Her voice cracked. She bowed her head, suddenly exhausted. “I’m sorry. I’m just tired. I didn’t expect any of this when I came back. I thought I’d swoop in, pack up a few things, put the farm on the market, and go back to New York. Instead, the place is falling apart, there’s no money to fix anything, my mother shows up out of the blue, and there might be an arsonist on the loose. Every time I turn around, something else is imploding. And I have no idea how to deal with any of it.”
Andrew closed the distance between them, took her hands, and pulled her close. “And everyone keeps telling you you’re doing it wrong—including me.”
Lizzy leaned into him, folding against his chest like a sulky child. She didn’t care. She felt sulky. And tired. And lost. “Maybe I am doing it wrong. Maybe none of this is what Althea would want. Maybe it’s what I want, and I’m just mucking through it all so I can feel better. So that this time, when I walk away, my conscience will be clean.”
“Is that really what you think? That this is just some selfish quest for absolution?” He cupped her chin, tilting her face up toward his. “How is it possible that you know yourself so little, Lizzy Moon?”
Lizzy met his gaze, breath held as she plumbed the depths of those warm amber eyes. Familiar eyes, she realized. The kind a less wary woman could get lost in.
She took an abrupt step back, holding him at arm’s length. “I don’t know anything anymore, Andrew. Except that when I leave here, I don’t want any unfinished business. I don’t want to have to look back—ever.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Lizzy hovered in the shop doorway, glad for a few minutes alone with her thoughts. The birds had quieted, the void filled with a deepening chorus of peepers and crickets. In the distance, fireflies winked on and off, random yellow pulses in the rapidly falling dusk. It was her favorite time of day. Her mother’s too, apparently.
She’d left Rhanna in the kitchen, helping Evvie wash up the supper dishes. To say she’d been surprised by her mother’s sudden willingness to pitch in was an understatement. But even more astonishing than the sight of Rhanna with a dish towel in her hand was the sight of her blowing Evvie a trio of noisy air kisses, followed by the announcement that she’d decided they should be friends. Evvie had rolled her eyes, grumbling that she didn’t have time for foolishness, but Rhanna was a skilled charmer when she needed to be. A full thaw was only a matter of time. And then what? Surely there was some motive behind all this sweetness, some angle she was working.
In the distance, she heard the slap of the mudroom door. Rhanna appeared moments later, barefoot as she crossed the lawn. She had plaited her hair into two long braids and tied the ends with matching yellow ribbons. They slapped her shoulders as she walked. She broke into a grin as she halted and clicked her bare heels.
“Rhanna Moon, reporting for soap duty, sir.”
“At ease,” Lizzy replied dryly, backing out of the doorway to let Rhanna in. “I was starting to think you weren’t coming.”
“I said I would, and here I am, keeping my promise.”
Lizzy reached for Althea’s remedy book and flipped to the page she’d marked several days earlier. “That was quite a show you put on for Evvie,” she remarked finally. “For a minute there, I thought she was going to swat you with the frying pan.”
Rhanna’s smile wavered. “She doesn’t like me.”
“She doesn’t know you. All she has to go on is what she’s heard.”
“Well, then. I’m doomed.”
Lizzy thought of her own first encounter with Evvie. The unspoken disapproval. The wary distrust. “Evvie’s big on loyalty. Especially when it comes to Althea. You have to earn your way in with her.”
“Three thousand miles,” Rhanna said softly. “Most of it on foot. Does that count for anything?”
Lizzy studied her. She looked young in her bare feet and braids, startlingly vulnerable. “It does, actually. Or it will, in time. She needs to know that she can trust you. So do I, though I’m not sure that’s actually possible.”
“You can trust me, Lizzy. I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s true. Before, when I said I owed a lot of people—I was mostly talking about you. I’m not asking for anything but a chance.”
“And you’ve got one,” Lizzy said evenly. “But only one. Screw up and you’re gone. Now, let’s get this show on the road. I’m tired.”
