Chapter 22 Angeni Luna #2
She made her way through the blanket of ferns, leaves overlapping so that none of the ground beneath was visible.
She stopped to inspect the various mushrooms—a grouping of chanterelles, another grouping of boletus.
She would teach Freya about mushrooms as she got older—which were magical (for cooking purposes and otherwise), which were dangerous.
She couldn’t wait to guide her daughter, in so many things.
This exuberant joy came with grief. It was only in mothering Freya that Angeni realized just how little mothering she’d received.
My dear, you have mother wounds. That was what a woman named Cheyenne had said to Angeni years ago, at the start of her healing journey.
Giving birth to Freya, loving Freya, didn’t heal the wounds.
Instead, the wounds reopened, fresh blood gushing forth.
With precious Freya in her arms, Angeni simply could not understand how her mother could have been so neglectful, so uninterested in the very act of loving her.
How did she never hold Angeni on her lap and smother her with kisses?
Angeni felt this compulsion with Freya every single day, blowing raspberries on her daughter’s belly, smooching up and down her arms.
At the same time, there was this poignant gratitude, this observance that, somehow, Angeni’s mother had managed to keep Angeni alive.
She must have breastfed her—formula would have been too expensive—and changed her diapers.
She must have taken her to the doctor when she needed antibiotics.
Angeni had never considered this fundamental caretaking that her mother must have performed.
She had been so fixated on all that wasn’t done.
Having Freya had made her realize all that was.
Angeni had even found gratitude in all that her mother had gotten wrong. By not being a good mother, she had taught Angeni how to be a great one. And now Angeni was helping other mothers be the best mothers they could be. If that wasn’t healing, Angeni didn’t know what was.
Once she was deep in the forest, she sat on a large rock she’d never noticed before. How special it was to discover a little more of your own home. This was how she described the inner healing journey to her followers—ongoing discovery of one’s self.
There was an indentation in the rock that invited Angeni to sit.
She did. As she unzipped the duffel bag, she wondered what Erik and Sitka talked about, if they were in fact meeting at night.
Had Erik told her about their fight at the firepit?
Was he venting about their marriage? She couldn’t help but think of Sitka wearing her skimpy pajamas, that thin camisole, those short shorts.
She was sure Erik found her attractive. It wasn’t his fault if he did.
He was a man with eyes, and Sitka was a young, beautiful woman.
Angeni and Erik prided themselves on openly discussing the inevitability of attractions outside a marriage.
They were human. It was natural to find other human beings attractive.
That didn’t mean they would act on it. They could rise above their own base instincts in honor of the commitment they’d made to each other.
It was silly of her to worry. The worry was an insult to what they’d created together.
She had originally planned to shoot the rifle, the Steyr AUG.
But now she knew Aurora was suspicious, so she decided to shoot the 1911 with the suppressor to lessen the noise.
She could have just told Aurora that yes, she was going shooting, but that would be admitting that she was not in the best frame of mind.
Aurora knew, better than anyone, that Angeni only went shooting for therapeutic release.
Angeni hadn’t gone shooting since Freya was born.
In her years with Erik, she could count on one hand the times she’d taken out the duffel bag.
She just hadn’t felt the need, and she considered this a sign of her growth and recovery.
What did it mean that she felt the urge now, that she could think of nothing else that would make her feel better than shooting?
She decided to suspend analysis and just give her soul what it needed.
Erik knew of her hobby, for lack of a better term.
He wasn’t a gun enthusiast himself, but he seemed to think it gave Angeni an attractive edge.
“My lady, the gunslinger,” he’d said when she first told him.
It was when they were first dating, before anyone knew they were dating.
In response, she’d said, “Your pistol is my favorite to sling,” and they’d laughed like teenagers in love.
He’d watched her shoot a few times, whistled when she hit her targets.
That was so long ago now, back when they accompanied each other on outings and took interest in each other’s interests.
If he knew she was shooting today, he would probably be concerned, especially considering their recent troubles. So she wouldn’t tell him. Whatever went on between her and her guns was her business.
She thought again about her agent’s suggestion of writing a memoir.
She thought of including the fact that she had been shooting guns since she was a child.
This was why she couldn’t write a memoir.
The type of people who loved her—the hippies, the lovers, the earth mothers—hated guns.
They could see some of her, but not all of her.
She loaded the 1911—that satisfying click. She stepped down from her rock and took her position in front of a Douglas fir about ten feet away. She held up the gun, finger on the trigger, squinted, pulled.
Her first shot was a complete miss, the bullet flying past the trunk. Birds squawked overhead, fleeing the trees at the sound of the shot—even with the suppressor, there was a startling bang. She waited to hear if anyone would call for her. Nobody did, though. It was unlikely they’d heard.
Her second shot went right through the trunk of the tree.
Exhilarated goose bumps covered her arms. She’d forgotten how good this felt.
She took another shot, hitting almost the exact same spot on the tree.
She thought of Steve, how he would be proud.
She’d never known what became of him. Every so often, she would google his name, but it was too common—Steve Waters—to turn up any meaningful results.
He was also the kind of person to go to great lengths to keep himself off the internet.
Steve must have known what became of her mother.
Angeni had heard he’d moved shortly after her mother died—just a coincidence, or something more meaningful, Angeni would never know.
