Song to the Moon (Damnatio Memoriae Book 2)

by Laura Giebfried

  “So what happened?” he asked. “Are you alright? Has it gotten worse? I've been in contact with Fisker and Graves, and they say that they can give me the medication. I can bring it there immediately – maybe just a day – but your father can stay with you until then –”

  “I don't need it. And I don't need him, either.”

  “I – Enim, yes you do. You're very sick … you need the medicine, and you need someone with you.”

  “Right, well, I certainly don't need him.”

  “Enim … I know that things didn't go too well when you last saw him, but he's very sorry that you left –”

  “Is he?” My voice was crisp as he told another lie. I had assumed for so long that he was terrible at doing so, but now it was clear that he was better practiced at it than anyone. He had chosen the right profession, after all. “Because I just spoke to him, and that's not what it sounded like.”

  “You spoke to him? When?”

  It was hard to know for certain. I glanced at the clock on the far side of the room, but the numbers there were meaningless. I couldn't tell if I had been out for hours or days, and the conversation with him felt far away despite how it still nipped at my skin.

  “Before you spoke to Ilona.”

  “Oh, I – I didn't know,” he said. “We haven't – he didn't tell me.”

  “I guess that runs in the family.”

  “Sorry?”

  I took the phone and switched it to my other ear, no longer able to keep the conversation at bay.

  “Not telling people the truth,” I said. “Sound familiar?”

  “Enim, I don't … What's this about? What's wrong?”

  “Everything, Karl – everything's wrong!”

  “I don't … okay, Enim, everything's wrong. Just … just tell me what you mean, exactly, and I can try to sort it out.”

  “I don't think that you can, actually,” I said. “But maybe you can explain yourself; I suppose that's fair.”

  “Explain what?”

  “Why you lied.”

  Karl was silent for a long moment.

  “Enim, I … I'm not sure what you mean. I haven't lied to you.”

  “Dad told me,” I said, my voice hissing in anger. “He told me everything!”

  “About what? About me?”

  “About Mom!”

  “I –” He spluttered as the accusation came, unable to turn the conversation back where it had begun. “What do you mean, Enim? About – about the affair, you mean? You knew that already.”

  “About how she died!”

  Karl grew quiet.

  “Enim, I never lied about that,” he said. “I – I told you that she had died. I didn't – you didn't ask how.”

  “So you just thought that you wouldn't tell me that you pulled the plug on her?”

  “Enim, that's … I wish you wouldn't say it that way.”

  “There's no other way to say it, Karl! You let her die! You killed her!”

  “No, I –” His voice caught unnaturally and he fought to keep it. “I allowed her to die, Enim. It was – she was already gone, and it was – it was what she had wanted.”

  “That doesn't make it right!”

  “No, it certainly doesn't.” He paused again and the sound of his teeth chattering came over the line instead. “But it … it wasn't right to keep her alive, either. Not – not like that.”

  He waited for my rebuff, but none came.

  “Enim?” he said. “Is that … I know that you're upset, and I don't blame you. I should have – I should have told you.”

  “You should have told me a lot of things,” I said heatedly.

  “I … No, I've always tried to be straight with you, Enim. This was … this was a difficult situation, and I … I regret it.” He paused again, waiting for me to speak. “Enim? Was there something else?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could you tell me what it is, please?” he said, his tone calm but bordering on exasperation. “I've been upfront with you about the rest. You know about the affair, you know about Turandot … I don't think there's anything else.”

  “There's Jack.”

  Karl stopped.

  “What about him?”

  “You know what about him,” I seethed, allowing the anger to take over for the other emotions that I couldn't yet allow through. “You told me that the trial was in absentia.”

  There was a pause.

  “I … alright, you're right. I didn't tell you the truth about that.”

  I shook my head and clutched my fingers to the small phone as they began to tremble in time with my mouth, and I hated him more than I ever had before, and no amount of apologizing or explaining could ever get the feeling to go away again.

  “You told me that he was out there,” I said wretchedly. “You – you let me believe that he was still alright, and that I could find him, and all this time I've – he's been –”

  “He's been what?” Karl said as I broke off, his voice a muddling of confusion.

  I couldn't take his evasion for a moment longer. He was still trying to lead me to believe that he hadn't lied in the same way that he had done with my mother, acting as though omitting crucial parts of the truth was anything other than an unforgiving prevarication, and listening to it was no better than listening to the endless stream of deceit that Cabail had planted in my head, as well.

  “He's been dead,” I said at last, the word so quiet and yet louder than any I had ever spoken before. It echoed over the phone line to holler repeatedly at me, telling me over and over again what I had done, and my throat had never felt quite so hoarse, even when I had been on the worst of the medications. Karl was silent for such a long moment that eternity seemed to draw out between us.

  “What makes you say that?” he said at last.

  “Stop pretending that you don't know – Dad told me. He told me that the trial was in absentia because Jack died, not because he was missing, and I came all of this way to find him and you just let me, and if I had known then none of this would have happened, and I wouldn't've –”

  “Enim, stop. Stop!” he said, raising his voice to cut through mine. “I don't know what you're talking about –”

  “Stop lying to me!”