They worked in silence for a while, divvying up the various parts of the process and settling into a rhythm. Lizzy measured out the sodium hydroxide, then held her breath as she stirred the crystals into a beaker of distilled water, eyeing the thermometer as the chemical reaction between the two began to generate heat. Rhanna melted the shea butter on the hot plate, then measured out the oatmeal, vanilla, and lavender oil.
Lizzy couldn’t help stealing an occasional glance while she waited for the lye solution to cool. In a million years she couldn’t have imagined working side by side with Rhanna to make soap—or anything, really. Her mother had always had a knack for disappearing anytime there was work to be done, which on a farm was pretty much always. Now, here she was, earning her keep as promised, and making a surprisingly good job of it.
“I think the lye’s cooled down,” Lizzy announced. “How’s it coming over there?”
“Good. And it smells fantastic.” Rhanna took the pan off the hot plate and walked it over to Lizzy. “I think we’re ready to mix. You’re going to pour the lye water into the oil mixture. Go slow, though, and pour it down the shaft of the spatula. You don’t want air bubbles.”
Lizzy followed Rhanna’s instructions, then set the empty measuring cup aside. “Are you sure this is right?” she asked, scowling at the bowl of gelatinous slop. “It looks like breakfast gone terribly wrong.”
Rhanna answered with a snort. “It’s fine. Now we mix.” She leaned in, careful as always to avoid contact. “That’s right. Slow and easy. No, don’t scrape the sides. Just stir, and watch.”
Lizzy cocked an eye at her. “What am I supposed to be watching?”
“This.” Rhanna dropped in a spatula of her own, then lifted it out slowly. “You want the dribbled batter to lie on top instead of sinking the way it did just then. It’s called trace. It’s how you know the soap’s ready to cook. It may take a bit, though. We’re doing this old-school method. They use stick blenders now. And Crock-Pots. Once we hit trace, it goes back on the hot plate. The oatmeal goes in after that.”
Lizzy looked at Rhanna in wonder as she took back the spatula. “How do you know all that? I don’t remember you ever taking an interest in what happened out here.”
Rhanna shrugged. “I didn’t back then. I was too busy being a brat. But life has a funny way of giving you what you need. Even if you don’t know you need it. I moved to Half Moon Bay for a while, with this guy I met. Actually, I liked the name of the place more than I liked the guy, but that’s a story for another day. I took a job at an herb farm. Grunt stuff mainly, but when I had a break, I’d hang out where they made the scrubs and soaps, and watch. If I closed my eyes, it was like I was back here. It helped a little.”
Lizzy looked up from the pot, the spatula still. “You were homesick?”
“Didn’t expect that, did you?”
“I didn’t. No.” Lizzy went back to her stirring, letting the quiet spool out as she tried to reconcile this startling revelation with the Rhanna she used to know, the one who’d gone out of her way to make tongues wag. “Why’d you do it?” she asked finally. “That day in the coffee shop, why did you say all those terrible things—the stuff about cursing the whole town, making sure Salem Creek got exactly what it deserved—when you knew what it would mean for Althea? For all of us?”
“I was angry.”
The glib response annoyed Lizzy. “We were all angry.”
Rhanna’s eyes glittered as they met Lizzy’s. “I couldn’t stand it anymore. Everyone whispering and pointing fingers, like they knew. They didn’t know anything. No one did. But they kept on pointing. And then
one day I had enough. I thought, If they’re so determined to think the worst of us, let them. I’ll give them something to talk about.”
“And you did.”
Rhanna lifted one of her braids, fiddling briefly with the scrap of yellow ribbon before dropping it back over her shoulder with a sigh. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, Lizzy, done a lot of things I’ve been ashamed of. But that day . . . I’ll never forgive myself for the things I said. It was like I couldn’t stop myself. You can’t imagine how it was.”
“I don’t have to imagine it,” Lizzy said flatly. “I was here, same as you. I heard what you heard, saw what you saw.”
“No,” Rhanna breathed. “Not the same as me.”
Lizzy huffed, in no mood for Rhanna’s drama. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing. It doesn’t mean anything.”
