Chapter 12
Luna
“Sometimes you need to unravel to find your true pattern.”
—Eloisa Hobby
Confounded by the conversation with her mother, Luna stood in the shower, shampooing her hair and turning things over in her mind.
What else could have happened that horrible summer night that neither Paul nor her mother wanted to talk about? How much worse could it have been? She couldn’t imagine. What secrets were they keeping from her?
And why?
Her mind flashed back, transporting her to the wretched evening that had changed the entire trajectory of her life.
She and Jeanie were coming back from Tyler where they’d driven to buy Luna’s prom dress and had gotten caught in an unexpected downpour. Torrential rain lashed the windshield of their ancient sedan, and the wiper blades—long past the point of needing replacing—dragged and squeaked, barely clearing away any water.
It took her back to another rainstorm when she was six years old, and in the middle of the night her mother spirited her from the hippie commune where they’d been living. Shoulders hunched, face grim, Jeanie clutched the steering wheel, her gaze trained on the slick road ahead.
“I can’t trust your father to do the simplest thing,” she muttered. “Can he put new wiper blades on the car after I asked him multiple times? No! No!”
Luna stared at her. Jeanie rarely said anything negative about Jack, but she was angry that night because her credit card had been rejected at the store. Jeanie didn’t have the full purchase amount in cash, but she negotiated a deal to do free alteration for the dress shop owner’s customers for the balance.
In the passenger seat, Luna sat clutching the gorgeous dress wrapped in blue tissue paper, feeling awful about the whole thing. Jeanie would have made Luna’s prom dress herself, but she’d been so busy doing alterations for all the other girls in town, she didn’t have time.
Luna tried to tell her mother it was okay, that she could just wear her Sunday dress to the prom, but Jeanie got a determined look on her face.
“You’re a Vincent as much as a Montgomery, so you’ll dress like it. Our family might have lost their fortune but not our dignity. You’ll be the prettiest girl at the prom in that frock.”
Frock. What a weird word. Luna’s stomach knotted with dread. Everything was wrong and terrible—the rejected credit card, the storm, the useless wiper blades.
Bad omens.
On the outskirts of Julep, they passed by the Vista Verde mobile home park where Paul lived. He was home studying for finals, like Luna should have been. Their car rattled over the railroad tracks and rounded the steep curve. Through the rain-slick windshield, the mangled wreckage came into view.
Jeanie slowed.
Luna’s heart jumped out of her chest. There, wrapped around an enormous oak tree, was her father’s rust-colored pickup truck, steaming and hissing.
She screamed. “Dad!”
Jeanie slammed the brakes, hydroplaning on the wet road, and wrestled the sedan to a stop in the bar ditch. The two of them burst from the car, running into the fierce storm. Rain drenched them instantly as lightning streaked across the sky. Luna sprinted for the wreck, her sneakers slipping in the mud.
She stumbled. Fell to her knees. Hopped up again.
Please let my daddy be okay.
How often had she recited that prayer? Dozens of times. Hundreds even. Whenever she found Jack passed out on the couch or face down on the front lawn. She reached the car ahead of Jeanie, and when Luna peered inside, her heart shattered.
Dad lay slumped unconscious in the passenger seat, his head covered in blood. She wrenched open the passenger-side door, and an empty whiskey bottle rolled across the floorboard and dropped out onto the ground.
“Dad!” She shook him, panic rising.
Jack didn’t respond. He was out cold. Was he dead?
“No!” Jeanie shrieked, her face white with shock, and she dropped to the mud. “No! No!”
Luna put two fingers at her father’s throat and a faint pulse flickered. “He’s alive!”
“What’s he doing in the passenger seat?” Jeanie asked. “Who was driving?”
A low moan, beneath the raging storm, caught Luna’s attention. She slipped and slid her way around the smashed truck to the driver’s side.
Paul lay sprawled on the ground outside the driver’s door, drenched in mud, blood, and rain. An overturned whiskey bottle poured out its contents beside his limp hand.
Wh-what? She stared, stunned, unable to believe her eyes. “P-Paul?”
No, this couldn’t be. Paul didn’t drink. He knew her views on alcohol. It couldn’t be Paul’s bottle. It had to be her dad’s. Nothing else made sense. Why was Paul in the truck with her dad? Why was he driving? Jack didn’t let anyone drive his truck.
Ever.
Paul’s gaze met hers. “Luna . . .”
