The Moon Sisters (32 page)

The Cowpasture Trail was hard-packed, and cut through a forest of trees and rhododendron bushes before opening into a wide-open field. There we found the ruins of an old prison, bird boxes, and the overgrown remains of a roadway. We passed a defunct well and a purposeless chunk of old stairs, then followed a stream for a while before crossing a bridge.

“We’re going off trail up here. Best way to avoid any campers,” Hobbs said.

We did it right where he said we should—left the trail and walked into the fieldlike boglands, where the ground sucked at our feet like wet blankets.

“This is illegal, you know, leaving the trail,” Jazz said, and Hobbs laughed.

“We’re not going to hurt anything,” he said. “Just relax.”

Jazz gasped. “Olivia!”

“What?”

She crouched, and when she stood again she held something beside my face. “They’re cranberries, see?”

“What happened to ‘This is illegal’?” Hobbs asked.

“Oh, shut up,” said Jazz.

With care, I took the berries from her and brought them so close that my eyelashes brushed over them. “They’re green.”

“And?”

“Nothing,” I said, and tried not to think of this as a sign that our timing was somehow off.

We walked until Jazz’s heels started to bother her again, and then Hobbs pulled out his tarp and settled it on the ground, said right there was as good a place as any to stop. When Jazz took off her shoes and socks, I followed suit, and then the three of us sat together, me in the middle.

“Hawk,” Hobbs said, and I followed the flight of the bird as best I could.

Minutes ticked by as water lulled beneath us and the sun sagged in the sky. I stretched my toes, breathed in the pine-scented air.

“Did you bring any snacks, Olivia?” Jazz asked. “I’m hungry again.”

“No,” I said, but she still leaned close when I opened my suitcase. I shifted it away from her.

“What did you bring anyway?” she asked.

“Only one thing that matters,” I said, and settled Mama’s ashes on the tarp between us before closing the latches.

“You going to scatter those?” Hobbs asked, handing each of us a sandwich. Soft bread gave under my fingers, beneath a thin layer of plastic.

“No,” I said. “But she always wanted to come here. She’s here now, so she should be out with us and not stuck in a bag.”

“She’s still stuck in a bag,” Jazz muttered, and whatever had existed of my appetite vanished altogether. Mama’s ashes were in a bag like the one holding my dinner. I rested my sandwich on the tarp and tucked my knees against my chest.

My mind wandered as they ate. Leapfrogged from one topic to another. How my father was doing, and Babka. The letter my sister and I had argued about. Hobbs. The green cranberries.

Mama. How she might’ve been sitting beside me in the flesh, instead of as dust, if things had been different.

We made it, Olivia
.

A breeze kicked up, turned my skin to gooseflesh.

“Not hungry, Wee Bit?” Hobbs asked, then lifted his water bottle for a drink.

I listened to his gulps as I rubbed my hands over the prickle of new hair on my legs. “Not yet.”

“I keep thinking about Mom’s story,” Jazz said, surprising me. “She always thought if she got down here she’d be inspired, but I don’t know that I’d call this an inspirational setting.”

I lay back and flipped onto my stomach. Stretched my arms beyond the edge of the tarp until they grazed long grasses, pushed my fingertips down into wet earth. Wondered over bodies that might be held captive in the acidic bogland beneath us. If that didn’t inspire a story or two, I wasn’t sure what would.

Hobbs leaned back on his elbows beside me. “Tell me about this tale. Is it a worthy West Virginia ghost story?”

“It’s worthy,” I said, turning onto my back again. “But it’s not a ghost story. And it isn’t finished. You sure you want to hear?”

It was Jazz who told it—or an abbreviated version of it anyway—whether he wanted to hear or not.

“Once upon a time,” she said, “there was a sun fairy who fell asleep in the forest. A power-hungry warlock found and took her and her gold-saturated cloak, then cast a spell on her so she’d forget her actual identity. He wanted the gold cloak, at least at first. That’s all he cared about.”

“That warlock’s name Bill, by any chance?” asked Hobbs, and I took his hand and squeezed it.

“Cillian,” said Jazz. “He holed her up in his tree house, and—”

“Tree house?” asked Hobbs.

“It was a fancy tree house, all right?” she said, and I smiled when I caught a hint of defensiveness in her voice over our mother’s creative choices. “As I was saying,” she continued, “he holed her up in his tree house, then proceeded to take over her life. He ate pieces of her.”

