The Girl Who Chased the Moon

The postcard was from Nancy, one of her best friends in Baltimore. Because Julia couldn’t afford a phone in her apartment while living here, once a month or so Nancy would write with what was going on with Julia’s old group of friends-a rowdy group of young professionals who drank cocktails and talked a lot without saying very much. Julia had suspected that they’d been popular kids in high school, and she liked that they thought she was one of them. This particular postcard had thrown Julia for loop. On it, Nancy-whom Julia didn’t even know was seeing anyone-had written that she had suddenly gotten married. She’d also written that their friend Devon had moved to Maine and their friend Thomas was taking a job in Chicago. Nancy promised to give Julia all the details as soon as she got home from her honeymoon in Greece.

Her honeymoon.

In Greece.

Julia hadn’t expected everything to remain static while she was away, she just didn’t think things would change so much. And all at once. She thought there would be more to come back to. But now, when she left Mullaby and moved back to Baltimore, there would be hardly any friends to reconnect with. That had been part of the plan, part of what had been keeping her going.

She tried to rally. She still had her Blue-Eyed Girl Bakery dream. The bakery, after all, was the whole reason she was doing this, the reason she had confined herself to this hell for two years. Growing apart from her friends had always been a risk. Blank-slate friendships were thin and temperamental. She knew that. There was no history there to cement people together, for better or worse.

So she would just deal with this.

She’d dealt with losing much worse.

She heard a splashing sound, and looked down the sidewalk to see Emily in front of Vance’s house. There was a sudsy bucket by her feet, a sponge in her hand, and a large old car at the curb, a car that was steadfastly refusing to get clean despite Emily’s effort. And it was a lot of effort. Work-off-your-frustration effort.

Julia tucked the postcard into one of the catalogs in her bundle of mail, then walked over to Emily. She hadn’t seen her since Saturday and wondered if she and her grandfather were communicating any better, if Vance had finally told her everything. She stopped a few feet away from her. “Nice car.”

Emily looked up. Her fine blond hair, as usual, seemed suspended in midair, half up in a ponytail, half hanging down around her face. “Grandpa Vance is letting me drive it. His mechanic is picking it up tomorrow morning, but I pushed it out of the garage so I could wash it first.”

“I didn’t know Vance still had this.” Julia walked over to the car and leaned down to look in a dusty window. “It belonged to his wife, didn’t it?”

“Yes.”

Julia watched Emily scrub the hood for a few moments. “Have you talked to your grandfather?”

“Yes.” That one word conveyed all Julia needed to know. Emily used her forearm to push some hair out of her face, then resumed scrubbing. “I didn’t know it was going to be like this. But my mom knew. I’m sure that’s why she never came back, and why she never told me about this place. I’m beginning to think she wouldn’t want me here.”

Julia looked from Emily, to the car, and back again. If Julia had had a car at Emily’s age, she knew exactly what she would have done. Hell, she was even thinking about it now. “Planning to leave?”

Emily looked surprised that Julia had caught on so quickly. She shrugged. “I don’t have anywhere to go.”

“Well, if you’ll hold off for a little while, the Mullaby Barbecue Festival is this weekend. It’s a pretty big deal around here. Do you want to go with me?”

Emily didn’t look at her. “You don’t have to do this, Julia.”

“Do what?”

“Try so hard to be friends with me. My mom was cruel to you. You don’t have to be nice to me.”

Oh, hell. “So Vance told you that, too?”

“He said my mom used to tease you. What did she do?” Emily finally met her eyes. If she were any more sincere, she would dissolve into fresh air and blow away.

Julia shook her head. “You shouldn’t worry about it. It has nothing to do with you.”

“Please tell me.”

“It’s not exactly my shining moment, Em,” Julia said. “But, if you must know, aside from the pink hair, black clothes, and black lipstick, I used to wear a studded leather choker that looked like a dog collar to school every day. Your mother would bring dog treats to school and throw them at me in the hallways. Once, she even gave me flea powder. When she didn’t have anything on hand, she simply barked at me.” She paused at the memory. She hadn’t thought about that in a long time. “To be fair, I gave her a lot to make fun of. You’ve seen the photos. I probably brought it on myself.”

“Don’t. Don’t justify it. No one should ever compromise the dignity of another human being.” She shook her head. “My mom taught me that. Can you believe it?”

“Yes, actually,” Julia said. “I can.”

“You told me she was popular.”

“She was popular.”

“But no one liked her?”

Julia thought about it for a moment. “Logan Coffey did.”

Emily dropped the sponge she was holding into the bucket at her feet. “I’m sorry for what she did to you.”

“I would never blame you for something your mother did, sweetheart. No one worth your time would. You’re not who your mother was. In fact, I’m beginning to think you are who your mother became. It might be worth staying, if just to prove that to everyone.”

Emily seemed to be thinking it over when they both heard a car door slam. They turned to see Sawyer standing beside a white Lexus hybrid parked behind Julia’s truck next door.

He took off his sunglasses and tucked them into the collar of his shirt, then walked toward them.

“Is he here for your date?” Emily asked.

Julia turned to her. “What date?”

“He asked you out for Monday night. When we were at the lake.”

Julia threw her head back and groaned. “Oh, damn.”

Emily laughed. “You forgot? You forgot you had a date with him?”

“Sort of.” Julia looked at her and smiled, glad that at least Emily was finding some humor in this.

“Hello, ladies,” Sawyer said from behind her.

“Hi, Sawyer. Julia didn’t forget you were going out,” Emily said. “She’s… just running late. It’s my fault. She was going to change when I stopped her to show her my car. Right, Julia?”

Julia looked at her strangely before realizing that Emily thought she was helping. “Right,” Julia said. “Let me know about going to the festival on Saturday, okay?”

“I will.”

Julia turned and took Sawyer’s arm and led him next door. “She thinks you’re here to take me on a date,” she leaned into him and whispered. “And she just went to a lot of trouble to help me save face because she thought I forgot. Go along with it, okay?”

“Okay,” he said amiably as they walked up the steps to Stella’s house. “But I am here to take you out. And obviously you did forget.”

They entered the house and Julia set her mail on the table in the foyer. “I’m not going on a date with you,” she said.

“You accepted in front of Emily. And she just covered for you. What kind of example are you setting?”

“That’s a low blow. Just wait here until she goes inside.”

He went to the living room window and pushed the curtain aside. “That might take a while. That car is filthy.”

Julia smiled. “She seems thrilled with it.”

“How was she when you took her home Saturday? She seems okay now.”

“She’s coping. Her grandfather finally told her some things about her mother’s time here. I think she’ll be better prepared for snubs from the Coffeys now.”

“She really is nothing like Dulcie.” He let the curtain fall, then walked over to Stella’s striped silk couch-the one she didn’t let people sit on-and sat, crossing his legs and stretching his arms over the back. She found herself