“Who was your mother?”
“Her name is Gina. I’ve been searching for her my whole life, and as much as I wish she was, she isn’t here.” I searched his face for answers, but it was clear that he’d never heard her name before.
“Where is she?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. But I’ll never find out if I don’t go back.”
“Go back where?” He begged, anger blooming once more in the back of his throat.
I walked over to the tree where the butterfly was carved, holding my hand over it like it was my heart. “She carved this.”
“The butterfly?” He shook his head and crossed his arms. “My father carved that.”
I whipped my head over to him with eyebrows folded in. “That’s not possible. It’s her butterfly.”
“I remember the day he put it here. I don’t know exactly how old I was, but I couldn’t have been older than seven or maybe eight. It was October because we were out here carving pumpkins. My mother and Rosemary had gone inside to clean up, and I stayed out here with him. It had turned dark and a full moon lit the sky so bright it could have been mistaken for sunrise. He stood looking out at the water not saying a word, even when I called his name,” Wren said.
Wren walked over to the tree and traced his finger along the butterfly’s wings. “When he finally spoke, he asked me what I liked most about autumn. I said Halloween, of course. My father looked at me hard and said, ‘Mine is standing at the top of the lighthouse looking out at Port Swan, eye to eye with the full moon.’ Then he took the knife out of the pumpkin and carved the butterfly in the tree.”
I stared at the butterfly, hearing Gina’s words in the journal whisper in my ear. Herbert kissed me. Words can’t describe how much it hurts that I have to leave him. I know he loves me, and I know leaving him will hurt him in a way that may never heal.
“I need to go,” I said, curling my arms over my head.
“Please just answer my questions first,” Wren begged. His anger had faded into to desperation.
“I can’t. It’s not just my secret to tell.”
Twenty-One
n
Wren brought me home in silence not long after I refused to tell him my secret, and I spent my last evening in Port Swan drowning in sorrow while I painted the full moon view of Luna sitting on the water. In between bites of cake, I talked aloud to myself, rehearsing what I would say if I told Wren the secret. I fell asleep in the middle of my paint cloth with a fork in my hand.
A knock on the door woke me from my deep sugar induced sleep. I ran to the door sliding on my socks, blinded by the rising sun. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and straightened up before opening the door. I decided I was going to tell him.
When I opened it, Rosemary was standing on the other side.
j
“This is a very quaint house,” Rosemary stood in the doorway of my tiny kitchen with her arms crossed, blocking the exit. She glanced around the space that wasn’t much bigger than her bedroom with judgment.
“Thank you,” I said, looking over my shoulder and smiling politely.
As I washed the only two coffee mugs I owned, I watched her in the reflection of the window in front of me. She moved to the wall where my finished paintings hung. There were images of Port Swan, the lighthouse, and the vineyard, but most of them were of Wren.
“It’s time we had a talk,” she said, cutting straight to the point without taking her eyes away from my art.
“About what?” I asked, as if there couldn’t be anything of importance to discuss.
“I think you know.”
I felt my stomach tighten and my calves get instant charlie horses. Rosemary’s presence had a kind of power, like she could see you from the inside out. A whistle of steam escaped from the coffee pot putting my body back in motion. The smell of coffee usually made me feel warm and happy, but it was having the opposite effect.
Rosemary sat down at the small dining room table, patiently waiting for me to join her. I only had two chairs and they had been scooted next to each other from the dinner I had enjoyed the night before with Wren. I dragged the second chair around the small circle until it was on the opposite side of the table. She watched me as I moved, tracing my body with her sharp eyes.
“Cream and sugar?” I asked, pouring cream into my coffee and reaching for the sugar.
“I take it black,” Rosemary said sitting up with perfect posture. I caught myself trying to sit up straighter to match her. It was like sitting at a table with an adult, someone who was about to lecture me on the ins and outs of life.
“The full moon is tonight,” Rosemary began. “I expect you’ll be gone?”
It wasn’t a question, it was a demand. The coffee cup was hot as I wrapped my hand around it, but I needed to feel something other than fear, even if it was pain.
“How do you know?” I asked, pulling my burned hand off of the cup. I rubbed my palm against my jeans trying to get the heat to come out of it.
“The trail of lost, dark haired girls that somehow arrive and disappear with the full moon was my first hint.”
I swallowed, wondering if she knew I was in the secret room that first morning and if she had seen me sneak in that first night. Or if she’d been watching me the whole time.
I licked my lips and took a deep breath before speaking. “How many of us have you seen?”
“Enough,” Rosemary said.
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.
“You see, my brother is very important to me and to our family. I’ve allowed all of this to go on for too long. ” Rosemary took a sip of her coffee before continuing. She sat the cup down without making a noise then placed her palms flat on the table on either side of her cup. “My father was ruined for many years because of your mother, the love he had for her still haunts him. My Grandfather and Great-Grandfather were ruined by your line as well. Women on Luna Time are not welcome in our lives and that includes you.”
