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

in them, but something else was working underneath. I wanted to ask him what he was planning, but I was afraid to know his answer.
“You told her,” Jade said, pointing a finger at me, “But not us.”
“It was purely by accident that I found out,” I said, yet again. “So now what?” I asked Caleb. “Now that he’s gone? Where do you think he might be? Should we go check the cemetery, or Belle’s house?”
He did not reply me for a long while. Jade and Reilly were silent too, waiting for his answer.
Finally, we reached the road, and he clicked the flashlight off. “No. We’re not going to look for him.”
Reilly stopped walking. “What? Why not?”
“We should at least talk to him, Reilly and I,” Jade said.
“About what.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Everything you talked about with him,” Reilly said. “How long have you been hiding him, anyway? Why couldn’t he have come to us? To me, at least, since I wasn’t even living with our mother until two weeks ago?”
“I don’t know, Ri. Okay? I don’t know. Maybe you were busy that day he decided to look to us for help.” I had never seen him so harried before, so agitated.
“What are we going to do, now that he’s gone?”
“Nothing. We go on living our lives like we should.”
Reilly turned to him. “I can’t believe you’d say that. He’s our father. Don’t you remember everything he’s done for you, done with you?”
Caleb shook his head. “He’s not as heroic as you make him out to be, Reilly. Yes, he was a good dad. But he made mistakes, too –”
“Who doesn’t?” Reilly almost screamed. I shushed her gently, but she shot me a look. Caleb put his hand on the small of my back.
“He’s made one too many. There’s no way we can go back to before.”
It reminded me of my dogged resolve when my mother asked for another shot at being a family. While all those nights ago I thought I would never forgive my mother for leaving us – and offering such a paltry explanation for her actions – here I was hoping Caleb would continue holding out for … what? With Gareth gone, there was nothing left to hold out for. With Gareth gone, the last link was burnt.
Suddenly, Caleb said, in a voice so soft I was sure it must have come from my mind, “I wish he’d never come back.”

