The Girl Who Chased the Moon

A guarded look came to his face. “Alone, as in leaving and never coming back?”

“Alone, as in leaving this apartment for a walk,” she said. “Then, who knows?”

“Okay,” he said. “Lay it on me.”

“Stay right there.” She went to her bedroom and reached under her bed, feeling around until she found the old algebra textbook she had hidden there. She opened the book and looked at the two photos she had of her baby. Sawyer’s baby. She’d put the photos in this book when she was at Collier, and could never think of anywhere else to store them. She set the book on her bed and took the photos to the living room. She felt jumpy, and her skin was alive with a thousand prickles.

He looked up at her as she entered. Before she could talk herself out of it, she held the photos out to him and he took them.

She watched as he looked at them, confused at first, then alert. He met her eyes with a short, quick jerk of his head.

“She was born on May fifth,” she said. “Six pounds, six ounces. She looked nothing like me and everything like you. Blond hair and blue eyes. A couple from Washington, D.C., adopted her.”

“I have a daughter?”

She nodded, then left before he could ask any more questions.

HEAT RADIATED from the metal bleachers in blurry, undulating light. Julia’s spot when she was a teenager was where the top bleacher butted against the enclosed media box, forming a pocket of concrete shade.

She hadn’t been here since she was sixteen. It felt different, but eerily the same. From here, she could see down onto the fifty-yard line where it had all happened, where her life had changed. The lumbering brick school building on the far side of the field was quiet, but the windows were open, indicating that teachers were in their classrooms, getting ready for the new school year. The cafeteria was on the ground floor and faced the field. She thought of what Sawyer had said about how he used to watch her on the bleachers at lunch.

She’d been there for at least an hour, wondering how much time he needed with this, or if all the time in the world wouldn’t be enough, when something suddenly caught her eye and, on the left side of the field, she saw Sawyer walking toward her.

He stopped at the base of the bleachers and looked up at her. The photos were in his hand. It was hard to tell his expression. Was he mad? Would this change everything all over again? The protective part of her steeled herself for that possibility, even though she knew she wasn’t as easily hurt as she’d been when she was sixteen. She had a lot fewer expectations than she did then. She had a very long list of Things She Would Never Have, and Sawyer had always been on that list, along with her daughter, long fingers, and the ability to turn back time.

He started up the bleachers toward her. The first step he took, he was sixteen, blond and cherubic, the wish every girl in school made when she blew out candles on her birthday cake. With every step he took, he got older, the cherubic cheeks giving way to sharper cheekbones, his skin growing more golden, his hair a darker blond. By the time he reached her, he was the Sawyer of today, of this morning… of last night.

Without a word, he sat beside her.

“How did you know I would be here?” she asked, because even she didn’t know she’d be here until she’d walked by and saw the school.

“Just a hunch.”

“Go ahead,” she said. “Ask.”

“I don’t have to ask the big question. I know why you didn’t tell me.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

“Do you know where she is now? What she’s doing?” He looked at the photos. “Her name?”

“No.” She tugged on the cuffs of her sleeves. “The papers are sealed. I can’t find her unless she wants to find me. You said you followed the scent home when your mother baked, so I have it in my head-in my heart-that if I just keep baking, she’ll find me. That this will bring her home.” Julia looked down, then across the field. Anywhere but him. “I think she has your sweet sense. I couldn’t eat enough cake to satisfy her when I was pregnant.”

“That’s what my mother said when she was pregnant with me.”

“I wanted to keep her so badly,” she said. “For a long time, I was angry at everyone for not helping me make that happen. It took a while to realize that it was just misplaced guilt, because I wasn’t well enough to care for her on my own.”

He was the one to look away this time. “Saying I’m sorry doesn’t feel like enough. I feel like I owe you so much more. I owe you for her.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe I have a daughter.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” she said. “She was a gift.”

“Your hair is still pink in this photo.” He lifted the one of her holding the baby in the hospital. “When did you stop dyeing it?”

“When I went up to school. I cut it all off shortly after that photo was taken.”

“When did you start with the pink streak?” Julia nervously tucked it behind her ear. “In college. My friends in Baltimore think I do it to be edgy. But I do it because it reminds me of what I can get through… of what I have gotten through. It reminds me not to give up.”

There was a long silence. A maintenance man on a riding lawn mower drove onto the football field and started taking wide loops around it. Julia and Sawyer watched him. “Are you going to stay?” Sawyer finally asked.

How did she answer that? He was being very calm. She had no idea how he really felt. “I spent so much time telling myself that this wasn’t home that I started to believe it,” she said carefully. “Belonging has always been tough for me.”

“I can be your home,” he said quietly. “Belong to me.” She stared at him, stunned by his whispered grand gesture, until he turned to her. When he saw the tears in her eyes, he reached for her. She held on to him and cried, cried for so long her throat ached, cried until the football field was all mown and the air smelled of cut grass, and bugs swarmed the track.

To think, after all this time, after all the searching and all the waiting, after all the regret and the time she’d spent away, she came back to find that happiness was right where she’d left it.

On a football field in Mullaby, North Carolina.

Waiting for her.

Chapter 15

Emily stuffed her hands in her shorts pockets as she walked down the sidewalk that night. There were no cars out, but she kept listening for them, stepping into the darkness in between each streetlight and pausing, waiting for some indication that Win had invited the whole town to this, like her mother had done.

Since coming to Mullaby, Emily had discovered that her disbelief could be suspended further than she ever thought it could, and there was a small part of her that wondered, what if it was true? If giants exist, if wallpaper can change on its own… why couldn’t Win do… what he said he could do? If it was real, that meant this wasn’t about revenge. This wasn’t about what her mother had done. The closer she got the more she wanted it to be true.

When she reached Main Street, she stopped on the sidewalk by the park. No one was there. Gray-green moonlight illuminated the area, and the shadows from the trees in the back looked like brittle witches’ fingers reaching across the grass toward her. She took a step into the park, then made herself walk to the bandstand.

She stood a few feet away from the main staircase and stared up at it, all the way up to the crescent moon weather-vane, then she turned back to the street, to see if Win was coming from that direction.

“You came. I didn’t think you would.”

His voice startled her, coming out of nowhere. “Where are you?” she called into the park, her eyes darting around, the shadows playing tricks on her.

“Behind you.” She spun back to the bandstand. Her hands had started shaking, so she curled them into fists, her fingernails biting into her palms. Looking closely, she could finally make out a figure in a dark pool at the back of the stage.