Chapter Twelve #2
“Did she tell you that for two hundred dollars she’d pick the winning lottery numbers?”
Luna pulled her eyes away from Nate’s and scolded her brother. “Don’t be an ass.”
“I’m serious,” Ash laughed.
“She told me to expect some turmoil and that my past was coming back to haunt me. But that it would all be worth it in the end,” Luna told him in a rush.
Ash stopped laughing.
“In this house, there’s always something around haunting you,” Harper said in a sobering voice.
Nate watched as something unspoken passed between Luna and Ash.
“She also said that Luna wasn’t getting her car back,” Miley said.
“I could have told you that.” Ash picked up his beer.
Tension that wasn’t there a moment before started to thicken.
“Do you really think this house is haunted?” Nate asked Harper in an effort to remove the stiffness that fell on Luna’s face.
“I don’t think it, I know it.”
Luna picked up her fork and looked away from her brother. “It’s an old house, it makes noises,” Luna said, dismissing the subject.
“Wood settling and windows letting in tiny squeaks of air when the wind blows is one thing. Pots and pans pulling themselves out of the kitchen drawers and banging on the floor was another.”
Nate turned his attention to Luna’s sister. “What are you talking about?”
Harper rested her fork filled with food on her plate.
“We were living here after Luna’s dad bailed.
It was late at night when noise from the kitchen woke Mom up.
She thought one of us was down there playing drums on the pots and pans, only when she came down to yell at us, none of us were there.
We were all upstairs sleeping. Every pot and pan sat in the middle of the kitchen floor. ”
“You can’t take Mom’s word for anything,” Luna protested. “She drank . . . a lot,” she told Nate.
“Nana said it happened several times.”
Nate felt a slight chill down his spine. “Was it always when you guys were here?” he asked.
“Not always. But when it did happen, Nana said it was guaranteed that one or all of us would show up at her door. Tell him, Ash. It happened when you were living here. You heard it.”
Nate looked at Ash.
“If you’re in this house long enough, you’ll see things you can’t explain,” he said.
“Whatever might have been here has left with Nana. I haven’t seen anything I can’t explain away,” Luna said.
Nate turned to Miley. “You live here . . . what have you noticed?”
“Nothing like pots and pans flying around.”
Nate leaned forward. “But you have seen something.”
“More like feel,” Miley said. “Like when someone is watching you, but no one is there.”
The hair on Nate’s neck stood up.
The fact that everyone, with the exception of Luna, had expressions of complete sobriety and conviction said they believed what they had seen.
“Now that the place is wired up like Fort Knox, we’re bound to capture something on a camera if there’s anything to see,” Luna said.
For a moment, everyone ate silently.
Then Harper said, “Maybe sage in the attic isn’t a bad idea. It will stop the old woman from walking around up there.”
From that point Ash and Harper talked about their attempts at catching the woman in the attic when they were kids. Some of it sounded a lot like what kids imagined once they got their hands on a Ouija board. As they went on, Luna sat back and shook her head.
And Nate watched Luna as she silently played with the beads on her wrist.
Dinner finished with laughter and friendly banter. The tension of flying pots and pans seemingly forgotten.
After what felt like a week, Nate needed to say his goodbyes.
Ash thanked him once again for all his help and hoped he’d see him again the next time he was in town.
“I might see you in the office,” Harper said.
Both thanked him for being there before Luna walked him out.
“I know I’ve said this a dozen times, but thank you.”
“Your family is very entertaining.”
“That’s putting it mildly. You would have loved Nana. She was the true storyteller.”
“It sounds like she had a lot of stories to tell,” Nate said.
“She did.”
Nate stopped at his car. “Do you think you’ll have time to put some work in before Friday to go over a few things?”
“Yes. I have a honey-do list for my brother that will keep him busy so I can work while he’s here.”
“Good call.”
He opened the car door, the light from inside illuminated the night. “Something you said earlier I meant to ask you about.”
“Yeah?”
“You said your grandmother named you. How did that happen?”
“The short version?” Luna asked.
“I do need to get home tonight,” he chuckled.
“Nana was at the hospital when I was born. My dad didn’t make it, and according to Nana, Mom was so pissed that she let Nana name me to get even with my dad. Dad and Nana didn’t get along.”
“You were named out of spite? That sounds petty with some lifelong consequences.”
“That’s the way things rolled in my life.”
Nate couldn’t tell if she was resigned to that turmoil or trying to hide any residual pain from it. “Why ‘Luna’?”
She looked at the sky. “I was born on a full moon. The nurses were so busy they barely caught me coming out. Nana decided on Luna. She told me later that she really thought my mom would veto the name. She didn’t.”
“How do you feel about it?”
“My name?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“I was teased as a kid. Moonbeam, moon child . . . all the unoriginal things kids cast shade on. No one bats an eye at it now. Or if they do, they don’t tell me.”
Nate moved around the door and tossed his jacket inside. “For what it’s worth, I like it.” Not that his opinion mattered one way or another.
“Thanks . . . I think.”
Their eyes held for a brief moment before Luna broke it off. “I’ll see you Friday.”
“If you need anything beforehand, you have my number.”
With that Nate slid behind the wheel and closed the car door.
Luna moved to stand by the back door where the solar powered light and camera clicked on with her movement.
On his drive home, the clouds parted enough to show the star filled sky and the moon that wasn’t quite full. Nate knew he’d never look at the moon the same again.