Rosemary took another sip of her coffee. Her words were cutting me deep, and she knew it. She was stealing the only happiness I had ever known.
“Warren is last male born with the Davenport name, unless he has a son of his own someday. We need him focused on the town and the vineyard. We need him to be Warren, not Wren. You changed him when you broke the Law of Luna. You fell in love with him.”
“How do you know the laws?” I managed to get out.
She raised one side of her mouth into a smile and took another sip. “I know everything.”
I swallowed hard, shifting my attention to the gallery of paintings, focusing on the first one I’d done of Wren in the vineyard. I wanted to run to Wren and ask him to take me back there so I could relive it again, everyday for the rest of my life. I wanted to see the vineyard in the fall with jewel-toned leaves. I wanted the chance to be the wind that whistled through them and the sun that made the grapes plump.
“How is any of this even possible?” I spat, as my eyes began to fill with tears. I stood up hard and fast, making my chair topple over. I walked across the room to the gallery, taking the painting of Wren in the vineyard off. “Why doesn’t he know?”
I looked at Rosemary searching for any amount of relief or understanding she could give me, but she stayed stoic. “If I have anything to say about it, he never will.”
Tears started to stream down my face, hitting the painting like rain. I crumbled to the floor and buckled over in pain. Rosemary’s perfectly manicured nails took the canvas from me and hung it back on the wall.
“I should have known what kind of damage would be done when I saw you on the beach.” She hovered over me. “I should have kept you away from him the minute he spoke of the new girl he called Nessa. I should have stopped this all.”
“Then why didn’t you?” I screamed in the silence that was broken by my sobs.
“Come with me,” Rosemary said, after she couldn’t take anymore of my heaving tea
rs. She held her hand down toward the floor for me to take. “Let’s go for a walk.”
j
We were standing on the steps of Louise’s house after walking less than a hundred feet.
“Why is Louise, whose blood runs through mine, an exception to the rule?” I asked in between gulps of air as I wiped my wet eyes.
“She’s been there for my father at times when we thought he wouldn’t make it through. When my mother left for six months because she couldn’t handle his bad days, Louise looked after us.” Rosemary said. “She might be a Marshall, but she’ll never leave.”
I believed that. Louise was woven into the journals throughout history, she was an anchor for the Marshall’s. Only, she didn’t consider me or my mother to be worthy of her steadfast love.
Rosemary knocked three times and waited patiently. I stood behind her staring out at the sound. The morning light was bright and was already sitting on the water like twinkling magic. Louise, dressed in a nightgown, stood behind the screen door.
“What are you doing here?” Louise asked in a way that made it clear that Rosemary was a welcome guest even when the sun had just woken up.
I moved from behind Rosemary, putting myself into a ray of light that had broken through the trees, I squinted hoping it would make my red and puffy eyes less noticeable. Louise paused and then pushed open her screen door letting us both in. She didn’t have on any makeup but was still just as beautiful, which only made me hate her more.
“It’s time, Louise,” Rosemary said. The look on Louise’s face changed from welcoming to stern in an instant.
“Time for what?” I whispered, my throat hurt from crying. Neither of them acknowledged my presence. I raised my voice to a demand, “Tell me, whatever it is. Just tell me.”
“I spoke with your father. We won’t be saying anything,” Louise said to Rosemary. She was standing at the sink pouring water into a teapot. “It’s almost time for her to go.”
“What is there to say?” I shouted, louder than I intended.
“We know, okay?” Rosemary shouted back.
“You’re both going to wake Jo,” Louise whispered with a reddened face.
Rosemary quieted herself back into a whisper. “I’m sorry Louise, but I have to.”
“What do you know?” I whispered back.
“That you’re a serial jumper, just like your mother,” Rosemary said.
I laughed through my tears, feeling as if I had the upper hand for once since I arrived. “So all of this hostility, the whole time I’ve been here, it’s all because you think I’ve already traveled?”
“We know you have,” Rosemary said, taking a book out of her bag. It was the same photo album I’d seen in her room the day I met Wren. She flipped open the book to a page she had marked with a newspaper article and sat it down on the table.
With her manicured pointer finger she touched a page filled with wedding photos. “Look.”
In the fourth photo down, there was a photo of a young Herbert and Lillian dressed in their wedding attire. In the background was John, my father, dressed in a suit talking to a dark haired girl. You could only see her profile peeking out.
“That is not me,” I insisted, picking up the book and taking a closer look. It did look like me, same body build, same wavy dark hair, same nose, but from what I’d gathered all Marshall women had these traits.
“Don’t try and deny it Vanessa,” Louise said, pouring three cups of tea.
“Why bother and make me tea if you think I’m a liar? Or are you trying to see into my future again?”
“I already know your future; it’s the same as your mother’s,” Louise said placing the cups and saucers down on the table.
“No it isn’t!” I shouted, falling into one of the chairs at the dining room table. I slammed the photo album down making the tea cups rattle. “I only jumped to try and find her.”
“You’ll never find her,” Rosemary said.