It wouldn’t have been hard for Steve to reach out to Angeni in the wake of her mother’s death, before she’d changed her name.
She hated that he never did, that he found it so easy to leave her behind forever.
With the name change, she’d be harder to find now, even if he wanted to.
Sometimes, she told herself he did, he tried, but Britt Taylor no longer existed.
Angeni went through three rapid-fire rounds, thinking about Steve and about her mother, about Erik and the fragile state of their union, about her book that absolutely could not be a memoir, about Freya refusing her breast, about all the haters on Instagram, about the @nurture.mother.official account.
She shot and she shot and she shot, hitting the trunk each time, until she was out of ammunition and her body felt calm and spent, as if she’d just run a marathon or had the best sex of her life.
She resumed her seat on the rock and packed up the duffel bag.
Her breasts ached. They were so full. She should have pumped after Freya refused to feed, but she’d never had to pump before.
She’d purchased one of those hand pumps when she was pregnant, figuring it might come in handy at some point, but she refused to buy an electric one.
She wasn’t going to succumb to machines.
She made her way out of the forest, feeling like a new woman.
She would need to find Sitka and Freya so Freya could feed.
Now that she felt more serene, her higher self was present and encouraging her to talk to Sitka, woman to woman.
Angeni would thank Sitka for keeping Erik company during his bouts of insomnia.
She would watch the expressions on Sitka’s face and determine a course of action.
Spirit would guide her. Spirit always did.
When she got back to the house, she put the duffel bag back in the closet, behind the winter coats and boots.
Then she got in the shower to wash off the faint smell of the gunpowder, a scent that took her back to Steve, to her mother, a scent she had to immediately remove and replace with her homemade vanilla body wash.
She braided her wet hair and put on her favorite dress, a stretchy cotton maxi dress that had accommodated her belly throughout her entire pregnancy.
Then she went looking for Sitka and Freya.
She hadn’t seen them out back, so she headed for the front porch.
She watched them through the screen door, the two of them sitting and swaying in the porch swing Matt and Jer had built.
Freya was asleep, nuzzled into Sitka’s armpit.
She pushed open the screen door, and it slammed shut behind her—the hydraulic mechanism that usually made the door close slowly had recently broken.
She winced at the sound and mouthed Sorry when Sitka looked up at her. Thankfully, Freya didn’t stir.
“I need to remind Erik to fix the door,” Angeni said in a whisper as she approached the swing. “How long’s she been asleep?”
Sitka shrugged. “I kinda lose track of time. A half hour, maybe.”
“She hasn’t been crying to eat?” Angeni asked.
She felt her boobs leaking, looked down to see the circles of wet forming on her dress.
“She hasn’t cried,” Sitka said. “Seems pretty content to me.”
Angeni wasn’t sure what to do. Should she wake Freya to eat?
Obviously, Freya wasn’t hungry, or she would be awake and crying.
Babies were simple in the expression of their needs.
But Angeni’s breasts were throbbing. If she used her hand pump, she would just dump the milk.
She didn’t want to use bottles yet—or ever.
Angeni decided that this wasn’t the right time to talk to Sitka. That could wait. She didn’t want to introduce a possibly stressful conversation when Freya was resting so comfortably.
“Okay, I’ll check in a bit later,” she said, deciding that she would use the pump. She didn’t know why Freya wasn’t hungry, but figured it was just an off day. They would be back to normal soon enough.
She pressed her lips to the back of little Freya’s head.
Her sweet, precious child. She could hardly believe she had created this perfect creature.
As she walked back toward the front door, she felt the ache of separation she always felt when stepping away from her daughter.
This was why she couldn’t fathom sending her daughter to school.
It was nearly unbearable to be out of arm’s reach on the same property.
She noticed the mail slot by the front door was overfull, junk inserts and envelopes sticking out the top.
She would have to bring this up at their next family dinner.
They hadn’t formally assigned anyone mail duty, had always said that whoever saw the mail should just bring it in, but it seemed a formal assignment was necessary.
She pulled out the stack of mail with a forceful tug, started riffling through it as she went back into the house, this time making sure the door didn’t slam behind her.
A bright-red envelope caught her attention.
It was addressed to her. No return address.
She set the stack on the small table by the front door and opened the envelope.
Inside was a single sheet of white paper. Across the center of the page were typed words, all caps, that made her lose her balance.
You Should Be Charged With Murder.
That was all it said. Just those words.
She stumbled backward.
She turned the paper over, then over again, thinking that more words, an explanation, would magically appear.
There was nothing more, though.
She looked again at the envelope, addressed to her. It was typed, no handwriting to decipher. No return address. She squinted to make out the postmark. Seattle.
You should be charged with murder.
Aurora had taken the ferry to Seattle last week to attend an art show. Would she have sent it from there? Why? Why now?
Unless it wasn’t her. But it had to be her. She was the only one who knew what had happened all those years ago. Unless she wasn’t.
A wave of nausea rolled through Angeni. She felt like she was at sea, put her hands on the wall next to the door to steady herself.
Her vision went blurry as she realized it was happening again.
Her body, in all its wisdom, decided that consciousness was too much for her in this moment.
Her body, in all its wisdom, fell to the floor.