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

the other hand…” He smiled, shaking his head again, before shrugging, “So, yeah, that’s how Annabel is like. Always a quitter, though she doesn’t look like one.”
“You guys go way back.”
“Not always a good thing,” Hyde said, wincing. “So when’s the kid leaving? All of them? Reilly and Jade too?”
“Not Reilly. She wants to stay here. But the rest are leaving tomorrow.” He had brought me back to the point of this whole conversation. “And there’s something else you should know. I saw Gareth hit Caleb the other day.” I described the motions as well as I could.
He reacted like I knew he would.
“He hit him? Hit him?” he roared, and I shushed him.
Over the banisters, I saw Caleb stick his head out of the storeroom, and shrugged upon the questioning look he shot me.
When I turned back, Hyde confronted me with a terrifying rage. “I’m reporting him. You’re taking me to that shack and I’m reporting him.”
I had not quite expected the intensity of his fury. “But he’s not there anymore.”
“Then we’ll find him. We’ll get the police to find him. What kind of person beats up his son?”
“He didn’t really beat him up –”
“Like hell he didn’t just beat him up. You’re taking me there now, to the shack.”
“No, wait.” Granted, I had wanted Hyde to seethe with indignation; I had wanted him to do something that would waylay their plans for leaving. But he was not thinking straight now. He couldn’t report Gareth for hitting Caleb, or bring the police to the shack. Caleb would be implicated, didn’t he see that? He needed to calm down and think of another plan. A better plan. One that would punish Gareth for all the trouble and hurt he caused, but that would also keep Caleb uninvolved.
But Hyde did not see that, despite what I said. “This ends now,” he growled, like a character from a movie, “the way it should, this time. If you really want to help Caleb, you have to do the right thing, Kristen. Gareth is going to keep going back to them – to Caleb, to Belle, and maybe to Reilly and Jade next time – and they’re just going to keep risking falling on the wrong side of the law just to help him. He won’t change, Kristen,” he added, enunciating each word emphatically.
I was still unsure about that. Was it really up to me – up to us – to change things for them, when they had already decided on their course of action?
Because deep down, if I had to be honest, all I wanted was for Caleb to stay, so that I wouldn’t feel like a broken doll tossed behind without another look again, the way I had felt when I lost two people I loved most. All I wanted was to do something about it this time.
If I had to be honest, I was being selfish for keeping him here, perhaps against his will.
But then I looked at Caleb downstairs, as he carried yet another box of books and counted them. For some reason, it broke my heart to look at him, always so well-intentioned, always trying so hard to be the person he thought everyone wanted him to be, but never getting what he deserved.
Caleb looked up and gave me a smile. I saw something sad beneath it. Maybe it had always been there; maybe I had just been so absorbed with myself that I never noticed it. I wondered how I could have missed what was so blatantly obvious, how he could have fooled everyone so well.
“So?” Hyde prompted.
I turned slowly to look at him.
“If you don’t show me where Gareth is, I’ll go look for him anyway.”
And I realised that Hyde was just like me, someone desperately looking for ways to protect the person he loved.
“No,” I said. “I’ll take you there.”


Twenty-seven


“Sometimes you have to get to know someone really well to realise you’re really strangers.”
~ Mary Tyler Moore (American actress and writer, 1936 – present)