He struggled to his feet, looked dazed and disoriented. The reek of alcohol hit her. Paul had been drinking. He’d been drinking and driving with her father in the vehicle, and he’d wrecked Jack’s beloved truck.
Rage filled, she flew at Paul, pounding his chest, anguish eating her alive. “You bastard! How could you?”
Paul feebly tried to stop her blows. In that instant, the boy she loved was gone, replaced by this . . . this . . . monster.
“We’re through. I never want to see you again!”
“Luna.” He reached for her.
But she turned away, bile rising in her throat as the wreckage of her life lay before her. Paul had done this, and nothing could repair the ragged hole torn through her heart.
Sirens wailed in the night. Jeanie appeared beside her, taking in Paul, sizing him up. “Luna, go back to the car. Now!”
“But Dad . . .”
“I’ll handle it.” Jeanie sounded strangely calm and in control. “I’m the mother and you’re the child. Return to the car and stay put.”
Distraught, Luna obeyed, taking refuge in the sedan. Drawing her knees to her chest, hugging herself and sobbing as she rocked on the seat.
Her gaze fell on the stupid prom dress.
The dress she bought to look good for Paul.
None of it mattered now.
Not the prom.
Not the dress.
Not their relationship. She yanked the dress from the wrapping, opened the door, threw it on the ground, and viciously stomped it into the mud.
Luna couldn’t think straight.
She couldn’t believe what was happening.
Her dad might die, and it was all Paul’s fault.
He knew she hated alcohol and yet he’d gotten drunk with her dad.
No way could she ever forgive him.
The emergency vehicles appeared, strobing lights cutting through the darkness.
The paramedics worked on Jack and then loaded him on a stretcher and whisked him off to the hospital, while the state trooper arrested Paul and stuck him in the back of the cruiser.
He sent her an anguished look as they drove away.
Luna and Jeanie collapsed into each other’s arms, finally letting the crushing grief wash over them, and Luna’s world was never the same again.
The days following the accident passed in a numb haze.
Her father underwent emergency surgery to remove his ruptured spleen and repair his lacerated liver.
The doctors placed him on a ventilator in the ICU and kept him sedated.
For three days, Jeanie stayed at the hospital around the clock.
She refused to leave Jack’s side.
Luna brought her changes of clothes and food from home.
When her father regained consciousness, Jeanie was there to inform him that Paul had been driving.
Jack didn’t remember the accident, much less that Paul had been behind the wheel.
Following the vehicle crash, Luna moved through each moment on automatic pilot, not speaking, barely eating.
The intense tears from the first night dried up, but her grief grew.
During the last days of her senior year, the cacophony of teenage voices in the hallways set Luna on edge.
She couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t smile, couldn’t pretend everything was normal.
Her friends tried to offer words of comfort, but their sympathy highlighted just how alone Luna was in her despair.
She withdrew further into herself each day.
She sat in the back during class, head down, speaking to no one.
She ate lunch alone in an empty classroom, choking down each bite until she thought she might vomit.
At night, she lay awake until the early hours, mind racing with flashbacks of tender moments with Paul that now seemed tainted.
Their Saturday night movie dates, their lazy Sunday mornings laughing over pancakes at the Waffle House, their stargazing sessions in the bed of his truck. These sweet memories were now agonizing reminders of what used to be.
She ignored Paul’s calls. Just seeing his name on the caller ID pierced her heart, but she would not bend, and she refused to let him back in her life. Luna was unlike her mother. She had no tolerance for addicts.
That night, Paul was booked and then arraigned the following morning. The judge sentenced him to a hundred hours of community service, a thousand-dollar fine, and suspended his driver’s license for three months. After his sentence was completed, he joined the navy and left Julep for good.
It didn’t seem like punishment enough to Luna, but because it was his first offense, he got off easy.
The life and love she once knew was irrevocably shattered, leaving her utterly adrift and alone. Until she left for the University of Texas at Tyler. Most kids from their town went to that college. Hercule Boudreaux, class president, captain of the football team, straight-A student, and son of the richest man in Julep, took an interest in Luna and asked her out.
Jeanie championed Herc and encouraged the relationship. Herc could provide lavishly for Luna, and her mother told her to forget about Paul and so Luna banished him to the basement of her mind.
But then all the old love flooded back when they’d reconnected last night, and her heart was torn in half.