  “There was no trial in absentia!” he said, shouting over me again. “That was what I lied about – nothing else! I – I said it to try and convince you of what he's done wrong and to – and to get you to come home.”

  He waited for my response, but my thoughts had stopped working again and I couldn't place what his admission meant.

  “They didn't find him,” Karl said. “Not alive, not his body – nothing. He disappeared, and as far as I know, and as I've told you, he's not dead.”

  The air quieted from its intensity and my breathing hitched, though my heart was beating faster than ever.

  “What?”

  “He's not dead, Enim,” Karl repeated, lowering his tone in conformity with mine. “Not that I know of, anyway.”

  “No, but Dad said ...”

  “Your father also said that you were dead,” Karl reminded me. “I'm not the one who lied to you – not about that. I would never lie about that.”

  My chest was rising and falling rapidly as though the heart trapped within had finally realized that it was still alive. As the words sunk in, the phone slipped a bit against my ear and my mouth went slack.

  “But he … why would he …?”

  “He wants you to come home, Enim,” Karl said, still defending his brother even though I was certain that he knew as well as I did that he didn't deserve it. “I think he just … He says things out of anger, and then he can't bring himself to backtrack. I don't … I don't think it was malicious.”

  I barely heard him. My mind was running too quickly to both listen to him and keep up with my thoughts, and the latter took precedence. Jack wasn't dead. My father had lied. And the woman at the farm might have lied, too, just as Ilona suspected. He was still there – he was still waiting
for me.

  “Enim?” Karl said. “I … I know that we've had our differences, and I know that you … that I haven't done things as well as I should have.”

  He paused to take a breath; it rattled over the line.

  “But I … I promise that I'll do things better. I'll listen to you, and I won't – I won't counter you so often, and I'll … I'll do anything. Just please – please come home.”

  The phone had slipped down to my shoulder; I barely heard him speak.

  “I can't,” I said, and hung up.

  Ch. 17

  “You feel better?”

  Ilona was perched on the edge of the bathtub smoking when I went to the bathroom door, but looked up as she caught sight of me in the threshold. Every part of me felt numb from the conversation, and now that the withdrawal was over and my form was so still again, the world seemed achingly slow but for her. She stubbed the cigarette out against the linoleum and stood, her heels sinking a bit in the shallow puddle of water on the floor, and I stared at them rather than her as the memory of how I had tried to strangle her came back fully.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You see, I am telling you that you will,” she said, the knowing tone of her voice chipping away at the solidified air. “You are not believing me, but this is good for soul. You are not water-sprite after all, yes, Eh-nim?”

  “Yes,” I said again.

  She turned her head at me oddly, finally noticing my daze.

  “You are sure you are feeling well?” she asked.

  I looked up to meet her eyes. They were as dark as ever, though the narrowness of them was lessened now that the makeup had been washed from her eyelashes and skin. Beneath it, her features was more pointed and sharp than the girl in the passport's had been, and I rather thought that despite it all, I was rather content that she wasn't who she had said she was after all.

  “Yeah, I feel great,” I said. “And I – I think I will go back to the farm to look for Jack, after all.”

  “Yes, I am knowing you would,” she said.

  I hesitated, certain of it except for one thing.

  “And I … I was wondering – and you don't have to, if you'd rather not – but I was wondering – hoping, really – that you might … might come with me.”

  She looked at me blankly.

  “To farm, you are meaning?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Of course I take you there, Eh-nim. This was deal, yes?”

  She turned away to gather her belongings. As I watched her replace them in her bag, I ran my hand over my mouth and pulled at it longingly, wishing that I could say the rest of what I wanted – what I felt – but knowing that it was unprecedented, and largely impossible, rendered me speechless even though I was more certain than anything that it was something that I really did feel wholly and completely, and that it was something that I was bound to feel forever.

  “I appreciate it, Ilona.”

  She righted the bag on her shoulder and smiled.

  “Yes, I am knowing this, too.”

  She laid out a clean pair of clothes that she had gotten for me on the counter in an almost exact shade of khaki and white, though the sweater was a bit of a brighter blue than the one that I had been wearing so consistently for the past few years. As I thanked her and took them into the main room to change into them, I rather wondered if she knew the rest of what I was thinking but couldn't say, and decided with quite certainty that she did.

  She had to hurry to catch up with me as we set off down the street in search of a taxi. Despite the throbbing in my leg, the anxiety to reach Jack had overwhelmed the discomfort of walking on it and I wouldn't wait a moment too long to get to him again. The sound of her shoes clicking on the pavement became closer and closer until she had done so, and her shoulder brushed mine as she looked into my face.

  “So you're certain that the brochure says that the harvest goes until late September?” I asked, looking off down the street.

  She spotted a cab and waved it over, standing on her tiptoes in order to do so. She had finally consented to buy a longer skirt and turtleneck blouse that successfully hid the bruising on her neck, and had pulled her unkempt hair back now that the scar along her neck was no longer visible. Though she had heavily made-up her face again, she appeared no different from the majority of other women on the street.

  “I am certain,” she said, but then threw a sidelong glance at me. “You are happy now, Eh-nim, yes? To find him.”