She would have turned away, but Lizzy caught her wrist. “Talk to me.”
“Don’t!” Rhanna jerked her hand back as if she’d been burned. “Please . . . don’t touch me.”
Lizzy stared at her, baffled by the panic in her mother’s eyes. “Did something happen to you?”
Rhanna dropped her gaze as she sidled past her. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. We need to pay attention to the soap.” She grabbed the spatula and lifted it out, watching closely as the batter drizzled back into the pot. “It’s ready,” she announced, all business. “Move it to the hot plate, and keep an eye on it. When it looks like day-old Cream of Wheat, you’re ready to add the vanilla and oatmeal. I’m going to start cleaning up, then get the molds ready.”
It took every ounce of willpower Lizzy had not to prod for answers as Rhanna gathered the used bowls and measuring cups and carried them to the sink, but she didn’t have the energy for another battle. And that was what she’d get if she kept pushing. The signs were all there: the shifting eyes and rigid shoulders, the brooding energy coiled just beneath her skin. Rhanna was spiraling toward one of her dark places, and that never ended well.
An hour later, Rhanna had mixed in the oatmeal, and was showing Lizzy how to press the batter into the molds and pack them tightly so the bars would be smooth when they came out. Her shoulders seemed to relax as she worked, but she was still avoiding eye contact, her face carefully shuttered.
“You okay?” Lizzy asked when they had finished the last mold. “You seem . . .”
“I’m fine.”
“Before, when you pulled away from me—”
“I think you’ve got this now,” Rhanna said brusquely, and handed back the spatula. “Don’t forget to cover the molds with waxed paper when you’re through. And some towels, if you have them.”
Lizzy blew out a breath as she watched her go. It was her own fault. Without meaning to, she’d let down her guard, allowed herself to hope that after years of distance and rejection, there might actually be a way for them to move forward as more than just polite strangers. But nothing had changed. Rhanna was still Rhanna, shutting her out, pushing her away. Just like old times.
She closed her eyes, drained by the evening’s drama. Rhanna wasn’t a puzzle she was going to solve tonight—or ever, probably. The real question was, Where did they go from here? Now that she had opened the door, could she just close it again? It was a question she was simply too exhausted to think about now.
She covered the soap molds with waxed paper, then rounded up some old towels and threw them on top as well. She was about to turn off the lights when she realized she’d nearly forgotten the most crucial part of the process.
Each recipe had its own unique blessing—a few brief lines, written in verse form, meant to be spoken aloud, as an enhancement to the remedy’s natural healing properties. To those on the Path, the blessing was considered the most potent ingredient in any preparation.
Lizzy picked up the recipe book and scanned the words printed at the bottom of the page. She had seen her grandmother recite various blessings over the years, and had even joined in on a few, but she’d never spoken one on her own. How would she know if she was doing it right, if it had . . . taken? She had asked Althea once. Her answer had been vague and enigmatic. Spells. Prayers. Blessings. It’s all the same. It’s about intention, Lizzy, about sending what’s in your heart into your work.
She hadn’t understood then, but maybe she did now.
She read through the lines several times, committing them to memory. When she was sure she had them, she closed her eyes, letting her hands hover above the soap, the way Althea had done the day she resurrected the blackened basil plants, and spoke the words.
“Soap so gentle, pure and mild.
Bring sweet sleep to the crying child.
Let darkest night pass by with ease.
Thank you, Spirit. So mote it be.”
Lizzy remained still when she finished, waiting for some sign that the blessing had taken. At first, there was nothing, just the steady chorus of night sounds filtering in through the open door. And then she felt it. A fizzy sort of vibration humming in her bones, like the ripple of current through water. It was a heady sensation, so intoxicating it nearly made her giddy. But then, at its ebb, came a wake of inexplicable calm, a knowing that in those few brief seconds, while her eyes were closed, the world had reshaped itself in some small but powerful way.
Lily of the Valley . . . for reconciliation.
