Sarah Allen - The Girl Who Chased the Moon

“Why didn’t you look for her?” Emily said.

He shrugged. “Because I knew she didn’t want to be found. She knew that if she contacted me, I would give her anything. But she didn’t want that anymore. A good, decent life for her was only possible if she left everything behind. The Coffeys, Mullaby… me.”

“She could have come back and told the truth!” Emily said. “And then everyone would have seen what a good person she became. She could have been redeemed.”

“I think she found redemption in other ways,” Grandpa Vance said, looking down at his clasped hands. “When she left, she told me that when she had children, she would never raise them the way I raised her. She said she would teach them responsibility. She said her children would be nothing like her. I like to think that at some point in her life she forgave me. But I deserve it if she didn’t.” He took a deep breath. “One thing is for sure, she did raise a remarkable daughter.”

Emily paused, then sat beside him on the steps. She put her hand on his. “So did you, Grandpa Vance,” she said.

And for the very first time, she thought maybe it was okay that they were the only two people here who knew that.

The point was, they knew.

VANCE DEBATED whether or not to go to breakfast that morning, but ultimately decided to go because he didn’t want to answer questions about his absence. No one had to know what had occurred that morning.

When he came in from breakfast a few hours later, he was exhausted, and not his normal exhaustion, the kind he felt minute by minute. The tension from the confrontation with Morgan had manifested itself into a feeling of having survived a collision. His neck muscles ached and his joints were stiff. He was more than ready to lie down and take a nap.

But instead of going straight to his room, he went to check the dryer.

He hadn’t meant to get so angry at Morgan. He didn’t often get angry at other people. There was no sense in it. The person you were angry at was rarely ever repentant. Now, getting angry with yourself had some merit. It showed you had sense enough to chastise the one person who had any hope of benefiting from it. And he was plenty angry with himself.

For many, many things.

For letting this go too far. For living too much in the past. For not being a better parent to Dulcie. For missing so much of Emily’s life already.

He walked to the laundry room and opened the dryer. He reached down, bending at the hip, and tried not to groan at the effort. He felt like such a small man, carrying around a body that was too big for him.

He reached in and expected to feel the smooth, cool curve of the dryer drum. Instead, his fingers brushed something slimy. Something that moved.

He jerked his hand away and stumbled back.

Out jumped a large frog.

He stared at it, frozen.

He watched it hop to the laundry room door, and for a moment he expected to see Lily’s shoes. His eyes actually traveled up, hoping she would appear, standing there, laughing, like she had last time.

But no one was there.

He looked back down and saw that the frog was gone. He quickly stepped out of the room, and when he crossed through the doorway, he felt like he’d walked through a fragrant breeze. His hair even moved. The sleeves of his shirt billowed.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

Lily.

The air was sprinkled with her spirit. He stood still for a long time, not wanting to lose her. He took deep breaths, his heart aching as, with each breath, the scent faded.

And she was gone again.

When he opened his eyes, he saw the frog sitting at the kitchen door. It turned and wiggled through a tear in the screen. Vance automatically followed.

He opened the screen door to see the frog hop across the backyard. He walked after it, all the way to the back of the property. The frog stopped at the gazebo and stared at him.

Vance hesitated, then looked around. Emily had obviously been back here, trimming the boxwoods around the gazebo. He suddenly remembered that Dulcie had done that, too, after Lily had died. She’d tried so hard to keep things going on her own, and she’d only been twelve. He should have been there for her, he should have taken care of things, instead of throwing money at her. But he’d fallen apart, and everything around him had followed suit.

Lily wouldn’t have wanted things like this. Maybe that’s what she was trying to tell him. The last time she’d put a frog in the dryer was to tell him to stop dwelling on the way things used to be, to stop being afraid of change, of what came next.

He had to stop squandering what time he had left. He had a granddaughter to take care of.

He took a deep breath and nodded to the frog in agreement to a silent question. Okay. He would call his old gardener. He knew landscaping was still in that family. He’d get this place fixed up. He turned to look at the house. It looked nothing like when Lily was alive. He’d hire a roofer. A housepainter.

Yes.

And he’d give Emily an allowance. He’d have a talk with her about college. Maybe she would go to State, where Lily had gone, which was only a short drive away. Maybe she would want to come home on breaks. Maybe she would want to live here after she graduated.

Yes.

He would build her a house on the lake, as a wedding gift, maybe.

What if she married Win Coffey?

It wouldn’t be a nighttime wedding, that was for sure.

Or, knowing Win, maybe it would be.

He smiled when he thought about how Emily would look on her wedding day. Lily’s wedding dress was in the attic. Maybe she’d want to wear it.

Julia, of course, would make the cake.

He gave a short laugh at how far ahead of himself he was getting.

He might be tall enough to see into tomorrow, but he hadn’t looked there in a long, long time.

He’d forgotten how bright it was.

So bright he could hardly stand it.

SEVEN DAYS later, Emily felt like she was living in a bubble, waiting for Win’s punishment to end. She began to wonder if his father had grounded him for life.

Not that there wasn’t plenty to distract her. Vance was suddenly on a home improvement kick, which was a good thing, except every morning Emily woke up to hammering on the roof, or the roar of a lawn mower in the backyard, or the sharp, pungent scent of house paint. When Emily asked Vance what was the hurry, he told her rain was coming and he wanted all the work done before then.

A heat wave had hit Mullaby that week, so Emily couldn’t believe rain was coming any time soon. But every time she would come downstairs, irritable from the heat, Grandpa Vance would tell her not to worry, rain was coming to cool things off. When she finally asked him how he knew, he told her his elbow joints told him so. She didn’t argue, because she really didn’t want to get into why he was talking to his elbow joints.

Every day, when Vance took his afternoon nap, she would go next door just as an excuse to spend some time in an air-conditioned house. It didn’t exactly work to her favor, though. Despite the heat, every day Julia made a cake with her kitchen window wide open. When Emily asked her why, she said she was calling to someone. Emily didn’t question this. That Julia believed it was good enough for Emily. While Julia baked, Emily told her about Win, and Julia seemed glad that Emily now knew. Emily knew that Julia had forgiven her mother for what she’d done. Julia seemed to be doing a lot of forgiving lately. She’d lost a lot of her restlessness.

At five o’clock every day, Julia would leave with the cake she’d made, just as Stella came home from work. On the seventh day of this happening, Emily finally asked Stella where Julia was taking the cakes. At first she’d assumed she was taking the cakes to her restaurant, but she became curious when she realized Julia never returned in the evenings.