In the Shadow of the Moon

by Karen White

  Genetti’s Comet hovered brightly in the darkened sky. A chill swept down my spine, raising the hair on the back of my neck. I shivered involuntarily and wrapped my arms around me. It was then that I realized that the insects had ceased their nocturnal chorus. I couldn’t hear the traffic anymore. Silence hugged the hilltop, enshrouding us. A strong wind began to blow, whipping my hair about my face, but the sound it made wasn’t the gentle whooshing noise that precedes a storm. Instead, the wind howled loudly and then softly, swirling around my head so I couldn’t determine the direction. The strong scent of gardenias assaulted my nose again, and I trembled with an unseen fear. My head pounded and the blood rushed through my ears, the pressure so intense that I fell to my knees.

  Annie. Something was wrong and I had to get to Annie. I panicked, trying to reach the spot where I had left her in the dark. I stumbled on something hard and rough and fell to the ground. I cried out Michael’s name, but I couldn’t hear anything over the din of the wind. I crawled on my hands and knees, crying out their names. Only the wind answered me. My fingers grasped the edge of the blanket where Annie had been sleeping, and I began to sob with relief. I crawled over it until I realized it was empty. The bile of pure terror crept up my throat and I threw up. I was still gagging when a hand touched my shoulder.

  I screamed and leapt up. I felt the reassuring touch of Michael’s embrace and the soothing words of his voice. “Laura, it’s me. Are you okay?”

  I struggled in his arms. “Michael, do you have Annie? I can’t find her!” My voice sounded frantic and I worked hard to bring it under control.

  “No. Isn’t she on the blanket?” Michael knelt down to feel for her blanket.

  “No, Michael, she’s not here! Oh, God! We’ve got to find her.”

  The shadow slowly swallowed the moon. I threw my shirt back on, grabbed a flashlight, and went flying down the path in search of my daughter.

  * * *

  Neither the police nor we found any trace of her. Huge search groups swarmed the area for days, despite the heat and torrential rains. After a week, they had given up. The police said it was still an open case and they were still looking, but I knew they had given up. Nothing was found—no clothes, no blood, no signs of anything. It was as if she had been absorbed into the moonlight. I know the police suspected us, but no evidence ever surfaced to incriminate either one of us, or anyone else. Annie was just . . . gone.

  In the days that followed her disappearance, guilt gnawed at my conscience. I had been the one to insist we bring her rather than leave her with my mother, as Michael had suggested. My grandmother’s warning spun around inside my head. Was this what she had meant? Why hadn’t I listened? I wanted Michael to lash out at me, blame me. His silence was worse than any accusation could have been.

  When the doorbell rang two weeks later, I was in the middle of mending one of Annie’s dresses. The tear in the seam at the bottom had come from her stepping on the hem as she tried to stand. She kept doing it again and again, thinking it enormously funny. I had joined in, for her silly giggles were hard to resist.

  The needle jabbed and plunged into the yellow fabric, closing the hole sure and swift. The smile on my face faded when I realized the doorbell had rung at least three or four times. I laid my hand on Michael’s shoulder as I passed him, his eyes blankly staring at a rerun of Quantum Leap. The old clock in the hallway announced the hour, the Westminster chime echoing throughout the still house. I opened the door, still clutching Annie’s dress.

  A woman and a man stood on my front porch, looking uncomfortable in the heat.

  The man spoke first. “Mrs. Truitt?”

  I stared at them for a brief moment before finding my voice.

  “Yes, I’m Laura Truitt.”

  “Mrs. Truitt, I’m Detective Peterson from the Roswell Police Department, and this is my partner, Detective McGraw.” He indicated the woman with his chin. “We have some news for you.”

  He paused. I could hear the sounds from the TV inside and Michael coughing. A car passed by on the street in front of our house. Loud music from the radio evaporated as the car sped away.

  “Mrs. Truitt?”

  I must have said something.

