PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF BARBARA DAVIS
“A story of love, hope, redemption, and rediscovering who you were meant to be . . . will resonate with readers who love a tale full of heart and soul.”
—Camille Di Maio, bestselling author of The Memory of Us and The Beautiful Strangers
“Infused with honesty, friendship, and a touch of romance. Davis creates nuanced and well-developed characters . . . a carefully woven tale that the reader won’t soon forget.”
—Emily Cavanagh, author of The Bloom Girls and This Bright Beauty
“Brimming with compassion and a refreshingly grown-up romance . . . an uplifting tale about starting over and how letting go of our nevers just might be the only thing that lets us move forward.”
—Emily Carpenter, author of Until the Day I Die
“Heartfelt and beautifully written.”
—Diane Chamberlain, USA Today bestselling author of Pretending to Dance
“A beautifully crafted page-turner . . . Part contemporary women’s fiction, part historical novel, the plot moves seamlessly back and forth in time to unlock family secrets that bind four generations of women . . . This novel has it all.”
—Barbara Claypole White, bestselling author of Echoes of Family
“Everything I love in a novel . . . elegant and haunting.”
—Erika Marks, author of The Last Treasure
“A book about love and loss and finding your way forward. I could not read it fast enough!”
—Anita Hughes, author of Christmas in Paris
“One of the best books out there, and Davis is genuinely proving herself to be one of the strongest new voices of epic romance.”
—RT Book Reviews (4½ stars)
“Davis has a gift for developing flawed characters and their emotionally wrenching dilemmas . . . a very satisfying tale.”
—Historical Novel Society
“A beautifully layered story.”
—Karen White, New York Times bestselling author of Flight Patterns
OTHER BOOKS BY BARBARA DAVIS
When Never Comes
Love, Alice
Summer at Hideaway Key
The Wishing Tide
The Secrets She Carried
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2020 by Barbara Davis
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542006491
ISBN-10: 154200649X
Cover design by Micaela Alcaino
For the women . . .
Healers of hearts,
Workers of light,
Makers of magick.
CONTENTS
START READING
PROLOGUE
ONE
TWO
THREE
Rosemary . . . for remembrance.
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
Bluebells . . . for truth.
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
Calendula . . . for the healing of scars.
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
Lilies . . . for rebirth.
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
Basil . . . for the mending of rifts.
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
Lily of the Valley . . . for reconciliation.
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
Dandelion . . . for resilience.
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-SIX
Gardenia . . . for secret love.
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
LAVENDER & LEMON SUGAR SCRUB
SILKY BEDTIME BATH TEA
BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Love works magic.
It is the final purpose
Of the world story,
The Amen of the universe.
—Novalis
PROLOGUE
A body that’s been submerged in water undergoes a different kind of decomposition: harsher in some ways, kinder in others—or so I’ve been told. We Moons wouldn’t know about that. We choose fire when our time comes, and scatter our ashes on land that has been in our family for more than two centuries. Mine are there now too, mingled with the dust of my ancestors.
Can it really be only weeks that I’ve been gone? Weeks hovering between worlds, unable to stay, unwilling to go, tethered by regret and unfinished business. The separation feels longer, somehow. But it is not my death I dwell on today but the deaths of two young girls—Darcy and Heather Gilman—more than eight years ago now. They’d been missing nearly three weeks when their bodies were finally pulled from the water. It was a ghastly thing to watch, but watch I did. They were dragging my pond, you see, convinced they would find what they were looking for. And why not, when the whole town was looking in my direction? Because of who I was—and what I was. Or at least what they imagined me to be.
Memory, it seems, does not die along with the body. It’s been years since that terrible day at the pond, and yet I remember every detail, replaying them again and again, an endless, merciless loop. The police chief in his waders, his men with their boat. The ME’s van looming nearby, its back doors yawning wide in anticipation of new cargo. The bone-white face of a mother waiting to learn the fate of her girls. Whispers hissing through the crowd like electric current. And then, the telling shrill of a whistle.
A hush settles over us, the kind that carries a weight of its own—the weight of the dead. No one moves as the first body appears, the glimpse of an arm in a muddy brown coat, water pouring from the sleeve as the sodden form is dragged up onto the bank. A bloated, blackened face, partly obscured by hanks of sopping dark hair.
They’re careful with her, handling her with a tenderness that’s gruesome somehow, and agonizing to watch. They’re preserving the evidence, I realize, and a cold lick goes down my spine. So they can make their case. Against me.
A short time later a second body appears, and there comes a broken wail, a mother’s heart breaking for her darlings.
And that’s how it all unraveled, the awful day that set up all the rest. The end of the farm. And, perhaps, the end of the Moons.
ONE
July 16
Althea Moon was dead.
That was the gist of the letter. Dead in her bed on a Sunday morning. Dead of a long and wasting illness. Dead and already cremated, her ashes scattered at the rise of the full moon, as laid out in her will.
The room blurred as Lizzy scanned the letter through