*

I did not dare to get out of bed until I saw the first ray slice its way through the curtains. Hyde had sent a text message at six a.m., demanding our presence at the Old Belle, so I assumed he was going to put the Gareth situation on hold until at least after the book fair.
Except, there was no more Gareth situation, was there?
It was difficult to be alone with Caleb at breakfast, since I knew neither Jade nor Reilly had gone to sleep since we got home last night. The four of us were at the breakfast table at six-thirty, silently sipping our OJ or buttering our toasts.
“We should go to the Old Belle now,” I said to Caleb from where I was, clearing my breakfast things.
“Okay.”
Once out the door and earshot of his sisters, Caleb, as he held the gate open for me, said, “I have something to tell you.”
“Let me guess.” It had rained last night, after we got home. I heard the rattling on the roof, the windows, and had to resist the urge to head out into the thick of it all. Right now, Caleb reached out to prevent me from stepping into a huge puddle in front of the gate. “You actually know where your dad is,” I said.
He shook his head and tugged on my hand to start walking. “I’m leaving.”
There was a second when I felt my breath desert me, like that time I fell off the monkey bar and landed on my back. I scrambled for something to clutch on to. Unfortunately, it was his arm. “But you said you weren’t sure if you wanted to leave.” The crack in my voice made me wince.
“I know.”
I could barely hear him. Look at me! I wanted to scream. But he offered nothing else. Not even an explanation.
“You were given a choice,” I said. “Right?”
“And I’ve decided to leave.”
Suddenly, it felt like the gap between us had inflated. A wall of stony faces and lies threw me on the other side of where I had, over these past couple of weeks, come into place. The other side of here.
“Why?”
The word hovered above us, lending its weight to the air. It was a question easy to answer – there was a reason for everything, right? – but he only remained silent. We both knew sometimes reason was not enough to justify what we did, not enough to justify whatever happened, whether we liked it or not.
But this time, silence wasn’t good enough for me. It was time for concrete answers.
“Why, Caleb?”
“I just need a change from all this, that’s all. I mean, why not?” He gave a bark of laughter. “Gabriel has been bugging us to move there for ages. Maybe it’ll be good for us all. Hell, if it’ll make mom less neurotic, I’m all for it.”
“I thought it was her job that drove her … you know, that stressed her out.”
“Nah, she was nuts all along.” He grinned. There was something wrong with that picture, something too unnatural and forced I had to look away.
“You think I don’t know what this is about?”
He raised his brows. “And you do, as usual?”
“You’ve failed. You couldn’t manage to help your father, and you’re afraid you’ll lose your mom too, so you’re leaving with her just so you can still hold on to a shred of the family you once knew, the one you once had.”
Shaking his head, he chuckled but looked away. “I don’t know where you get these ideas from –”
“You’re saying I’m wrong? There isn’t any truth to all that at all?”
He just kept shaking his head, running his hands through his hair.
“Look, I don’t know how to fix this, how I can help –”
“Why, thank you for your good intentions, but there isn’t anything you can do, because there’s nothing – no-one – here that needs your help. My dad is gone and my mom wants to move, so I’m going. End of story.”
“No, it’s not. You’re just running away from the problem, just like your dad, who has never –”
“Shut up, Kristen.” And then, softening: “Please. Let’s not end it this way.”
“End what?”
“Nothing.”
I took a deep breath, deciding I had just about had it with this conversation. “Keep avoiding the truth, Caleb. Sooner or later, you’ll just realise nothing’s changed, and you’d have just made another futile attempt at repairing something that’s already broken.”
I was ready to take the remaining few steps towards the Old Belle, when he spoke again, “I’ve thought it through. It’s done, Kristen. I’m done, done helping him, done keeping secrets, done trying so damn hard to get my parents back together again. He doesn’t care. Maybe he never has.”
“That’s not true.”
“How would you know for sure?”
I didn’t. “So you’re leaving. Tomorrow.”
He silently caught up with me and we both stood there before the bookstore, looking at each other.
“What about the book fair?”
“I’ll still be helping out,” he said. “Today.”
“Today.”
“Yeah.” He squeezed my arm, flashing a slight smile. Today.”
He must have realised what was standing between us then, must have known it was what we both refused to acknowledge.
“That’s … good for you. I hope you enjoy yourself there.” I stretched my lips to flash him a smile.
He stared at me, parted his lips a little. I could almost see the words spinning about in his head as he struggled to get the right ones out. It was a long while before he actually spoke. “Thank you. I hope you enjoy … the house. Maybe your parents can take over once we’re gone.”
Goodbyes were for people who were unable to hold themselves up on their own and had therefore come to rely so much on someone else. If you were prepared to let go of your heart, you should also be prepared to get go of whatever – whoever – it was that took it in the first place.
What a fool I had been. Again. It got me every time, that sense of loss, of being cheated somehow. I imagined this was how Caleb felt whenever he stepped into another of Oliver’s traps. Like he should have known better.
I should have known better.
“I’m sorry,” he offered, and waited for me to say it was okay, it was what he should do, as long as it was what he wanted. But I couldn’t.
So I pushed the door open, taking in the dust floating in the sunlight. Hyde was there, on the phone at the counter as he pushed aside heavy-looking boxes with his feet.
“I don’t know why you’re even bothering to help, if you’re leaving tomorrow,” I muttered.
“Don’t be like this, Kristen.”
“How long will you be gone for?”
“She wants me to finish my education there. After that, I can probably come back here if I want.”
There was no use hoping. He didn’t see it the way I did. What I saw were two people who had been hurt by something that they played no part in, needing each other to hold ourselves up. But he had chosen to walk away.
“Okay,” Hyde said to us, snapping his phone shut. “It’s a good thing they didn’t bring down the tent at the marquee. We can use it for another day or two, so that’s one problem down. Now, we should come up with a list of all the books for sale so we can keep track of what we’ve sold…” He stared at Caleb, frowning, then at me, and back again.
“We’re listening, Hyde,” Caleb said. “Go on.”
“Okay, so as I was saying.…”
I zoned out afterwards, my mind spinning with thoughts of causes and consequences. Only when Hyde snapped his fingers in my face did I start paying attention again.
By then, I already knew what I had to do.

*

“I just thought you should know everything that’s gone on so far,” I said, “regarding the Gareth issue.”
Hyde eyed me suspiciously. “Go on.”
“There isn’t an issue anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” I said, leaning against the stack of books he was wiping yet again, “that he took off. Last night, we went to the shack, and he wasn’t –”
“The shack?”
“The place he’s living in. Was living in. Everything was gone. And Caleb’s decided to leave with his mom and Gabriel.”
“What? Why is this the first time I’m hearing about this?”
“Well, to be fair,” I sighed, “he did only make that decision last night, after we found Gareth gone.”
“So she’s just going to haul her kids away so her ex-husband won’t be a threat to them anymore.” He shook his head. “Typical Annabel.”
I frowned, immediately looking around to see if Caleb heard that, but he was still in the storeroom downstairs packing the books into boxes. “Why do you say that?”
“Because that’s how she’s always been, since the day I knew her. She runs at the first sign of trouble, willing to sink into a comfy little humdrum life just so she won’t have to stand near the edge of the water. Belle, on