The Girl Who Chased the Moon

now, but it will. Okay?”

Emily reluctantly nodded.

“All right, then.” Julia put the truck in reverse. “I’ll take you home to talk to your grandfather.”

Chapter 8

Good, you’re home,” Grandpa Vance said as he ducked out of his room as soon as Emily came in the front door. She was surprised he’d come out on his own. She’d been prepared to smoke him out. “I was thinking, you need a car so you can go out to the lake whenever you want to, instead of being cooped up here. I happen to have one, you know. A car, I mean.”

“Grandpa Vance-”

“I don’t actually drive it. I’ve never been able to drive. Not with these legs. But your grandmother had a car. Come, I’ll show you.”

What was this all about? Just last night they were eating barbecue in silence. He led her through the kitchen, where he had to turn sideways because his shoulders were broader than the width of the doorway to the porch. She followed him out and around the side of the house. There was an old garage there that looked like it hadn’t been used, or even opened, in ages. The driveway from the street no longer existed, so the garage stood in the grassy side yard like an island that had lost its mainland bridge.

When Vance pulled the garage door up, dust motes sparkled in the sunlight, but they couldn’t see very far inside. He reached around and felt for the light switch. The fluorescent light popped on reluctantly, buzzing and flickering and complaining until it finally decided to shine properly on the car.

“It’s a 1978 Oldsmobile Cutlass,” he said. “Under all that dust, it’s actually brown. If you wouldn’t mind driving something this old, I’ll have someone look it over.”

Emily stared at it. “Did my mom used to drive this?”

“No. When she turned sixteen, she wanted a convertible, so I bought her one.” He paused. “If you want something different, I can arrange that.”

“No,” she said immediately. “I think I like this one. It looks like a muscle car.”

“A muscle car, huh? Lily would have liked that.”

She turned to him. “Who is Lily?”

Vance looked shocked. “Lily was my wife, child,” he said. “Did your mother never talk about her?”

“She didn’t tell me anything.” Emily tucked her hair behind her ears. Talk to him. “Grandpa Vance, today at the lake, there was this party. It turned out to be a party thrown by the Coffeys, and I was asked to leave.”

If indignation were something you could see, it would look exactly like an eight-foot man pulling himself to his full height. “You were asked to leave?”

“Well, not in so many words,” she said, still embarrassed by it. “But it was clear enough that the Coffeys don’t like me. Well, except for Win. I think. Actually, I’m not really sure about him.”

“That was the one thing I asked you to do, Emily!” he said. “To stay away from them.”

Win was right. He said Grandpa Vance would soon tell her that. “You asked me to stay away from the Mullaby lights, not to stay away from the Coffeys. I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong.”

Vance took a deep breath and shook his head. “You’re right. None of this is your fault.” He looked at the car for a long moment before turning off the light. “I had hoped, with all the time that had passed, these old wounds had healed.”

“Is this because of my mom?” she asked hesitantly. “Win told me some pretty unbelievable things today. He said she was cruel. But that can’t be true. Mom was a wonderful person. Wasn’t she a wonderful person? I know you don’t want to talk about her. But please, just tell me that.”

“Dulcie was a handful when she was a young girl,” he said as he pulled the garage door down. “She was so stubborn and high-spirited. She could actually sting people with her energy. But she was also bright and happy and curious. She got that from Lily. Dulcie was twelve when Lily died.” He looked away and rubbed his eyes with an embarrassed flick of his hand. “I didn’t know how to handle her on my own. The only thing I could think to do was give her everything she asked for. She tested me at first, asking me for outrageous things, just to see how far I would go. But I never said no. So she got the best of everything. As she got older, she began to take great pleasure in teasing people who didn’t have as much as she did. She could be very cruel sometimes. Julia was a frequent target.”

Emily felt like she’d been walking upstairs and had suddenly missed a step. “My mom was cruel to Julia?”

He nodded slowly. “And others,” he added reluctantly.

Emily could feel herself resisting this, wanting to push it away. This couldn’t be her mother he was talking about. Her mother had been a good person, a selfless person. She’d wanted to save the world.

“She was the queen bee of her social circle, and her word was law. She had an incredible power over them. Who she accepted, they accepted. Who she shunned, they shunned,” he said. “So when she took this shy, troubled boy named Logan Coffey under her wing and told everyone to accept him, they did.”

“Win said he committed suicide.”

“Yes.”

Emily paused, wondering if she really wanted to ask what she was about to ask. “Did my mom have something to do with it?”

She waited, holding her breath, until he finally answered. “Yes.”

“What did she do?” she whispered.

Vance seemed to struggle with what to say. He looked up at the sky for a moment, then said, “What did Win tell you?”

“He said Logan loved my mom, but his family didn’t approve of her. He said Logan broke tradition to be with her, but all my mom wanted was to trick him into revealing a Coffey family secret.”

Vance sighed. “The Coffeys are much more social these days, but you have to understand, back then they were very exclusive. Status was important to Dulcie. It started with me, giving her everything she wanted. It all got wrapped up in her grief over losing her mother. If only she had more, then she’d be happy. When the Coffeys wouldn’t let her into their social circle, when they frowned on her relationship with Logan, it made her angry. Not just angry. Livid. She had a hard time with her temper after Lily died. She lashed out a lot. The Coffeys had, and still have, one particular quirk: They never come out at night. Never. But Logan came out at night for Dulcie. She assembled most of the town in front of the bandstand in the park one night, saying she was going to perform for them. She had a lovely singing voice. Instead, she led Logan onstage.”

She waited for more. There had to be more. “That doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “He committed suicide because she made him come out at night? That’s the big secret? That’s ridiculous. That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Tradition has always been important to the Coffeys,” Vance said. “And Logan was a very sensitive, very troubled young man. His suicide almost drove the Coffeys away. If they’d left and taken their money with them, Mullaby would have been ruined. That was the last straw. No one wanted anything to do with Dulcie after that, after what she had cost the Coffey family, after what she had almost cost the town. She finally did something no one would forgive her for, something I couldn’t buy her way out of.”

Emily was several feet away before she realized she was backing away from him.

“I haven’t spoken of it in twenty years,” Vance said. “And I was going to keep it from you, because you were better off not knowing. The Coffeys obviously thought differently. I’m sorry.”

Emily continued to back away. Vance simply watched her go, as if leaving him was what he expected, what he was used to. Without another word, Emily turned and walked back into the house.

When she reached her room, she just stood there, not knowing what to do. Coming here had been a mistake. A huge mistake. She should have known her mother had a good reason for keeping this place from Emily. This place wasn’t right. There was something distinctly off about it. She’d felt it all along. People here committed suicide just for breaking tradition. For coming out at night. And this person everyone remembered as