“That’s nice,” said Hobbs.

“It’s what a warlock had to do to transmogrify into another living thing,” she said. “That’s a mouthful, isn’t it? Transmogrify. But that was that greedy warlock’s plan—to become a god, in truth.”

The wisps played a central role, Jazz explained. They knew the fairy’s true identity—their land was where Cillian had found her to begin with—but most of them had been captured and immobilized in a box. Maybe they’d be able to somehow reveal the truth if they were set free, but it wasn’t clear how, or if, that would happen.

“So there isn’t an ending?” asked Hobbs.

“Nope,” Jazz said. “Grates, doesn’t it?”

I laughed. “I thought you hated this story.”

“I do,” she said. “Completely.”

“Hmm.”

“You know what I think?” Jazz said. “I think that whole peanut-butter-and-jelly ending thing threw her off.”

Hobbs made a noise of justifiable confusion.

“Mama promised Papa one Valentine’s Day that she’d find a way to work his favorite sandwich into the end of her book,” I told him. “She said she’d find a way to do it if it was the last thing she did.”

Jazz snorted. “That’s what happens when you don’t make your husband a card or even a decent meal on Valentine’s Day. I think she forgot, I really do, so she made up that ridiculous promise on the spot. Stupidest thing ever. I could’ve written a hundred ends to that story.”

“I still don’t get it,” Hobbs said, and I patted his arm.

“It’s complicated.”

“All right, then.” He stood. “I should get that tent set up before it gets full dark, anyway. Be back.”

I listened to his retreating steps, my thoughts still on the story. Though I couldn’t say for certain why the sun smelled like my mother, my brain with its crossed wires probably made the connection a long time ago, with Mama writing about a sun fairy and all. It’s too bad the story was never finished. I’d always liked it—its roundness, the way it rolled over my imagination like a warm peach. Maybe Jazz was right and there were a hundred ways it could’ve been ended, but I remembered too well the panic in Mama’s eyes when Papa wanted to take her to the glades.

I can’t, I can’t. I don’t know why, I …

Hope was a powerful thing. Difficult to risk.

“So what will you do?” Jazz asked. “Sit out here with Hobbs until morning?”

I focused on the thin hum of mosquitoes. Twilight was upon us. “Hobbs and the bugs,” I told her.

She muttered something about being prepared, then unzipped her backpack; in my mind, a black ladder sprouted from the bag like a fast-growing weed. Seconds later, she handed me a bottle of spray. I sat and pumped repellent into my hands, rubbed it over my arms and legs.

“You’ll be all right?” she asked.

“I’ll be fine.”

“Will you be tomorrow?”

I grimaced and handed the spray back to her as the wind kicked up again. “When I fail, you mean?”

“Cut me some slack, will you, Olivia? I’m trying here.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that, wasn’t used to my sister
trying
.

“You have something extra to wear in case it gets cold later?” she asked. “What
did
you pack in that bag of yours?”

“Stop worrying about what I packed all of a sudden. I’ll be fine.”

She pulled on her socks. “I’m going to the tent as soon as Hobbs puts it up,” she said. “The two of you make me feel like an extra part, and I’m tired anyway. I didn’t sleep well last night.”

It had been my journey all along, but I still felt a stab of disappointment that Jazz wasn’t more invested or even a little curious about what the night might bring.

“You don’t want to stick around and look for inspirations?” I said. “I think you’re a liar, you know. You don’t hate Mama’s story at all.”

“I do hate it,” she said, but her voice turned to cotton.

We sat without speaking for a while, as small noises echoed from the edges, where Hobbs worked to set up the tent.

“What do you hope for that you want to taste it so much anyway?” Jazz asked, and I jerked around to face her. “Why are you doing this, for real?”

“You know why,” I said. “I’m doing it for her. For Mama.”

“But she’s gone, Olivia. The dead don’t need hope.”

I shifted the bag of ashes closer to my side. “Sometimes it’s like you have no emotions at all,” I told her. “You’re untouchable.”

“I’m not—” She sighed, and silver dust glinted against the darkening sky. “I’m not trying to be mean, all right? All I’m trying to say
is that it might be dangerous to give another person—or anything—too much power over your actions.”