  “Mrs. Truitt. We’ve found a child’s body.”

  The yellow dress fell from my hands, puddling on the floor like crumpled sunshine. “Annie?” My voice sounded a lot stronger than I expected.

  “The body is unidentified, but it matches the description of your daughter.” The woman’s voice was kind, and she took a step toward me.

  “A body . . . And you want us to . . . You need us to come down . . .”

  I looked behind me and into the parlor at Michael. Angry red marks of exhaustion marred the skin under his eyes. His sun-streaked blond hair looked gray against the pallor of his skin, and for the first time since the beginning of our ordeal, I knew his pain was as great as mine. I recalled how he had wept when Annie was born, and I suddenly wanted to slam the door shut and erase the choked sound of the detective’s voice from my memory. I had the impulse to run into Michael’s arms and pretend that everything was normal again and our dear, sweet Annie was upstairs in her crib. But Michael’s arms lay powerless and empty beside him on the sofa, his palms turned upward in silent supplication.

  The man swallowed, and I turned back to face them.

  “Mrs. Truitt, we need you and your husband to come to the morgue for identification.” More firmly, he said, “You should have someone bring you. If— Well, sometimes, afterward, it’s not easy to drive. . . .”

  “We’ll be fine,” I said.

  He gave me the information I needed; then I shut the door silently, wondering how I would tell Michael. I forced myself to breathe. I sat on the stairs and took as many deep breaths as I could.

  As we hurtled south on I-85, the huge and shimmering Atlanta skyline beckoned from the horizon. The giant peach structure rose on our left, and I fleetingly thought of how Annie always pointed at it and said “apple” when we passed by. I stole a look at Michael and saw a tear escaping down his cheek, and knew he was remembering, too.

  We clung to each other as we walked through the fluorescent-lit halls of the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Center. The unnatural light made the hollows and shadows of Michael’s face more prominent, and I knew if I bothered to look in a mirror I’d see the same devastation.

  We walked ahead as a unit, my husband and I, and stopped before the metal slab. The doctor pulled down the top of the sheet that covered a small form. Two little feet barely stuck up high enough to make the sheet rise.

  My gaze traveled to the top, where the doctor held the cover open. Dirty blond hair was matted to the delicate forehead, partially obscuring a large plum-colored bruise. Translucent skin stretched over the small bones of the face, and dark lashes on the closed eyelids fanned the pale cheeks. It could have been Annie; there were so many similarities. But it wasn’t my daughter. It wasn’t Annie. I broke down then. I don’t know if it was from relief that it wasn’t our baby or for this loss of gentle life. Maybe it was for all the empty years I knew lay before us.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Press close bare-bosom’d night—press

  close magnetic nourishing night!

  Night of south winds—night of the large few stars!

  Still nodding night—mad naked summer night.

  —WALT WHITMAN

  The loss of Annie had been the beginning of the unraveling of my life. The end of it came five years later.

  Shortly after Annie’s disappearance, Michael took up flying. I remembered the heated argument we had when he told me how he was going to deal with his heartache.

  “Laura, I’ve signed up for flying lessons.” Michael continued to read the paper as if he had just mentioned that he was going to plant a bed of daffodils.

  “You’re what?” He had never mentioned such
a thing to me before.

  “One of the partners at the law firm pilots his own plane, and I thought that might be what I needed.” He sipped his coffee and continued to peruse the paper.

  “What you need for what? To kill yourself? Or to spend even more time away from me?” I cringed at the shrillness in my voice. I went over to him and knelt beside him. I rested my head in his lap, blinking away tears.

  “I miss you,” I mumbled into the striped wool of his pants. “I need you. Please come back to me.” I looked up at him, uncaring of my tears that soaked into his pants.

