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

Caleb had switched back to his default mode, hefting a stack of paperbacks onto the counter. I looked at him, then at Oliver, who had finally ventured some form of motion, and wondered if having someone could sometimes be just as bad as losing someone.


Eleven


“For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (American poet, 1803 – 1882)


Kristy? It’s mom. I know you probably hate me right now, but – oh shit, what am I even doing? You probably don’t want to hear my voice, much less talk to me. I’m sorry. That’s all I can say. And I went back to our house today – what happened to it? You and daddy weren’t there; someone else’s kid was lying in this inflatable pool in the yard. Where are you? I know. I could have just picked up your calls if I wanted to know, but … Never mind, I’ll stop now.
She made it just in time for the beep.
I stared at my cellphone, and replayed the message again, hardly daring to believe it. After so many days of trying to reach her, holding my breath, hoping she’d just for once pick up her phone, I had missed her call?
The number was withheld, naturally. My mother was never one to report her whereabouts and she hated the idea of others being able to reach her when she least expected or welcomed it. “I don’t live for other people’s emergencies,” she used to say. Which might sound selfish, but really, it was just how she was.
I was halfway through the message for the third time, when Caleb came down the stairs, a hand around Oliver’s shoulders so that he wouldn’t run loose again. “All done,” he said. “Now we can go home and sleep. Yet another day with no proper customers, apart from that idiot who bought that old horror magazine after using our washroom … Kristen?”
“Yeah?” I snapped my phone close.
Something must have registered on my face, because Caleb asked, “Is everything okay?’
“I’m fine,” I said, my customary answer to most things these days. My mother always had a way of pulling out the carpet from under me.

*

I knew something was wrong the moment we entered the house. An addition was made, and the pair of turquoise pumps lying at the doorway confirmed my conjecture.
Jade was visibly awkward. She kept looking around for something to say or do, as though trying to gain inspiration from the coffee table or television. When she saw us, she actually heaved a huge sigh of relief. “Here they are.”
And the lady sitting beside her with a mug in her hand turned.
My initial reaction was to step back. It just couldn’t be that easy, to have her back after such a long period of missing her, wishing she were back, wondering why she left.
“Kristy,” she said, standing up. Behind her, Jade was mouthing, Her mom, to Caleb.
Caleb nodded beside me, and said, “Hi, I’m Caleb. You must be Kristen’s mother.”
My mother nodded, still looking at me. I wasn’t sure what she was about to pull, but she stuck out her hand and shook Caleb’s. “Just call me Rachel.”
“Well, I need to catch up on some sleep,” Caleb said, and shot a meaningful look at Jade. They headed upstairs quickly.
With them gone, the air in the living room closed in on us. It was one of those days where it was neither rainy nor sunny, and the clouds just sat there waiting, so it was grey out in the early evening.
“How did you find us here?”
“I called so many people, you wouldn’t believe,” she said. “After I left that message on your phone, I called up everyone you and daddy had ever known, and I was finally led here.”
My mother was never good with giving concrete details.
“So what do you want?” I said, not moving an inch.
Her face crumpled. “You’re mad at me.”
“Well, what did you expect, mom? You left us – one day you were there with me, watching old Audrey Hepburn films, and the next you’d packed up your bags and left. I’d always known you were a free spirit – at least that’s what I prefer to think – but I didn’t know you were that flighty!”
She stared at me with a pinched look on her face, like she was about to cry. She was always effusive, and her moods were extreme. She either bawled her head off at the theatre, or laughed hysterically at my father’s corny jokes. I realised how quiet and calm – boring – it had been ever since she left.
“Oh, honey,” she said, sinking back into the couch. “You don’t understand.”
“Then make me, mom,” I snapped. “You don’t just leave your family behind without an explanation, and then come back a month later acting the martyr.”
A moment of silence passed between us. I could hear myself breathing hard.
“Well, now that’s a side of you I’ve never seen,” she said quietly. “You never were this angry.”
“Things change.” And she had no idea how much.
“Call it a midlife crisis, if you will, Kristen. I’ve become a woman who has raised a family, now grown – and you have no idea how proud I am of you – but … I’ve lost something, you know? All these years, as you grew older, I felt like we were sinking into a routine. There was nothing in store for me. I felt empty, like someone had deserted me, like the purpose of life had abandoned me –”
“So it was all you.” I walked to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water. Her light footsteps trailed after me. “Never mind how your family is left hanging in the air, waiting for you to maybe – just maybe – come back. Why do we always have to shape our lives around your whims?”
“It’s not a whim, honey.”
“Then what is it? What was it that we couldn’t give you? Dad and I love you, you have a job – do you need spiritual enlightenment to finally be happy? Or do you just need us to be out of the picture?”
She shook her head, and a tear fell off, cruised down her face. “I realise that absolute happiness is just an illusion. Being with my family is the happiest I can ever get. It happens, sweetheart.”
“So you’re back.”
She nodded eagerly, glad to agree with me on something. “I am. I’m back because I love you both. I never want to leave again. I want to start over.”
I stared at her, empty glass in my hand. At that moment, I hated her pleading, tearful, repentant face. Sometimes, it was just too late for second chances. Time would have chewed away at the only thing that held you both together, and the space left behind would just grow bigger and bigger. Until one day, you gave up holding on to what you had so desperately clung on to.
“I should’ve taped that speech down for the next time you decide to leave us again.”
As I lied in bed and pretended to sleep, Jade watching me with eyes burning with curiosity, I heard my mother let herself out of the door quietly.