It was a sense of déjà vu we all experienced that evening at dinner. Maybe it was just me, but something else sat there with us, some invisible force that repelled each of us away from everyone.
“Pass the chilli, Reilly,” Mrs Burnstead said.
Reilly looked up from her food and handed her the saucer of chilli. I did not know what the plan was for her; I hadn’t gotten around to asking yet. But judging from her atypical civility towards her mother, it was obvious she had made her own decision.
Mrs Burnstead received it without thanks, but stared at her daughter for a moment before going back to her food. Reilly was unaware, having gone back to attacking her dinner with vigour. I thought about how it would feel to lose someone again, the second time around, and had to push that notion out of my mind.
So we all sat like that, captured by our thoughts, too preoccupied to even think about the silence that had settled upon us.
“Well, I must say,” mom said, as she fed herself some sushi, “all of you have been very warm in your welcome. It’s quite a surprise you’re all leaving so abruptly.”
I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic.
“But it’s been very nice knowing all of you,” dad continued. “Good luck in California.”
“I trust you’ll enjoy the house, Daniel,” Mr Burnstead said. When we stuck our heads up in surprise like those alligator heads at the carnival, the ones you had to whack as hard as you could for higher scores, he said to me alone, “You will be living here after we leave. The house is yours now.”
It was strange how, while we had each retreated into our cramped little world, such transactions, so formal and business-like, were being made. As though whom the house belonged to was more important.
“The contract is valid for four years, under which your parents are now recognised as the owners,” Mrs Burnstead said, trapping me in a flat gaze. “If we do not return by then, they will renew the contract.”
Mom smiled at me. I nodded, but something in my throat made it hard to swallow my food.
When the doorbell rang, Jade leapt up and said, “I’ll get it.” I had just come to learn that visitors were mostly welcome in this huge, hollow house.
“Can I help you?”
“Who is it?” Reilly said, helping herself to some cream of corn. “Please, don’t let it be Tate. I told him to pick me up at eight. Jeez, doesn’t he ever listen?”
As we finally realised who it really was, everyone fell silent, staring up at them with our dinner sitting before us. Everything rushed forward to this moment. I heard a whooshing in my ear as Jade invited the two policemen in.
One of them began speaking. “It has come to our attention that Gareth Wane has been taking up residence in an unregistered shack near Highmont Lane. We would like your assistance in our investigation of his offences.”
The rest of what was said after that became white noise to me. I could only feel the weight of gazes, of words, of the slow burning realisation of the truth, as they came together in a blur, leaden, pulling me down.


Twenty-eight


“A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”
~ Vladimir Illyich Lenin (Russian politician, 1870 – 1924)


The irony did not escape me. Despite all my efforts to turn things around this time, nothing had changed. I guess it was stupid of me to think that telling Hyde about Gareth was the ultimate solution.
It had been three days since they were all hauled in for questioning. The Burnsteads were released on Tuesday morning, while Jade and Reilly had only just returned. I could hear them complaining about how tired they were and how Reilly just wanted to crawl into a bath.
Needless to say, they were not going anywhere for the time being; all their immediate plans had to be put on hold until Caleb was free.
After they left on Sunday evening, my parents and I sat silently at the dinner table for a while before dad spoke up, “Well, it’s just a few questions. They’ll be done by next morning.”
But by then, everyone in Wroughton had caught wind of what happened at the craft fair, and had their own speculations on Gareth’s return. My parents, as politely detached as they were from rumours, must have heard something.
“It’s my fault. This happened because of me.”
They exchanged a fleeting glance before mom said, “It wasn’t your fault, honey. It’s no-one’s fault. They’re his family, that’s why they were needed for questioning.”
“No, you don’t get it. It is my fault.” And then I told them the whole sordid tale, about how selfish I was in trying to make them stay, about how I went behind Caleb’s back and blabbed to Hyde.
They kept telling me you did what you had to, honey, you did what you had to. They didn’t see that it was not what I had to do. What I had to do was let them go to California and cut off every last thread that tied them to Gareth.
“Would Caleb have been happy if you did that?” Dr Tang asked the day after, when he came over for lunch. My mother called him the minute we ended our conversation at the dinner table. “Would you have been happy?”
“I was selfish. I’d only thought of what I’d have to go through again if they left.”
“That’s understandable.”
How I hated that word. It was as though by using it, you could be exonerated from your misdeeds. As though everything was forgiven, as though everything was out of our control and therefore we were not to blame. It was a crutch we all fell back on to.
At night, I found myself unable to sleep. It was like my body clock had grown too used to sleepless nights just after two weeks. The room was quiet, too still, without Jade’s gentle snoring next to me, without the rustle of sheets as she kicked them off. What I laid in was a gaping dark hole illuminated just slightly by the slice of moonlight through the curtains. It felt too lonely, and reminded me too much of the days after Blake was gone, so I went downstairs.
The pair of I traded my bed for the moonlight mugs were there in the cupboard, but it felt wrong to be using it now, too late somehow.
It was just too quiet. All that sudden silence was too much to bear, so I turned on the radio the whole night, and tried to read. Words just floated across my eyes.
The next morning, I did not go for the book fair. I didn’t even know if it would still be on. Maybe Hyde was as torn up with guilt as I was.
But no. I received so many text messages, missed calls and voice messages from six o’clock onwards on Monday morning that I had to turn my phone off by nine. To him, even if Caleb was mad at him, he had done what he had to so as to protect him and Belle. If only things were as simple as doing what was right.
Hyde came banging on the door that night, demanding to know what the hell was going on, and why I didn’t reply his messages or calls. I thought mom was about to have a heart attack, to find a brawny man with a sun tattoo on his arm roaring at their