  He looked at me with shadowed eyes and sighed, pushing his newspaper away. “You’re so strong, Laura. You’ve picked up the pieces of your life and have learned to live with your grief. But I’m falling apart inside. I need to see Annie again. When I’m here or at work, all I see are the memories. I need to go where I can create new images of her and feel her close to me again.” He ground the heels of his hands into his eye sockets and rubbed them harshly, as if to clear them of whatever image he couldn’t bear to see.

  I wanted to argue with him that I wasn’t so strong. I had managed to survive by compartmentalizing my grief into a tiny box in my heart and only allowing myself to peek inside when there was no one around to witness the devastation.

  I stood, kissed him softly on the lips, and left, a tight ball of fear growing in my stomach.

  Later, as I sat and tinkled halfheartedly with the piano keyboard, Michael sat down and put his arm around me. He apologized, but didn’t back down.

  I could feel the tension in him, felt his need, and knew I couldn’t tether him to me forever. “Okay, Michael. If this is what you want to do. Just please be careful. I don’t think I could stand to lose you, too.”

  So Michael searched for Annie in the cumulus clouds and soaring winds while I remained earthbound, but with my eyes toward the heavens. By the time I got the dreaded late-night phone call, I had already prepared myself. I had been down this route before. The voice on the other end of the line mentioned something about engine failure, but I listened with only half an ear. Whether it had been engine failure or a lightning bolt, the end result was the same. I was a widow at the age of thirty-five.

  For almost a year after his death, I strived to remember the feel of Michael’s touch on my skin. I lay awake at night in my empty bed, trying to feel his presence beside me, the encroaching warmth that would draw me toward him during sleep. The thick air of a Georgia summer settled around my ghosts and me. If sleep did come, it was only to dream he was there. I would breathe deeply and smell his warm, slumbering breath and hear his quiet murmurings in the stale morning air. Then I would open my eyes and know I was alone.

  The never-ending search for Annie kept me moving in the halls of the living. And I had my house. It sustained me through that time, its walls seeming to enclose me in an embrace.

  I vaguely remembered something my grandmother had told me long ago about a connection between heartache and the moon, and I knew the answer lay high above me. So I remained looking and searching, but no answer came.

  I found great solace in my music. I returned to work full-time as an elementary-school music teacher and continued to teach private voice and piano lessons from my home. Instead of finding the constant presence of children depressing, it was what kept me living.

  My mother was concerned about me, but she lacked the ability to truly comfort me. I knew she grieved terribly over Annie and, perhaps, blamed me a little for her disappearance. I never forgave her for that. I longed for my grandmother’s wisdom, but she had died years before.

  I was surprised, therefore, when my mother made an impromptu visit on an early summer evening in June. Reclining on the watered-silk sofa in the parlor with Henryk Gorecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs flooding over me, I heard a hesitant knock on the front door. My mother’s habit was to simply breeze in unannounced, so I was amazed to see her tall, elegant form standing on the porch when I opened the door. Impeccably dressed, as always, with her glossy black hair pulled back in a neat chignon at the back of her head. A warm smile sat on her lips.

  “Hello, Laura. I hope this isn’t a bad time.” Her gaze scanned the house and interior—to either check on their condition or to make sure we were alone, I didn’t know.

  “Not at all, Mom. Come in. I’ll order out for some Chinese if you’re hungry,” I said, noting how my stomach was rumbling.

  My mother gave me a wry grin as she stepped through the doorway. “I see you still don’t cook.”

  “There’s no one to cook for, and I can’t see going to all that trouble just for me.”

  She looked a little chagrined, and I regretted being harsh, but I had detected a hint of criticism in her voice and it had reduced me to a chastised adolescent once again.

  “I’m sorry. I wasn’t criticizing you. Sure, why don’t we order takeout? There’s a new place that just opened on Canton Street that everybody is just raving about.”

  As I Googled the restaurant on my phone, my mother took a tissue-wrapped object out of her purse. I did a little start as I recognized it. Putting my phone down, I reached for the picture.

  “Mom, I’d almost given up ever getting this back from you,” I said as I pulled the picture from its wrappings.

