Bedful of Moonlight by Raven Held (audio ebook reader .txt) 📕

arm around me again.
“It’s not your fault, why are you apologising?”
But he didn’t hear me, for the wind was a ferocious vacuum. It was even worse here in the gazebo, where the rain pounded on the roof and made it sound like sand being rattled in a huge bottle. So I reasserted my assurance.
“It’s just – I imagined our first night tour of Wroughton a lot … drier than this,” he said wryly.
“It’s not your fault we’re stuck in a thunderstorm in the middle of the night. If anything, I shouldn’t have decided to ask you for the tour tonight when it was so obvious it was going to rain.”
A flash of lightning split through the night and Caleb’s face glowed momentarily, revealing the bemused smile of his that I was growing used to. “Right,” he said, “as long as we’re not rushing to claim the blame or anything.”
Somewhere to our left, thunder cracked and bellowed. Caleb and I flinched slightly.
“The truth is…” I chuckled, uncomfortably aware of what I was about to say.
“What?”
“The truth is, I can’t think of anywhere else I would rather be tonight. With all the cards dealt the way they have been, being here might just be the highlight of my stay here.”
“Wait, your stay?”
I looked at him.
“You mean you’re going to leave?”
“I didn’t think you’d miss me that much, buddy,” I said, smiling slightly when a blush came upon the pallor of his face in the greyness of the crashing night. “But yeah, I don’t believe we’ll be staying long here.”
“How do you know that?”
“Dad doesn’t seem very settled here. He seems able to take off any minute with me in his wake. I don’t think he really believes mom’s left us for good.” A sigh I did not know I had been holding back escaped.
“And you do?”
I nodded. Of course I did. My mother took flight easily, and never looked back. I was stupid to hope my father and I would be able to hold on to her.
“The only other time I’ve seen my dad so strung out was when my mom fled to Amsterdam for two weeks after they had a fight. He couldn’t do anything without breaking something or exploding in frustration.”
He frowned.
“I know how that may sound, but that is just how my mom’s like, okay?” I noticed how defensive I sounded.
He raised his arms in defence. “Frankly, that’s a way healthier relationship to have.”
“Excuse me?”
“Letting it all out, putting your emotions out there so that both parties can wade their way through it and settle it once and for all.”
I shook my head. “You say that because you’ve never had to live with two screaming adults who’d do anything to show how pissed off they are. As if that would do anything to help. And as for the wading and settling, it isn’t so easily achieved, not without a whole lot of mediation from the middle person – namely, the daughter.”
He laughed, and I caught myself smiling at the unexpected realness in that sound. “Let’s trade, then,” he said.
The smile slipped; I felt the muscles slacken, and tried to hold it back up for his sake, but could not. “I don’t want to.”
“I didn’t mean for real, Kristen,” he said gently. “I love my mom. What I’d love more is for her to spend more time with us. For us to be what I’ve heard a family is like. She and Gabriel, they travel somewhere for months and months and come home for a few days. And before, with my dad…” He looked ahead and drew his knees up. “Every other kid I know would think Jade and I are crazy, but – well, I can’t say for her – but I’d give up anything I have to have more time with my parents.”
In an attempt to lighten the mood back up, I offered, “Would you give up Philly cheese-steak sandwiches and Uncle Owen’s fish and chips?”
He turned back to me and smiled, his grin sliding higher up one side. “Man,” he said, pulling a thoughtful look, “that’s a tough one. I would say … no.” He grinned again. “You can’t make me give those up.”
“For all your sentimentality a while ago, you sure switch preferences quickly.”
He laughed again, and I let the smile grow upon my face this time.
Before I could ask about his biological father, he asked, “What about you? What do you wish for?”
I had to bite the inside of my mouth to stop myself from trembling. I imagined a holding up a gate to prevent the water from gushing out, consuming everything in its path. “Blake to be alive, mom to be contented with just us,” I finally said.
Maybe something registered on my face that made Caleb look away that moment. But he showed no signs of being caught in an awkward moment when he asked, “Okay, so what would you trade for that?”
“My soul,” I said.
He laughed, and I looked at him. “Melodrama becomes you, Kristen.”
“Does it.”
“But think about it, if – dramatics aside – you traded your soul to have all that, you wouldn’t be able to enjoy that, so what’s the point?”
“Why do you have to be so logical about it?”
“So you’re saying it’s a figure of speech?”
“I’m saying, you’re not making much sense at the moment.”
“Look who’s talking,” he muttered, and I punched his arm. The next moment, thunder snapped at us for laughing too loudly.
I don’t know how long we sat there, just talking, trading responses back and forth in rapid-fire manner.
“Burned to death, or frozen?”
“A morbid and clichéd question.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Okay. Frozen, I guess.”
“Fight or flight?”
“Flight.”
“Of course,” he said.
I rolled my eyes.
By the time we realised the rain finally let up, it was already five in the morning. The sky had finally cleared to a light grey mass that gasped in the cool aftermath of the storm.
So it seemed we didn’t have to wade through knee-high waters.
“I love this moment when the rain stops,” Caleb told me as we got up and made our way back home. “Everything feels like it’s been renewed, cleansed, purged somehow of its ugliness.”
“Of its deaths and diseases and jealousy and greed,” I agreed.
“You know what I mean,” he said, looking surprised.
I did know what he meant. Every time the rain stopped, it was as though everything was back to the way it should be, and we all were back to being a part of this new world, base and reborn.