  The word didn't quite describe it, and I wasn't sure that one could. But if Jack was there – and if I found him – then it would mean that at least something had gone right inside of my head, and that there were riddles capable of being solved, and that there was hope of being someone other than the person that I had sunken into after all that had gone wrong. And I would never be able to take back what I had done, but I thought that I could at least move past it, and that maybe something else would reside under my skin again, and that whatever was clutched so tightly behind the white cage trapped in my chest would become real once more instead of some wasted organ that I had longed to stop working time and time again.

  We slid into the taxi and Ilona leaned over to tell the driver where to go. The familiar unwillingness to see her go came back to me as the car pulled onto the road, and I wondered if she would continue to live the way that she had been for the past three years, feigning the troublesome occupation and stealing money, and I had the sudden urge to hand her my bank card and tell her to drain my account. The money from my inheritance meant little to me in light of everything else, but it wasn't really what I wanted to give to her, and I knew that she would never take it from me even so.

  The farm came into view as a spot of purple on the long expanse of green. As the taxi grew closer, the familiar building that matched the front of the brochure welled in my vision beneath the still-bright sun. I handed the money to the driver and barely waited for the car to pull to a stop before opening the door and stepping out onto the grass. Ilona's heels sank into the ground as she followed me.

  “We ask someone different this time, yes?” she asked, looking around for any sign of someone. “Another worker, maybe. Not lady from before.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  We waited for the boy with the reddish hair to cross behind the building to get something from a storage unit until we stepped forward to catch him before he disappeared inside. He looked up as we approached and paused without lifting the crate that he had gone to collect.

  “Hello,” Ilona called, giving him a friendly smile. “You are working here?”

  He nodded and wiped at his forehead; a line of dirt smudged his brow.

  “We are here looking for someone,” she said. “He is working here. Maybe you can help us, yes?”

  “Euh, I can try,” he replied, wiping his hands on his pants. “But my mother would be better to ask – she picks the employés.”

  “No, this is alright,” Ilona said. “We do not want to bother her.”

  He shrugged and nodded again, and Ilona stood back so that I could give the description of Jack.

  “Right,” I said. “Well, we're looking for someone named Jack Hadler – or Enim Lund. He's … he's an American, about my height … um, nineteen, with dark hair and – and he would have been here for a few months, already. For the harvest.”

  I paused as the boy frowned.

  “The – the harvest is still going on, right?” I quickly added.

  “Euh, yes, we are still harvesting,” he said. “But … I do not think that he is here. We do not have any Américains.”

  The knot pulling in my stomach tightened, and the hope that I had garnered vanished as quickly as it had come. I threw a glance at Ilona, willing myself to have heard him incorrectly, but her expression had furrowed as well.

  “Not even one?” she asked. “He would be speaking French – maybe you did not realize that he is American?”

  The boy shook his head.

  “No
, I am certain. We do not employ Américains. Only native French-speakers.”

  I shook my head in devastation. He wasn't there, just as before. It was too unbelievable, though, and I couldn't stop the denial from taking over my mind. He had to be there – I couldn't not find him again. I racked my mind for a possible solution other than the one that Cabail had given about the brochure being a standard advertisement that had been sent to all Bickerby students, telling myself that it couldn't be given what the boy had just told us: they didn't employ Americans. There would be no need to send it to a school in Maine if that was so.

  “Maybe you can think harder, yes?” Ilona persisted. “He is this tall, with dark hair, he speaks French … maybe he is pretending to be French, yes?”

  The boy gave a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a scoff.

  “No, that is impossible. We would be able to tell if he was not French, oui?”

  “But it is impossible that he is not here, too,” Ilona said, ignoring the way that he mocked her standard way of adding the affirmative onto the endings of her sentences. “You will think harder, yes? Do you have anyone who is not speaking French as first language?”

  The boy shook his head initially, but midway through he paused and gave a shrug.

  “Euh, we do have a Canadien,” he said at last. “But he is not either of these names.”

  “But what is description?” Ilona said quickly. “He has dark hair? He is twenty?”

  “Euh, about,” the boy admitted. “But I am certain that he is really Canadien; he speaks of cold weather there with précision.”

  My heartbeat hastened again at the words.

  “What's his name? Where is he?” I asked. “Is he – can I see him, please?”

  “His is not person you ask for,” the boy said. “He has Canadien papers.”

  “But what's his name?”

  The boy sighed and rolled his eyes, tired from arguing with us.

  “Jean,” he said. “Jean Mercier.”

  I skirted around him and hurried behind the building before he could say anything more. The name was too coincidental to be anything else, and the knowledge that he was there came back with full force. My leg was stiff from overuse and a pain shot through it as I walked, but I didn't slow down as I reached the fields out back. The lavender was swaying gently in the breeze, circling the ground around me and filling the air with the overwhelming scent, and the dots of various colored clothing in it marked where the workers stood harvesting the crop. I scanned the area in search of him, my eyes peeling each form for one that was familiar, and didn't pause until they found the one that I was so used to seeing crossing the grounds at Bickerby towards me in late spring as he made his way back to the dorm room after classes.