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

thunder, you’ve sure grown to embrace it.” She swung her arms in that gangly way when you didn’t know what to do with them. “How’ve you been holding up? I’ve barely gotten a chance to talk with you since I came here.”
I shrugged.
“You know.” She waited until I looked at her properly before continuing, “When I went back to our house last week, the new owner handed me a bunch of stuff. She said she found them under the floorboards in your room.”
I fixed my gaze on the group of children in their cycling gear across the road. There was a heavy thudding in my chest that I tried to tame by controlling my breathing.
“Did you forget to take them, or did you leave them there intentionally?”
“Must have forgotten.”
“Kristen.” She inched closer.
My first instinct was to move away – everything she did now felt like some sort of overcompensation – but I made myself stay still and see what she would do.
She reached over and tucked my hair behind my ears, rubbing my earlobes the way she used to every night before she turned out the lights. “I should have been there for you.” She looked ready to cry. “He was everything to you.”
“Mom, please. I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Okay. Let’s talk about the present, then. What have you been up to since you came here?”
“Trying to restore the Old Belle. It’s the bookstore Caleb’s grandparents opened. His aunt runs it now, and it’s … well, it’s falling apart, hardly any business. We’re trying to save it, bring in more business.”
“Yeah? How’s it coming along so far? I hope you’re getting paid.”
I looked at her.
She rolled her eyes. “I’m kidding. So what’s the progress like?”
“We’ve earned enough from the craft sale yesterday to give the shop a makeover, but we still need some more funds to pay for the promotion and to repair some old books.”
“Do you accept donations?”
“Mom, please. Don’t.” It made me feel worse that she made this offer, not because she was being too nice, but because she was doing what a generous stranger would do to support a good cause.
“But I want to help.”
“Not this way.”
She patted my hand. “Okay.”
“So.”
She smiled. “Take your time.”
“I didn’t go to his funeral.” I had no idea why I was suddenly telling her this. “I didn’t talk to any of his friends or family after it happened. His mom wouldn’t see me.”
“She was a still mess when I saw her at the bakery the other day. I don’t think she even saw me, much less recognised me. I don’t think she saw anything.”
“He used to be so worried about her, with her high blood pressure and all.”
She nodded. “And he’d light those matches in the car. Until I told him to take it out of the window.” She put an arm around me, and I let her pull me closer to her. “But he took care of you. He always made an effort.”
I nodded, realising I was wetting the front of her blouse with my tears. Ever since that day at the craft fair with Caleb, all this crying business was becoming more frequent.
“But you know, I think Caleb does too,” mom said, smoothing my hair back. “No-one’s asking you to forget about Blake, honey. It’s just … you have to let new people in, and keep the old ones nonetheless. There’s always space for that.”
I looked up at her. “So should I see you as a new person or an old one?” She flashed me a grin, and I quickly added, “And no bad jokes, please.”
She laughed. How long it had been since I heard that sound. “I’m still your same old mother with a new heart.” She grimaced. “How’s that for an answer?”
I scrunched up my nose. “Better than ageist jokes, I guess.”

*

That night, I tried to distract myself by listening to an RnB channel in bed. While I was anxious to head downstairs and hear what Caleb’s decision was (assuming he had already come to one), something would almost immediately slow my chugging thoughts in its tracks.
When one a.m. came, I pushed the covers away and slipped out of bed.
Only to hear the bedside lamp click on, and find Jade and Reilly standing before me.
I gasped and pulled the covers up to my neck.
“A little bird told us that you and Caleb were present when our dad was seen.” Even in a tank top and pink pyjamas, Reilly managed to intimidate me.
“Is this true?” Jade said, staring wide-eyed at me. She was still sitting on her bed. That was when I realised they had been laying in wait for me.
“I … I don’t know.”
“Kristen, if you do, please just tell us. He’s our father,” Reilly said, softening slightly as she sat down on the foot of my bed. There were shadows under where her eyelids sank, and I thought she looked hurt, or disappointed, but that was probably just my imagination.
“Maybe Caleb knows.”
“Yeah, makes sense that he would know, I guess,” Reilly said softly.
“So you didn’t see our dad at all?”
I kept staring at Reilly, whose eyes were downcast.
“Kristen. Did you see our dad at all?” Jade asked again.
“Maybe Caleb knows,” I said again, sighing.
“Okay.” Jade stood up and placed her hands on her hips. “Let’s go ask him, then.”
She had my attention. “What? Now? Why?”
“Because,” she said, “I’m convinced mom’s just being paranoid, and so I’m not going to leave everything behind here and migrate to California. I don’t care how beautiful their beaches are. Just – no. This is our only way of knowing for sure and convincing her otherwise. Now, come on.” She opened the door.
We filed out after her. There was too much shuffling tonight. I was convinced someone would hear us, but we managed to get to the porch without being noticed.
For the second night in a row, he was not there. I was getting tired of seeing that mug there, steaming alone, sitting on the uppermost step and watching out for the return of a familiar figure.
“He’s not here,” Jade said, like perhaps we weren’t able to see that.
“Where’d he go?”
“Maybe he went for a walk.” I picked up the mug. “You can ask him when he gets back. Now let’s get back to bed.”
“No, no, no.” Jade held on to my arm. “You know where he’s gone. Now, we will wait here until he gets back, or you will tell us where he is.”
“Or better yet, bring us to him,” Reilly added. “You think you’re hard to read? Hardly. You know something, and you’re hiding it, Kristen.”
I considered how I would feel if someone else had known where my mother was when she left us. It would be my right to know where she was. I would, dramatic as it sounded, stop at nothing to worm that information out of the one who knew.
“I’ll take you to him.”