* * *
In the Crafters’ Corner town square at noon, Luna found Paul waiting for her with a picnic basket handle looped over his arm. Seeing him now, after her vivid flashback in the shower, was so disorienting, she stopped before reaching him.
Last night had been magical. A wonderful reunion, as if none of the awful stuff from their history had happened, but the flashback flung her hard into the past and gave a stark reminder of their demise.
But that was twenty-two years ago. Paul had created a good, solid life for himself and his daughter. Jack was long gone. And her feelings for Paul were filled with regret and yearning. Could she finally forgive him? Could he forgive her? Could she forgive herself?
Or was there simply too much hurt between them?
“Hi, Moonbeam.” He grinned as if everything was hunky-dory in his world. “How are you today?”
She had once loved this man with all her heart and then hated him just as fiercely. Swirled in emotional whiplash, her knees wobbled.
He held up the picnic basket. “I hope you’re hungry.”
Fifteen minutes later, Paul unfolded a soft, woven blanket with intricate designs, setting it on a lush patch of grass above the beach with an expansive view of the ocean.
The sea stretched endlessly, its surface shimmering under the touch of the noonday sun, casting hues of orange and pink across the sky. The sound of gentle waves crashing against the rocks below mingled with the distant cry of seagulls. The salty tang of the ocean and the faint scent of wildflowers dotting the surrounding landscape filled the air. It was the perfect romantic backdrop, isolated and intimate, with the vast, majestic ocean as their witness.
Paul sank onto the blanket and patted the spot next to him. “Have a seat.”
“What’s in the basket?” she said, struggling to keep things light. She had so many questions that needed answering.
“Sandwiches. Chicken salad, your favorite.”
“You remembered!” she said, a warm feeling filling her heart. “Where did you pick up the takeout?”
“Not takeout. Made it myself. Just the way you like it. With red grapes and Granny Smith apples.”
“You can cook?” she said, touched beyond measure, and her heart softened.
“Well, it is chicken salad.” He gave her an endearing, lopsided grin. “Not exactly haute cuisine. As a single dad, I had to learn to cook so Orion wouldn’t starve.”
“I thought you might make use of the island’s aunties. You’re not playing this right. You should never have to cook with your gardening skills and that gorgeous smile.”
“What? This little old thing?” He turned his grin on her full force.
Heated from the inside out, Luna felt her face flush. Oh, she was in over her head.
He opened the picnic basket and took out the chicken salad sandwiches on sourdough bread, which were cut into triangles. Paul passed one to her, along with a napkin and a bag of ruffled potato chips.
“Nah. I gotta do the cooking. It would be too easy to take advantage of all the help I receive from Eloisa and the aunties. I need to stay strong and on my toes raising a teenage girl. Can’t let my parenting skills slip.”
“I see your point,” Luna said. “I’m already feeling beholden moving in with Mom, even though she never makes me feel that way. I think she really loves having me and Artie there.”
“It’s a fine balance to walk between independence and interdependence.”
“What scares me is codependence.”
“You don’t want to be like your mother.”
Laughing, Luna pointed a finger at Paul. “Ding, ding, ding. Nailed it.”
“Unless you’ve changed a lot, you don’t have to worry about that. You go in the opposite direction from Jeanie. You don’t let just anyone in. You build walls and keep them high.”
The chicken salad was delicious, but her throat suddenly tightened, and she couldn’t swallow another bite. She set down the sandwich on the wax paper wrapping, dusted the crumbs from her fingers, and looked Paul in the eyes.
“I talked to my mother this morning. She claims to remember nothing about that night.”
Paul exhaled and put down his sandwich too. “I want to be transparent with you, Luna.”
“Please do.”
“Seeing you again and being with you last night . . .” His eyes went shiny in the sun. “Well, it reminded me of what I threw away. Of everything we lost.”
“Oh, Paul.” Her hands were shaking. “I feel the same. But there’s—”
“Too much dark history?”
She nodded, unable to continue.
“We’ve got to clear the air before we can move forward.” He paused. “If you want to move forward.”
“I-I’m—”
“Scared?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Me too.” He spoke into the wind, and she could barely hear him. “But I can’t ignore my heart. Being with you again, it feels right. It feels good.”
She put up both palms. “This is too much, too soon. I have feelings for you too, but—” She bit down on her bottom lip.
“One night, twenty-two years ago, I became the enemy, and that’s the way you’ve seen me ever since, no matter all the good times that came before it.”
