The Girl Who Chased the Moon

forgotten.”

“I don’t want to go back to the way things were.”

“You don’t have a choice. You’re grounded. And you’re not allowed to associate with Emily anymore.”

That wasn’t unexpected. “That girl you liked. Didn’t you ever want to tell her?”

Morgan uncrossed his legs, then crossed them again. He stared at his cuticles awhile. “No,” he finally said. “I liked the illusion. When I was with her, I was…”

“Normal,” Win finished for him.

Morgan nodded. “It was like that with your mother for a while. Then Logan was tricked into showing everyone what we could do. Your mother and I had only been married for two years. Nothing has been the same. She’s never forgiven me for not telling her, for making her find out with the rest of the town.”

Every Coffey man had a different way of telling the woman he married, but it was always after the ceremony. A tradition, like all the others, that made no sense. Win had often wondered, if Logan had never revealed the family secret, would his father have ever even told his mother?

“Mom loves you,” Win said, certain that it had been true at least once.

Morgan got up and headed for the front door. “She loves me in the daytime. Everyone loves us in the daytime. Trust me on this, Win. I’m trying to save you some misery.”

Chapter 14

Julia parked her truck by the Dumpster behind the restaurant and thought, What in the hell have I just done? Sawyer had gotten her so mad that she’d slept with him. Or was that really the reason? Maybe it had just been the excuse she’d needed. But everything was messed up now. She didn’t know what to do. There was no goal now, no plan. And now she had to go into her restaurant, which was already packed, wearing the same clothes she’d been wearing yesterday, and smelling of him. She adjusted the rearview mirror and looked at herself. God, she even had beard burn.

She groaned and put her head on the steering wheel. She could go home, she supposed. But then people might come by and ask where she’d been, if something was wrong. It wasn’t worth all the additional explaining. And Sunday was the busiest day at the restaurant, the day that brought in the most money. She had to do this.

She tried to smooth her hair back a little, but it didn’t help much. She sighed and got out.

Coming in through the back meant walking a few steps into the seating area itself, just past the restrooms. She tried to sneak in, but found herself stopping when she saw just how full the place was. She knew how well the business was doing from a financial standpoint, but it was an entirely different experience to see it for herself. Her father would have loved this. He would have been out there talking to people, making them feel welcome, catching up on news. For a moment, she could even see him, in his T-shirt and jeans, ball cap and half-apron He was a wisp of man, another ghost in her life. But then someone passed by her line of vision and she lost him. She suddenly wondered, when she left this place, would he still be here? Would his memory live on?

“Hey, Julia!” someone called from a table, and several people turned to her. More people called out. A few waved. A couple of old ladies she’d gone to church with when she was a kid even got up to invite her to the Sunday night service. Normally, she was here so early that she never saw these people. Oh, she would see them in the grocery store and on the street, but they were never this friendly. For some reason, seeing her here made it different for them. Here, she was the restaurant owner. She was the reason they still had this place to come to, to gather, to socialize. Here, she was Jim’s daughter. And they saw in that something to be admired.

Julia smiled at them, a little dazed, and sidestepped her way into the kitchen.

Hours later, in the thick of the lunch rush, Julia finally finished her cakes. They were being sliced and served even as she stood behind the counter and wrote the names of the day’s cakes on the chalkboard.

She didn’t know it, but while she was in the kitchen, her stepmother, Beverly, had come in, but obviously not to eat. She was waiting for Julia at a table near the door. When she got up, the couple she’d been sitting with looked relieved.

“Julia!” Beverly said as she approached, waving a large brown envelope. Several men looked her way. “I stopped by Stella Ferris’s house looking for you because you’re never here at the restaurant at lunchtime. What are you doing here at lunchtime? You’re only here early in the morning. Everyone knows that. You should set a routine and stick to it.”

Julia was too tired, both emotionally and physically, to deal with Beverly today. She set the chalkboard down. “Let’s talk some other time, Beverly. I’m exhausted and I want to go home.” And where was that, exactly? she thought. Her apartment at Stella’s? Her dad’s old house? Baltimore? Nothing was clear anymore.

“No, no, no. I’m put out enough with you already, missy. If I had known you’d be here, I would have come here first instead of stopping at Stella’s house and waiting for you. That woman is such an odd duck. What are you doing here at lunchtime?” she asked again. “You’re never here at lunchtime.”

“I own this place, Beverly. I can come and go anytime I please.”

“Speaking of which… Excuse me, hon,” she said to a man sitting at the counter as she hipped her way between him and the man beside him. It was a tight fit, but she didn’t seem to mind. Neither did the men. “Here’s the surprise I was talking about!” She slapped the envelope on the counter in front of Julia. “Your father would be so proud of me. I had my lawyer draw up partnership papers for this place. All you have to do is sign over half of J’s Barbecue to me. That way, when we sell it, we can split the profit.”

The men on either side of Beverly looked at Julia curiously, waiting, as Beverly was, for her to say something. People at a nearby table heard, too. The news soon made its way around the room like smoke.

Julia stared at the envelope on the counter. This shouldn’t have mattered, but it did. Just like last night shouldn’t have mattered, but it did.

At least a full minute passed before Beverly began to look uncomfortable. “Now, Julia, you know I deserve this.” She leaned in and said in a softer voice, “I thought we had an understanding.”

“My understanding,” Julia said, finally looking up from the envelope, “is that my father loved you, but you left him.”

That had the restaurant quiet in seconds.

Beverly scooped up the envelope. “Obviously, you’re cranky. From the look of you, you haven’t had much sleep. And don’t think I haven’t noticed that those are the same clothes you were wearing yesterday. Clean up a little, and I’ll meet you outside.”

“No, Beverly. This ends here,” Julia said, and it all came flooding out. “You were everything to him, to the detriment of his relationship with me. I ceased to exist when you came into his life. These scars you like to point out every time you see me were because he wouldn’t look at me once you appeared. He worked damn hard at this business, but it was never good enough for you, was it? When it stopped making money, as paltry as it had been, you left him. Do you honestly think I’m going to give you half of it? That you deserve it?”

Beverly pursed her thin lips, which were lined in pearly peach. “You could learn a thing or two about casting stones. You left him first. And you were the reason he was so deeply in debt. It was all your fault, missy, so don’t get all high and mighty on me.”

Julia couldn’t believe her gall. “How could I be the reason he was in debt?”

Beverly laughed resentfully. “How do you think he paid for that reformatory you went to? What little he made was still too much to apply for aid, and because you were from out of state, the fee was even higher. He mortgaged everything he had for you, you ungrateful girl. And I still didn’t leave him then. I only left when Bud started showing an interest in me and your father didn’t say a word about it. He stopped appreciating me a long time ago. All he talked about was you. How you were the first in his family to go to college, how you lived in the big city, how you were making your dream come true. He conveniently forgot that you tried to shred yourself to pieces, that you got knocked up at sixteen, that you took all his money and then never came back to see