*

I wondered if I had done the right thing, leading them to the shack. I knew it was what I should do, but who could say that for sure? It was not up to me to say what should happen, or that what I was doing – or had done – was right.
“You mean to say you two have been hiding him, and you never once thought of telling us about it?” Reilly said, stepping gracefully over a tree root while Jade and I stumbled yet again. She swung her flashlight in my face.
“I’m sorry,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut.
“That secret doesn’t belong to you,” she said. I had the distinct idea she was not quite so partial towards me anymore now that she had learnt of the truth.
“But why didn’t you tell us?” Jade slipped on a spot of wet mud and I reached out to steady her. “Why didn’t Caleb tell us? He’s our dad, too.”
“He figured you’d go telling your mom.”
Jade shrugged and rolled her eyes. “Well, maybe I’d consider that possibility, but –”
“You don’t consider,” Reilly said. Which was a fact. Jade never considered anything until it happened.
“But I’d realise eventually,” Jade said sharply, “that that would send mom into a paranoid fit much like the one she’s in now. And then I wouldn’t tell.”
“There are only a handful of people who know anyway, and I wasn’t supposed to, only I did.”
“Who else knows?” Jade demanded.
“Your aunt. And Hyde, since the craft fair.”
“Aunt Belle?” they both said. “Wait,” Jade said, frowning. “So it was true? The fight and everything?”
“Well, I’m sure it’s probably not as dramatic as everyone described it.”
“Anyway,” I said. The house was in sight now. The grimy windows were open, and a dim fluorescent glow lit up a portion of the living room. “You know now.”
I stopped, and they followed suit.
“What is it?”
“Will you leave? All of you?”
“No,” Reilly said flatly. “She can’t make me, anyway; I’m almost twenty-three. Now I’d just have to look for somewhere else to crash. It’s just so like her to change plans all of a sudden on a whim.”
I turned to Jade.
She rolled her eyes. “I suppose. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.” When she saw that my response hadn’t quite satisfied her, she added, “I don’t know about Caleb. Who knows what goes on in that head of his? He’s always been protective of mom, but he’s also loyal to dad, so who knows?”
This was not exactly an answer. I sighed and strode towards the shack, expecting Gareth and Caleb to be in another argument, probably. I only realised, then, how I had never really seen them as a loving father-and-son duo.
There was no-one there.
“Hello?” I called out to the empty kitchen, half-expecting Gareth to pop out from behind the counter with a bowl of Fruit Loops and the sour face he usually reserved for me.
There was, however, an empty bowl with a spot of milk curdled at its base, a spoon stuck in it.
“Dad?” Reilly called out. “Caleb?”
“Maybe they left,” I said, checking the pantry. There was nothing left in it. While before it was chock-full of cup noodles, tubes of sour cream-flavoured Pringles and, of course, Fruit Loops, it was now empty.
“Do you know where they might have gone to?”
I shrugged, and went on to check the fridge. It wasn’t entirely swept clean: a few battered apples sat in there.
They had to have been here. At least, Gareth must have. Maybe I was wrong, and Caleb had gone looking for Hyde’s after all, or to make sure his dad did not go looking for Belle.
But then he burst in through the kitchen door right then.
“He’s gone,” he said, in a voice so even it was as though he was expecting it to happen.
“What?”
“He’s gone. Upped and left.”


Twenty-six


“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live; it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”
~ Oscar Wilde (Irish playwright, poet and writer, 1854 – 1900)


“I can’t believe you knew all along and you never told us,” Reilly said. “I mean, really, would you never have told us if it weren’t for that incident at the craft fair?”
“Reilly,” Caleb said, still in that scarily flat tone. “Calm down.”
He had barely uttered a word since we left the shack, and his eyes were as flat as his voice. Something was gone