“I was too hard on you. I had you on a pedestal, and when you fell off, I couldn’t forgive you. I see now that my youth and fear made me harsh and intractable. I’m sorry for the pain I caused,” she said.
“You thought I was driving drunk and severely hurt your father in a vehicle crash. I understood.” His jaw tightened, and he glanced away, staring out at the ocean.
“You were driving drunk.”
He shook his head, drew up one leg, and draped his arm over his knee. “I was hoping Jeanie would tell you the truth. This should really come from her.”
“Well, she didn’t.” Luna kept her tone neutral, matter-of-fact. “It’s up to you.”
Paul met her gaze head-on and held it. Luna saw conflict in his eyes. This was painful for him. “I wasn’t in the truck with your father that night.”
She stared at him, not comprehending his words.
“I wasn’t drunk.”
Luna recoiled. Why was he lying? “I saw you. I saw the whiskey bottle. You staggered and slurred your words.”
“I was pretending to have a head injury. Pretending I’d been driving. And there were liquor bottles everywhere falling out of that truck.”
“But why would you do that?”
“To protect you.”
“No. No.” Luna shook her head and backed up, slid off the blanket. “That makes no sense. The sheriff said your blood alcohol was well above the legal limits and the lab tests confirmed it.”
“Yes, but that’s because your mother asked me to guzzle enough whiskey to fail the sobriety test once she realized what I’d done.”
Luna let out a keening noise. Her chest so tight she could hardly breathe. “What. Did. You. Do?”
Paul looked weary and his blue eyes sad. “I was at home, in my mom and stepdad’s trailer at Vista Verde. They were out for the evening, and I was studying for finals.”
She owed it to him to listen, but she didn’t really want to hear this. The repercussions were already too much to bear. If he hadn’t been drinking, that meant she made him a scapegoat. Ruined them for no good reason.
“I heard the crash. I tried to convince myself it was just the thunder, but I went outside and saw your dad’s truck wrapped around the tree. I called 911 and then ran to help him. When I saw the whiskey bottles, I knew he was blitzed. I also knew this would be his third DUI, and he’d go to prison.”
“What did you do?” she whispered, already knowing.
“I considered the impact on you and your mother and reacted impulsively. I tugged Jack into the passenger seat and decided to tell the cops I’d been driving. I pretended I was behind the wheel and dazed from the accident. That’s when you and Jeanie showed up. I didn’t expect that.”
Luna felt all the blood drain from her face and pool into her feet. Was it true? Bile rose in her throat, and she fought hard not to vomit.
“Your mom figured it out right away. She knew Jack would never let anyone else drive his truck. She also knew if the cops looked too hard at the accident, they’d figure out Jack was driving, and she knew we needed a distraction to take the focus off him. If I was drunk, they’d put the focus on me, and as a first-time offender, I would get off without major consequences. That’s when she sent you to the car.”
Luna put her hand to her mouth. She couldn’t hear more of this. She knew her mother had enabled her father’s addiction, but she had no idea how far it went.
“She grabbed a flask from the glove compartment and told me to drink it down. And I did.” His eyes drilled into hers. “And then Jeanie swore me to secrecy. I kept my word all this time. Stayed silent. But twenty-two years have passed, Jack is gone, and it’s time you knew what actually happened.”
Her brain reeled. She flashed to that horrific night again. Her furious rage and desperate grief over Paul driving drunk and nearly killing her dad. Everything she believed about that night was a lie.
Anguish grabbed Luna. Why had she been so willing to believe the worst about Paul? The one person she had loved like no other.
Tears streamed down her cheeks in the cheery sunlight, the calming water in direct contrast to her turbulent emotions. The boy she loved had sacrificed everything—for her. The fog of that night finally lifted, and for the first time, she clearly saw the truth.
“You loved me that much?”
Relief washed over Paul’s face. “More than you can ever know.”
“How can you ever forgive me for the way I treated you?”
“It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know. I would have made the same choice in your position.”
“Oh, Paul, I am so very sorry.” She was crying so hard she couldn’t see.
“Shh, shh. Nothing to be sorry for.” He pulled her close and cradled her head against his chest. The decades melted away and she was his girl again.
“Forgive me, please forgive me.”
“There’s nothing to forgive, Moonbeam. Everything’s okay. We’ve reconnected, and that’s all that matters.”
They held each other tight as the surf pounded around them and for the first time in twenty-two years, Luna felt whole.