“That’s not true! She delivered me a letter in 2019. I know she’ll be there when I get back.”
“When you get back?” Rosemary said surprised.
“That’s what you want isn’t it? For me to leave 1949 and jump into someone else’s problems? To leave your brother alone?”
Jo walked into the kitchen rubbing her eyes as they adjusted to the light. She wore a long nightgown that made her look more like a child than I’d seen before. Louise tried to shoo her back to her room, but once she saw me she pushed past Louise to get to me.
“What’s wrong Vanessa?” Jo asked. She placed her small hand on my shoulder, which only made me cry harder. She turned her soft touch into a hug, laying her head on top of mine stroking my hair like so many other Marshall women had done for their girls. “It’s going to be okay."
I remembered her on the pier in 2019, as a perfect eighteen year old in a yellow dress. It’s going to be okay. Then I remembered that she only had twenty-seven more years left in this world, and I choked on my sob as it fell out of me. “No, it won’t.”
Rosemary and Louise stood with their arms crossed whispering to each other with serious faces. Instead of yelling or attempting to hear any of the false words they were saying, I just let Jo love me. I belonged to her, the same way any granddaughter belonged to any grandmother. I never wanted to leave her, and I was mourning the loss of her in my life as she held onto me. I wanted to stay in Port Swan, in 1949, to keep her healthy and safe and I wanted I could do it with Wren by my side.
Twenty-Two
n
It was October 7th, 1949, the night of the full moon. I hadn’t seen Wren, and I wasn’t going to, saying goodbye would have been too hard. I walked into the secret room, breathing in the crescent shaped space where Luna’s presence lived. I placed the fresh washed linens back under the bed, the note on top of the bare pillow, and filled the basket with three packs of fresh crackers and two bottles of Cheerwine.
As I pulled the drawer out of the side table to put the journals back in, I noticed a new notebook sitting inside. I picked up the marbled composition book, with my eyebrows drawn in as I flipped it over and fanned through it. It was fresh and only had a few pages that had been written on. I still had an hour before midnight, so I sat on the bare bed and opened the new notebook to the first page.
September 8th, 1930
Dear Luna,
I’m not sure how it’s possible that I’m alive. I thought I was going to die swimming in from the ocean last night. I’m in disbelief that I actually traveled back in time, and I don’t think I’ll ever be convinced that this isn’t a dream. I have a hickey like bruise on my arm from pinching myself.
Annabella
Annabella. The name Herbert had called me.
September 9th, 1930
Dear Luna,
I bought some food and am planning to stay in the lighthouse until further notice. I feel like Anne Frank hiding in this room while people come and go on the other side of it. I have set a goal for myself to read a book every day, starting with the journals.
Annabella
September 10th, 1930
Dear Luna,
I read the journals from start to finish all through the day and some of the night.
Everything about my life feels uncertain and messy. I know who my birth mother is now, and she’s the last person in the world I ever thought she’d be.
Do you want to know about my life? Keep reading if so…
I jumped on September 13th, 2019. My parents think I’m still at college. I can’t believe I’m not. They are going to kill me when they find out that I dropped out and vanished off the face of the earth. My roommate is covering for me; I gave her four letters to mail - one for each week I’m gone. My parents are totally old fashioned and completely obsessed with the 90s so they’ll think it’s charming that I chose to send them snail mail.
I was adopted when I was four, so I don’t remember a life without my parents. For most of my
life, I’ve liked it that way. One week ago, I got a letter in a pink envelope delivered to my dorm from my birth mother and everything changed. I’m sure you can guess what the letter said - it told me to jump.
One week before September 13th, 2019 Annabella got a letter in a pink envelope from her birth mother, just like I did. I pulled the envelope out of my backpack and held it tight.
I can’t believe I actually went through with it. I think I was hoping I might find her, or maybe that she’d be there after I fell. I’m not saying that I wish she was my mom, because mine is fantastic. I just wanted to meet her, but I don’t think she’s here.
My parents’ names are Shane and May. Gina, my birth mother, references them both in her entry as her brother and best friend. My “aunt” Gina has been missing all of my life. My Grandma Dorothy, my dad and Gina’s mom, refuses to talk about her. We’ve always been neighbors, my grandparents in the same house that’s been passed down for generations and my parents and me in the tiny cottage next door.
But after reading the journals, I feel like my whole life has been a sham. How could it be possible that my mother is my missing aunt?
Annabella
My mouth was hanging open. The two houses on Luna Road. I whipped the page to the left not stopping to process the life changing information I was reading.
September 13th, 1930
Dear Luna,
I have been exploring the lighthouse at night. There is a photo of my mother next to a man with dark hair - with what I’m guessing is me in her stomach. I knew it was her the minute I saw the picture. I am not her doppelganger, but we definitely look like mother and daughter. She’s beautiful and mysterious. I’m awkward and nerdy.
Do you think the dark haired man might be my father? This is not me admitting that I’m actually in 1930, or that I was conceived in another era - I’m just playing along to appease my dream.
On Luna Time Page 12
