The Girl Who Chased the Moon

a lot of pictures with her.”

“That’s Logan Coffey,” Julia said.

“That’s who he was talking about.” Emily sat back and smiled. “I met a boy named Win Coffey today. He mentioned that his uncle was Logan Coffey. He seemed surprised that I didn’t know who he was.”

Oh, hell, Julia thought. That can’t be good.

“Was Logan Coffey her boyfriend?” Emily asked.

“We all wondered. He and Dulcie denied it,” Julia said cautiously. “Basically, he was just a shy, mysterious boy your mother tried to coax out of his shell.”

“Does he still live here? Do you think I could talk to him about my mom?”

There was a conspicuous silence. No one wanted to tell her. Julia finally said, “Logan Coffey died a long time ago, sweetheart.”

“Oh.” As if sensing the change in atmosphere, Emily reluctantly closed the book. “I guess I should get back home. Thank you for letting me look through the yearbook.”

Stella waved her hand. “Take it with you. That was twenty pounds ago. I don’t need to be reminded.”

“Really? Thank you!” When Emily stood, so did Julia. Julia walked her to the door and said good night, watching until Emily evaporated into the darkness under the canopy of trees next door.

When Julia walked back in, Stella was standing there, her hands on her hips. “Okay, what’s going on?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why are you acting that way around her?”

“I’m not acting any way around her.” Julia frowned. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’m just surprised, that’s all. I mean, come on. You’re the least maternal person on the planet.” Stella laughed, but stopped when she saw the look on Julia’s face. Julia had gotten used to people saying that to her, but it didn’t make it any easier to hear. It was the price you paid when you were thirty-six and had no apparent interest in sharing your life with anyone. “Oh, I didn’t mean it in a bad way.” And Julia knew Stella didn’t. Neither did Julia’s friends in Baltimore when they said, You love your independence too much. Or You couldn’t be a mom because you’d be cooler than your teenager. “Let’s go out on the back porch and have wine.”

“No, thanks.”

“Julia…”

“I know you have something sweet in here,” Sawyer called from the kitchen, followed by the banging of cabinet doors.

Stella rolled her eyes. “That man can find my stash of Hershey’s Miniatures no matter where I hide them.”

“Let him have them before he tries to raid my kitchen,” Julia said as she headed for the staircase. “I have work to do.”

EMILY SAT on her balcony when she got home, the yearbook on her lap. Earlier that day, she’d gone through the closet and all the drawers in her bedroom, in search of… something. Some clue to her mother’s time here. She’d begun to feel strangely suspicious, like there was something she needed to know that no one was telling her. But there was only her mother’s name on the dusty trunk at the foot of the bed to give any indication that Dulcie had ever even lived there. There was nothing personal. There were no photos, no old letters, not even a scarf or an earring left behind. That’s why Emily had gone over to Julia’s. She’d felt awkward about it at first, but now she was glad she’d done it. The yearbook was such a treasure, if a little confusing. One of the tenets of Roxley School for Girls was that there was no caste system, no superlatives, no elections. How could her mother have been prom queen?

Emily remembered her mother never let her go to the mall because of the open competition there to have something as good as or better than the next person. She always said that fashion should never be a factor in determining someone’s self-worth. So of course Roxley School had uniforms. Yet, here in the yearbook, her mother was in the trendiest clothes of the time, and she had mall hair.

Maybe she’d been embarrassed by who she’d been as a youth. Maybe she thought her grassroots reputation might have been hurt by her tiara-laden past.

Still, that seemed like such a peculiar reason never to come back.

Emily looked up from the yearbook when she heard voices gliding through the still night, coming from the back porch next door. A woman’s laughter. A tinkling of glasses.

Sitting at the old patio table she’d cleared of leaves, she smiled and leaned back. The stars looked twisted in the limbs of the trees, like Christmas lights. She felt like part of the hollow around her was filling. She’d come here with too many expectations. Things weren’t perfect, but they were getting better. She’d even made friends next door.

She took a deep breath of the sweet evening heat, and began to get sleepy.

She only meant to close her eyes for a moment. But she dozed off almost immediately.

WHEN SHE woke up, it was still dark. She blinked a few times, trying to figure out what time it was and how long she’d been asleep.

She looked down and saw the yearbook had fallen from her lap to the leaves on the balcony floor. Her back stiff, she leaned down to retrieve it. When she sat back up, her skin prickled.

The light was back! The light Julia said people thought was a ghost.

Frozen, she watched it in the woodline beyond the old gazebo in Grandpa Vance’s backyard. It didn’t disappear like it had last night. It lingered instead, darting from tree to tree, hesitating in between.

Was it… was it watching her?

She quickly looked next door. There were no lights on. No one to see this but her.

She turned back to the light. What was that?

She made herself stand and slowly walk into her room. She set the yearbook on the bed and paused for a moment. She didn’t know what came over her, but suddenly she took off in a run, her bare feet slapping against the hardwood floors. She slowed down so that she’d be more quiet as she went down the stairs and past Grandpa Vance’s room, but then she took off again. She was briefly foiled by the locked kitchen door, but after fumbling with the lock, she finally opened the door and ran out.

The light was still there! She ran after it, into the wooded area behind the gazebo. The light quickly retreated and she heard footsteps in the leaves.

Footsteps?

Ghosts don’t have footsteps.

After about five minutes of chasing it through the gloomy, moonlit woods, her hands up to swat away the low- hanging branches, it began to occur to her that she had no idea where she was going, or where this patch of trees ended. When the light suddenly disappeared, she felt the first twinge of real worry. What was she doing? But a few more steps and she unexpectedly broke through the trees. She stood there for a moment, out of breath and painfully aware that she was barefoot. She lifted her foot and saw a fine trickle of blood. She’d cut her heel.

Out of the quiet came the distinct sound of a door being closed.

She jerked her head up and looked around and realized she was on the residential end of Main Street, standing in the middle of the park facing the old brick mansions. The woods behind Grandpa Vance’s house must zigzag through other neighborhoods in a crazy labyrinth, ending here, by the bandstand with the crescent moon weathervane. She looked up and down the street, then she looked back into the woods. Surely she saw the light end here?

She limped back home the long way, taking the sidewalks. Her mind was whirling. She couldn’t believe she’d just run through the woods in the middle of the night, chasing a so-called ghost. This was so unlike her.

When she reached Grandpa Vance’s house, she remembered the front door was still locked, so she had to go around back. She saw a hint of light as she walked to the corner.

The back porch light was now on.

Obviously, Grandpa Vance had heard her run out and was waiting for her. She sighed. It took running around at night to get him to come out of his room. How was she going to explain this? She hobbled up to the kitchen porch and almost tripped over something as she approached the door.

She bent and picked up a box of Band-Aids.

A crunching of leaves invaded the quiet, and she turned with a gasp to see the white light disappearing back