“Be my guest,” Carlie said.
Moonstone took the journal into both hands and held it against her ample chest. Without warning, her eyes fluttered and rolled back in her head.
We stared at her as the muscles in her face twitched and her mouth moved without making any sounds. I squeezed Carlie’s knee under the table. At least ten seconds went by.
As fast as it had come, she just as quickly changed back to normal. She blinked, as if she weren’t sure we were really there. “Z was in his twenties.”
“How do you know?” Carlie asked.
“Beth told me.”
That afternoon, the temperatures reached the mideighties. Hot and mentally exhausted after the day’s events, Carlie asked if we could go down to the river for a cleansing swim. I put some cold drinks in a backpack and called to Moonshine and Duke. The four of us walked past the garden and down to the river’s edge.
We swam for a few minutes until the chill of the water forced us onto the large rock that jutted out of the water like a small island. Four people could easily sit on it, and as kids we’d often done so. Time and water had worn holes and dips, making it nature’s best chair.
Carlie closed her eyes and tilted her face toward the sky. Slim and toned, the woman did not look a day over thirty. I didn’t care what she thought or saw when she looked in the mirror. Her sky-blue bathing suit brought out her eyes and contrasted with her alabaster skin. A layer of slick sunscreen beaded on her skin.
I traced my thumb down the arch of one of her feet.
She giggled and snatched her foot away. “Tickles.”
“Good to know.” I did the same to her other foot.
“Stop that.” She yanked that one away and wrapped her arms around bent knees. I scrambled up and plopped down next to her. Water cascaded from my body and soaked into the hot surface of the gray rock. I kissed a shoulder, then nibbled at her neck. Her skin was cold from the chilly water, but soon we would become too warm and need another dip.
“God, I love it here,” I said. On the other side of the river a thicket of trees grew tall, sheltering the spot from wind. Not that there was any today. This was the perfect summer day. Not too hot but hot enough to swim. The water so clear I could see straight down to the rocky bottom.
A blue dragonfly hovered nearby before darting away. From the shore, Duke barked at us.
“Lie down, boy,” I shouted to him.
He wagged his tail, then shook his coat dry before collapsing next to Moonshine, exhausted from his swim.
“Isn’t it weird that we now know a Moonshine and Moonstone?” Carlie asked in a lazy voice. In mere minutes, the sun and river had done its magic on us. The horrific morning couldn’t be believed here next to the green water and the blue sky and the scent of moss drying on rocks.
She buried her face against my shoulder. “I need my sunhat and sunglasses.”
“I’ll get the backpack. I want a beer anyway.”
Before she could stop me, I dived back in and swam to shore. I put her hat on my head and held the backpack in one hand and swam with my free arm and legs back to the rock.
“I’m impressed, Mr. Paisley. Swimming with one arm in the air like you’re still a kid.”
“It’s only a few feet,” I said as I followed the backpack onto the rock.
She snatched her hat from my head. “I’ll take that before I decide you look better in it than I do.” Straw and wide-brimmed, it sufficiently shadowed her face.
I dug both our sunglasses out of the backpack and tossed hers over to her.
“Bless you,” she said. “As much as I love the sun, it hurts my light eyes.”
“Beautiful eyes.” I leaned close to peck her mouth before settling across from her.
She moved to a dip in the surface of the rock that was almost like one of those low beach chairs. “It’s so nice here. I always loved your swimming hole. Those were some of the happiest times of my life.”
“For me too,” I said. “I’m so grateful my mom kept the property. This land is worth much more than I could have ever bought it for on the open market. She sold it to me for what they’d paid back in the late seventies.”
“She wanted you to have it.”
“Yeah. She knew how happy I was here.”
“What was it like for you after you left here? High school in LA seems scary.”
“It was all right. Bigger but pretty much the same. Cliques. Popular kids. Bullied kids. Ones like me that kind of flew under the radar.”
“True enough,” she said.
“I missed you and this.” I waved toward the water. “Being in the country where I belonged. But I played sports every quarter, and that brought the positive kind of attention that I needed to get friends.”
“Did you have any girlfriends down there?”
I chuckled. “No way. I had this plan to find my way back to you.”
She flicked my thigh. “You’re such a liar.”
“No, for real. I compared everyone to you. All the girls were so fake down there. Drew hated it and was always trying to fix me up with a friend of whomever he was dating at the time.”
“He was always such a lady killer.”
“When we were little, I always figured you’d go for him. He was so much more outgoing.”
She shook her head, smiling over at me from underneath the brim of her latticed hat. “It was always you. From day one.”
“I can’t wait to tell him that.” I laughed as I reached into the backpack for a beer. “You want one?”
“Why not?”
She took the can I offered. I put a cap on to shield my eyes and
