The Girl Who Chased the Moon

She stuffed her hands deep into her jeans pockets, making her shoulders hunch a little. “It was what you told me about how you always sensed when your mother baked cakes. I loved that story. I started baking when I was away at school. That’s a whole story unto itself. The point is, at a time in my life when there were a lot of bad things happening, you gave me something good. Something to hold on to. I’m opening my own bakery when I move back to Baltimore. And it all started with you.”

He felt incredibly humbled. She was being too generous. “I didn’t give you anything but a hard time. How can you possibly appreciate that?”

“I’ve learned to hold on to the good parts.”

He didn’t know what to say. He struggled for a few moments before saying, “And that’s not even the big thing?”

She smiled. “No.”

On the one hand, he really wanted to know. On the other, he wanted to make this last. As curious as he was, he would live with the anticipation forever if it meant being able to be with her like this.

He shifted the cake box and opened it. He loved hummingbird cake. It was all he could do not to dig his hand through it like a shovel right now. His mother had tried to hide cakes from him when he was small, but he always found them. He couldn’t help it. At that age, he hadn’t yet developed the willpower to resist. He’d inherited his sweet sense from his grandfather. It was the reason he felt so close to him, closer than to anyone else in his family. His grandfather had been the one who taught him how to turn it off, after one too many stomachaches. And he’d also been the one who’d told Sawyer that not everyone could see what he saw, so be careful who he told. Sawyer normally left it off now, unless he was distracted or tired, then he would unwittingly see the silver glitter undulating out of house windows, or the sparkle trailing out of a child’s lunch box. The only time he consciously switched it on was when Julia baked on Thursday nights. She was hidden from him, but he could see her do this. She was so good at it, the smell so beautiful. And he’d inspired it. He was overwhelmed.

“You’re the only person I’ve ever told about my sweet sense,” he said. He’d never even told his ex-wife.

“I hate to break this to you, but your secret is out.”

He closed the lid to the box before temptation got the better of him. He shook his head. “Uh-uh. That’s not going to work anymore. You can be as hard and sarcastic as you want, but we both know you really have a soft spot for me. You just admitted it.”

“If you tell anyone, I’ll deny it.”

“Come on,” he said, feeling as light as high cotton. “I’ll take you to your truck. I think I even have some gas in a canister in my garage.”

“No, I…”

But he had already grabbed his briefcase and was walking down the steps.

By the time he had the cake and his briefcase in the backseat of the car and the gas canister full of gas in the trunk, she was in the driveway, looking uncomfortable and ridiculously lovely.

He opened the passenger side door for her, and she sighed and got in.

When Sawyer got behind the wheel and started the car, she busied herself by playing with his navigation system. He just smiled when she programmed his GPS to take them to Frank’s Toilet World on the highway.

Instead of Toilet World, in a matter of minutes, he was at her truck. They both got out and he put the gas from the canister into her tank. She thanked him, but before she could get in, he said impulsively, “Have dinner with me tonight.”

She shook her head. “That’s not a good idea.”

“Come on. You have six months left here. Live a little.”

She snorted. “Are you seriously asking me to have a fling with you?”

“Absolutely not,” he said, feigning shock. “I said dinner. It was your lascivious mind that went to the bedroom.”

She smiled, and he was glad. This was much better than the bristle she’d given him since coming back. Without thinking, he lifted his hand to her hair, petting it, then threading his fingers through it so that he could see the pink streak. He’d often wondered why she kept it. It had to have something to do with her pink hair when she was a teenager. Was it her way of remembering? Or maybe it was her reminder to never go back.

When he met her eyes, he was stunned to see that they were huge. They darted once to his lips.

She thought he was going to kiss her.

And she wasn’t running away.

Suddenly his blood was pumping thickly, increasing in a steady rhythm until it was roaring in his ears. And he leaned down and put his lips to hers.

Touching her, kissing her, was everything he remembered. There was such chemistry between them. Christ, he could almost feel it, the break in her exterior. She’d just let him in. It was that effortless. He remembered from the football field, how willingly she had given herself to him, how it had felt like this. And he remembered thinking at the time, This girl must be in love with me.

He lifted his lips from hers, startled.

“I have to go,” she said quickly, not meeting his eyes, obviously embarrassed. “Thank you for the gas.” She wrenched open the door to her truck and jumped in.

He was still standing on the sidewalk long after she drove away.

What just happened here? he thought.

What in the hell just happened?

Chapter 11

Long ago and mostly forgotten, the land surrounding Mullaby was once farmland, hog land. In those hard-scrabble days of North Carolina, when cattle refused to thrive, swine farming was a boon to the state. Like the citizens of many small towns in the area, the people of Mullaby took great pride in the slow, meticulous pit-cooking of pork, and it soon became an important part of defining who they were. It was at first a Sunday tradition, then a symbol of community, and eventually an art form, the art of old North Carolina, an art born out of work so hard it could fell a hearty man.

But as the years passed, the small farms and the once-prosperous hog-trade trails that stretched into Tennessee gradually disappeared. Up cropped neighborhoods and shopping centers, and then the interstate came, taking away people who remembered and bringing in people who didn’t. Eventually the origin and the reasons fell away from the bone, and all that was left was a collective unconscious, a tradition without a memory, a dream every person in the town of Mullaby had on the same date every year.

In the early hours of the morning on the day of the Mullaby Barbecue Festival, a fog would settle low in the air, sneaking into windows and into nighttime visions. You’ll forget when you wake, it would whisper, but know this now and be proud.

This is your history.

STELLA HAD been gone for hours before Julia finally left the house. Stella considered the festival her day of debauchery. She started early and wouldn’t be home until the next day. Sometimes Julia worried about her. She couldn’t help it. She’d gotten to know Stella well in the past year and a half. Julia had never seen anyone try so hard to be happy with what she had. The Stella that Julia knew now was very different from the Stella she’d known in high school. Back then, Stella had been conspicuously showy, just like Dulcie Shelby. They’d been as thick as thieves. She’d driven a shiny black BMW bought specifically to match her shiny black hair. And Julia remembered hearing about how Stella’s decorator mother, who lived in Raleigh while Stella lived in Mullaby with her father, had designed Stella’s bedroom to look like a movie theater, complete with her own private movie screen and a popcorn machine. It had even been featured in some design magazine. To be honest, when Julia came back, she’d been surprised to find Stella still living here. Julia had always imagined those rich girls from school going on to live exotic lives. They’d had everything, every opportunity. When you had that much, why would you squander it? How could you accept anything less?

Stella’s problem, it turned out, was falling for the wrong guy. A tale as old as time. Her ex-husband had done a