  “I’m sorry for keeping it this long. It got misplaced after we moved to the new house, and then I guess I forgot about it with . . . well, with everything that’s happened.” She smoothed her already perfect hair behind her ears. “I still can’t figure out who she is. And it’s obviously somebody we’re related to.” She looked directly at me and failed to suppress a shudder.

  I stared at that all-too-familiar face and felt a cold, unseen finger on the back of my neck. Who was she? I moved to put the picture on the hall table, but slipped it into a drawer instead.

  Later, sitting at the dining room table amid little white cardboard boxes, my mother and I shared a bottle of wine. She had raised her eyebrows at my extensive collection on the wine rack in the kitchen. I wanted to explain that a glass or two of wine every night was the only way I could shut my eyes and enter oblivion. Otherwise, I would lie awake in my bed and feel the darkness encircle me. I would imagine Annie calling out for me or feel Michael’s gentle caress. My solitary torment would be my only companion if I did not have the wine to chase away the ghosts. I didn’t want to worry my mother or suffer through a lecture, so I offered no explanation.

  Dabbing at the corners of her mouth with a napkin, she said, “Laura, I met the nicest man yesterday at my doctor’s office. He’s new in the practice, very nice-looking, and . . .”

  I held up my hand. “Stop it, Mom. I’m not interested.”

  “But you haven’t even met him!” She started digging in her purse until she came up with a business card and slid it across the polished surface of the table. “Here’s his card. I gave him your number, too.”

  I left the card untouched in the middle of the table. “Then you’d better call him and tell him I’m not interested.” I pushed my plate away from me and took a long sip of wine.

  “Laura, isn’t it time to restart your life? I know you miss them. But life goes on.”

  I closed my eyes in an effort to control my temper. “You don’t understand. Unless you’ve been here, you couldn’t possibly understand. Michael and Annie weren’t just a man and a child, easily replaced by the next available candidates. They were mine. I can never get them back. And I could never love another man like Michael. So just forget about your matchmaking. Love only brings me grief, and I’m through with it. Forever.”

  Her mouth became two thin strips of disapproval, but she said nothing. But when she stood to clear the table, she left the business card.

  As my mother was helping me rinse the dishes and put them in the dishwasher, she finally broached the subject she had come over to discuss.

  She made a big production of s
crambling around in the cabinet to find storage containers for the leftover food. As she was leaning down with her head in the cabinet she said, “Laura, have you been reading the papers lately?” She stood to compare sizes of Tupperware, then leaned down to put one back.

  “Not really. I haven’t had an interest, I suppose.”

  I turned on the hot water and let it run until I saw steam rise and condense on the window above the sink. I looked through the steamy haze and saw my mother’s reflection. She was looking at me with a perplexed frown, as if pondering whether to tell me something. I began to meticulously poke bits of food down the disposal. When my mother still didn’t speak, I glanced up to find her still looking at me. I shut the faucet off and turned around to face her.

  “Why? What is it?” I asked.

  She began to empty the contents of a white carton into the plastic container. She slammed it down a little too hard on the counter and said, “There’s going to be another total lunar eclipse in two weeks. The first one in five years.”

  Something akin to panic began to creep on little bird’s feet into the pit of my stomach. “Oh, really?” I tried to keep my voice calm.

  “Yes,” she continued. “And there will be another comet visible at the same time.”

  “Genetti’s Comet?”

  “No, a different one.”

  I started to tremble and could feel my knees go weak. I hastily sat down at the kitchen table. My mother snapped the container’s lid closed and then burped it before putting it in the refrigerator and closing the door with her back. She leaned against it and drew in a deep breath as if to gather her strength.

  “It’s almost the same conditions as when baby Annie disappeared. I was thinking that maybe whoever took her might come back to the same spot again.”

  An icy hand began to claw at my insides. I knew what she was going to ask me, and I didn’t know if I could do it.