made Marta hiccup, and Pree got squeezed until she knew she’d have bruises later. Good bruises.

  And in that moment, Pree knew. She finally got it. She already had her family. Right here. She’d had it the whole time, and while she’d known that superficially, she hadn’t really known it in her bones. She hadn’t known it in her blood. Not until now. She already had her people. Marta. Isi. Hers.

  She looked over her shoulder and saw Kate coming down the ramp, followed by Nolan. Her birth parents. She knew about them now, just as she knew about her double-jointed left pinky and the fact that she was mildly allergic to strawberries. She was glad to know. But the knowledge mattered so much less when held up against the two women who stood in front of her, the ones who had driven to her as fast as they could. The ones who held her heart.

  “We can get my car later. Can you take me home now?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Isi said, and her voice was the most gorgeous shade of rosy joy.

  Chapter Forty-five

  Aftermath

  November 2011