*

That night, I slipped out of the back door.
I knew Caleb must have heard what had passed between me and my mother, and I was just not in the mood for questions.
I saw him sitting at the porch, silently waiting with a mug in his hand and another beside him. It made me sad, somehow, to think that he would be waiting there the whole night while I knew that I would not show up.
But it didn’t make me sad enough to want to be completely alone.
So, as quietly as I could manage, I slowly twisted the knob crept out into the backyard in my t-shirt and sweatpants. The night was relatively balmy, so there was no need for a sweater.
I did not know where to go. Wroughton was a world on its own, and without the clarity offered by daylight, I could end up anywhere.
But then I saw the tree. Its flowers were darkened by night, but it was standing there, lone and protective. I remembered what Caleb said about the dead protecting us, like how the cemetery protected us from the outside world. It had not protected me from my mother, from the hurt she could potentially inflict on us again.
I sat down on the cool, moist earth, imagining the dead all staring at me while I could see none of them. I wondered if Blake was here, if he could see me, and what he would do or say if he could.
“Blake!” I called out. “Are you there? Can you see me? Hear me? Blake!”
It didn’t seem like such a stupid thing to be doing, even though I was basically calling out for a dead person in the middle of the night in a cemetery. I briefly wondered what Dr Oliveiro would make of that.
I got up. “Blake!” I called louder, suddenly certain of his presence. Didn’t people always say a gust of chilly wind would pass whenever a spirit was near? Well, it had turned gusty.
A figure broke through the darkness before me. A male figure, walking towards me. “Blake!” I screamed, and rushed forward, desperate to close the gap between us.
“What the hell –?”
My eyes were burned by the beam of light swung in my direction.
“Kristen?”
“Blake?” I said, even though the voice sounded nothing like his. I had heard it before, though.
“I didn’t think you’d forget, for that recycled joke you made of my name,” he said. “It’s Hyde, actually.”
“Hyde,” I said, taking a step back. “Of course.” I frowned. “What are you doing here?”
He laughed monosyllabically. “I could ask you the same. I’m the caretaker here. I was half asleep, until some idiot decided to scream at the top of her lungs….”
“Wait. You’re a cemetery caretaker?” It was hard to imagine Hyde, with all his tattoos and muscles, as something so … sedentary.
“I’m on the night shift. It’s the only place that would hire me,” he said, shrugging, as though offering his body as explanation. He then fixed his gaze on me. “Now. What are you doing here at this time of the night?”
“Nothing.”
He crossed his arms and waited.
“Couldn’t sleep.” I shrugged. “So I came out for a walk.”
“Don’t you do that with Caleb?”
“I needed to be alone tonight.” He continued watching me, so I asked, “So how’s Sawyer doing?”
“He’s fine. A bit of dehydration, but he can be discharged soon. Belle can put her mind at ease.”
“You sure seem to care a lot about her,” I remarked.
He glanced sideways at me. “So this book fair business,” he said. “Are you sure you know how to go about doing it?”
“I’m no publicity pro, but we can begin after the fete on Saturday,” I said. “Step one will be to haul out the really old books and separate them from the out-of-print ones.”
“Great, we’ll do that. I told Belle to let us handle the whole PR business,” Hyde said. He peered closer at me and said, “Come on, let’s get you home.”
“It’s okay, I’ll get back myself,” I said, backing out. He narrowed his eyes at me. “Really, I promise I’ll go back right now.”
“Alright,” he said. “Take it easy, kid.”
He stood there watching me, a lone figure illuminated by the soft glow of streetlights, until