Ten


“Maybe love is like luck. You have to go all the way to find it."
~ Robert Mitchum (American writer and actor, 1917 – 1997)


I didn’t know why we were sneaking around like we had done something wrong – surely we could go for a night-time stroll if we wanted, as friends if nothing else – but like Caleb, I felt the need to keep our night-time activities a secret.
There was, however, no chance of that.
“What are you –?”
Our reactions, if they could produce a sound, would have made a resonating snap throughout the house.
Jade’s gaze ticked back and forth between Caleb and me. It then travelled to the door Caleb was holding open for me, and our drowned-rat getups.
Nobody said anything for a while.
And then, calm as a falling leaf on a windless day, Caleb said, “Morning, Jade.”
“Look what the cat dragged in,” she said, still bug-eyed as she slowly descended the stairs.
“Aren’t you Little Miss Sunshine,” Caleb said drolly.
“Yeah, well, none of that this morning,” she said, pointing out the window.
The rain seemed to have only taken a respite. It was now pouring again with a renewed vigour.
“Where did you guys run off to, anyway?”
I exchanged a look with Caleb.
“Nowhere in particular. Why don’t you go wash up? I’ll make waffles,” Caleb said, pushing his sister back up the stairs towards the bathroom. After getting rid of Jade by shutting her in the bathroom, he said to me, “Why don’t you take a shower while I make Jade those waffles? And then we’ll go for breakfast and head down to the Old Belle. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

*

His name was Hyde, he was twenty-eight years old, had a tattoo of a sun on his left arm, and he was waiting for us at the diner called Miss Macy’s Bed ‘N’ Breakfast.
“Hyde? As in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?” I asked as our orders arrived.
“Oh, like I’ve never heard that one before,” he said, rolling his eyes.
“I wasn’t trying to be rude,” I said.
Caleb shot him a look as he squeezed a slice of lemon on his pancakes. “Don’t mind him. He’s just inherently this touchy, especially before his second cup of coffee.”
Hyde grunted. “So I heard you’re messed up,” he said to me, watching me over his coffee. Steam veiled his face partially.
I stared at him.
“I also heard I’m a murderer, and have been arrested several times for unwarranted assault,” he went on. He paused mid-drink. “None of them are true. Do you believe everything you hear?”
It sounded like a rhetorical question, so I shrugged.
“But you did almost set a house on fire,” he said, peering at me again. The seat felt sweaty under my thighs. He leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms. “So I really can’t make you out.”
“Quit creeping her out, Hyde,” Caleb said.
“Quit being an overprotective idiot,” Hyde said. “Eat up quick, you two. Belle must be starving. We should get her breakfast.”
Caleb snickered and shook his head.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I forgot to mention. Hyde here,” he told me, clapping Hyde’s muscular shoulders, “has been in love with Aunt Belle ever since he learned how to talk.”
Hyde shook Caleb’s hand off. “Have not.”
Caleb shrugged. “You know best, I suppose. Anyway, Kristen and I were talking last night.”
Now Hyde snickered. “I bet.”
Caleb ignored him. “She said we need to bring some publicity for the Old Belle if we want to rope in more customers.”
“And?” He looked up at me. “How are we supposed to go about doing that?”
“We can raise funds, organise book fairs, storytelling festivals and readings,” I said. “Haul out the older books and sell them at a steal.”
“We’ll make a loss,” he pointed out, stuffing pancake into his mouth.
“That’s not the main concern yet. Once we organise those events, people will take notice. They’ll keep a lookout for subsequent fairs or other activities, they’ll know what kind of books we sell, even those really rare ones that are already out of print. I saw some the other day.” I looked at Caleb, who nodded. “And once we have the customer base, we won’t have to worry about not having business anymore.”
“Just one second,” Hyde said, waving his fork. “Where did all this we business come from?”
“Hey, be thankful we have someone like her willing to help us out,” Caleb said. “She seems to know what she’s doing.”
“I’m not saying you can’t help, of course,” Hyde said.
“My dad’s a publicity agent,” I explained for Hyde’s benefit. “I just picked up some stuff along the way.”
“He’s Gabriel’s agent,” Caleb told me.
That I did not know. Then I guess it was not luck that we managed to find another place to stay on such short notice.
“Belle’s too busy,” Hyde said, scraping his plate clean and drinking up the egg yolks. “We