My Lizzy,
We’re here again, you and I, meeting across this scribbled page. It gives me pleasure as I write, to think of you holding this book, propped up in bed, or perhaps in my reading room. It makes me feel close to you, though I’m not sure you’ll like what I have to say. Once again I must speak of your mother. You’ll think I’ve already said my piece concerning the two of you, but I find there is more to say, and so, at the risk of running you off for good, I must say it.
You were always an inquisitive child, the sort who asked why over and over again, who needed to peel back the layers of a thing until you got at the truth. It didn’t matter what it was—you needed to understand it all. You liked knowing about things. What they did. How they worked. What would happen next. You thought if you knew enough, nothing would ever catch you off guard. You liked things mapped out, predictable, safe. But that’s not the nature of who we are. Life, particularly for women like us, doesn’t come with a road map.
Nor do the people in our lives.
Even as a child, this seemed to confound you. You needed to be able to put people in neat little boxes, to label them as friend or foe, safe or unsafe. Because then you’d know what to expect, and how to protect yourself. But with Rhanna that didn’t work. She was your mother, and she wasn’t, living under the same roof, but absent in all the ways that matter to a little girl.
She was so unprepared for you, so terrified of the responsibility. And so young. I was afraid she would do something rash—something that couldn’t be undone. And so I struck a bargain with her. She would bring you into the world, and I would do the rest, raise you up and train you in our ways. Even then I knew the Moon legacy would fall to you.
You were too young to understand such a bargain, and you hated her for it, though you pretended not to care. The chasm between you continued to grow, until you barely spoke at all. Meanwhile, Rhanna was coming apart. You didn’t see what I did, because you didn’t know her. But I did, and I watched her change—almost overnight. She was in pain, tormented by something I couldn’t see, and she wouldn’t explain. I begged her to talk to me, to let me help, but she just kept getting further and further away. We each have a shadow-self, a dark place we go to hide when we’re hurt or afraid. For Rhanna that place was at the bottom of a bottle, or in some stranger’s bed. And there you were, watching it all. That’s what you remember—how she was at the end.
You’re a smart girl, Lizzy, and I love you, but there are areas of your life where you choose to wear blinders. Your mother is one of them. You made up your mind about her years ago, leaving no room for the possibility that there might be more to her sto
ry. More than either of us will ever know.
I’ve lived a good many years, and seen a good many things, and one thing I know to be true is that we are all scarred, all broken in our own way. Some of us may break more quietly than others, but break we all do, when this world dishes out its worst. It’s part of the journey we all came here to make, the stings and losses all part of our walk. But we can rise above those wounds if we choose. If we’re willing to let down our guard, to look beyond the flaws and the shortcomings, to what lies beneath. It’s easier to be prickly than to be vulnerable, to distract with harsh words rather than show our bruises. But we must do the hard things. That is the work of healing.
All this time, while you’ve been reading this, you’ve been thinking of Rhanna, of her flaws and her shortcomings. But I speak of you too, my Lizzy. You must let down your guard. The time will come when Rhanna will need you—and you will need her. You can’t imagine this now, I know, because of the gulf that’s always existed between you, but the day will come, perhaps sooner than you think, and when it does, you’ll finally understand—there is no quarrel sharp enough to sever the bonds of blood.
A—
TWENTY-EIGHT
August 10
Lizzy ran her hands through her hair, checking for cobwebs as she came down the stairs. She had awakened early to gloomy skies and a drenching rain, still brooding over Althea’s latest journal entry. It had seemed like a perfect day to hide out in the attic and sort through another round of dusty boxes.
Most of it had been unremarkable—linens, cookware, old rugs, and unused lamps. But there’d been a few interesting finds too: a set of scrapbooks belonging to Althea’s mother, Aurore; a crate of salt-glazed pottery that had almost certainly been thrown by Dorothée Moon; and a sketchbook of botanical prints signed by Sylvie Moon.
So many lives. So many stories. But what was she supposed to do with it all?
She was still mulling her options as she wandered into the kitchen, ready for coffee and some toast. Evvie was up and sitting at the table, repairing the pocket of a faded chintz apron.
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