It wasn’t a surprising thing to hear coming from Jazz’s mouth. She preferred to control everything herself.

“I just want to talk a minute—don’t start freaking out,” she said, and I realized that my hand was in my hair again. “I’m not untouchable. But I’ve thought about it some since Mom died, and I think it’s wrong to take on or inherit another person’s life goals. Sometimes I felt that was all Mom wanted for me—to be a better version of her. I hated that.”

Jazz had never talked like this with me before—like a confidante, a friend. But, as much as I appreciated the turn things had taken, I wished she’d chosen a different topic. I didn’t want to criticize Mama, not in any way, ever. At the same time, I remembered the conversation I had with her so many years ago about Jazz and college, and knew that what Jazz said held at least some truth.

“I’m not trying to live another person’s dreams,” I said, putting the spotlight back on me, even though I didn’t want it there, either. Calling a dream a
dream
, too, and not
life goals
or—Hobbs’s version
—wanting
.

She wedged her feet back into her sneakers. “What does hope taste like, anyway?”

Despite not being able to see the fine details of her face, I could tell by her voice that she was serious.

“God, your eyes get huge when you’re surprised at something,” she said. “I’m just curious, all right?”

“All right, but it’s not easy to describe.”

Truth was, hope didn’t taste like anything at all in real life. But that particular perception had been in a dream, beginning with a layered scent that had wound its way to my tongue. Familiar and unknown, cold and dark, tart and rich and creamy. And that was just the start of it. How would I ever encapsulate all of that for Jazz? I cleared my throat.

“If I had to say, it might’ve been like a mix of berries, just a hair
shy of ripe, with a drizzle of honey and another drizzle of lemon, and coffee with cream, and ice water when you hold it in your mouth until the ice melts. With a dash of salt. And maybe some mint. Yes,”—I nodded—“mint.”

She was still and silent for a few moments, and then she began to laugh. Really laugh. Laugh like I hadn’t heard her laugh since our childhood. Laugh so hard that I started to laugh, too, just because.

“Oh, Olivia.” She wiped at her eyes. “Sometimes I wish I could be you for half a minute.”

“Sounds like I’m missing some fun,” Hobbs said, walking toward us as Jazz got to her feet.

“The fun is all yours now.” She slung her bag across her back. “I’m going to turn in, before the bugs come to feast on my flesh again. But I hope you find what you’re looking for, Olivia. I really do.” Then she bent and said in a low voice, “Don’t let that boy into your knickers,” before turning on her heel.

“Did she just tell you not to let me into your knickers?” When Hobbs sat beside me, the ground gave like a bedspring.

“You have good ears.”

“One of my many talents.
Are
you going to let me into your knickers?” He nudged my arm, and I laughed.

“After I see that wisp. You’ll have to help me, with your good eyes.”

“At the whim of ghost lights. This could take a while.”

He lay down and pulled back his knees. After a minute or so, he began a song on his harmonica. It sounded like something ghosts would enjoy—low and long-lined and round at the end, like bones.

After a time, I said, “What if nothing happens tonight?”

He stopped. “What if nothing does? It won’t take away from what you’re trying to do by coming out here.”

Part of me wanted to argue,
But I dreamed about this. I need this. I can’t fail
.

Instead I said, “I know, you’re right,” and tried to sound as if I meant it. “But I’m going to hope anyway.”

He lifted the harmonica to his mouth, set it down again. “Alice kept a hope chest all those years she lived with us, full to the top with baby clothes so small they looked like they were for dolls. Stuffed bears, too, and rattles and blankets. Even spoons. Some people have a harder time letting go than others. Those people do what they have to do to get through it. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.”

“You know something, too, about getting through it, don’t you?”

He paused, said, “Yeah, I do.”

“I admire you for that.”

“Well” was all he said, but there were fewer pinpricks marring the curve of his voice.

He played a tune I’d never heard before—a quiet song that felt full of thought.

“What if I forget her?” I said, once he’d finished.

Not just the way she moved or the sound of her voice but the way it felt to hug her or laugh with her. What if I forgot her sun-drenched scent, the way the smell of a person fades on clothing over time?

“You won’t forget her,” Hobbs said. “You’ll keep parts of her—maybe not blankets and spoons, like Alice, but memories—and those things will be what keep you going.”