Epilogue
luna had wanted to escape.
In the aftermath, after the house had been sold, after her brother had been buried, after her parents had gotten back together—both empty and limp and clinging to each other because no one else could understand what they had lost—Luna had opened a Google search and typed summer sleepaway camp eight weeks .
The next morning, she presented her mother with three options and, of course, Alice chose the closest camp, on Galiano Island, only one ferry ride away.
Her mother didn’t ask any questions, only readjusted the new baby’s latch on her nipple, that old muscle memory from Luna’s and Luca’s babyhoods, and said, “If that’s what you want, honey.
” And then she looked blankly out the window at the grey sky and grey seagulls.
Luna didn’t ask what her mother was thinking about, whether she was mulling over the collapse of her business, if she regretted ignoring orders and phone calls, if she ever thought about that partnership offer from the Good You that she simply never answered.
Luna didn’t ask because she didn’t want to hear it.
And so, three months later, here she was, at a camp on an island so remote, surrounded by salt water so rough and cold that no one, not even a ghost, could find her.
Luna ran a finger over her forearm and felt the layer of sweat that covered her whole body, that collected in the crevices behind her knees and between her breasts.
The old Luna would have hated this swampy stickiness, the sensation that the heat was no longer separate from you and was instead coming from deep inside.
The old Luna would have begged someone, anyone, to take her to a mall or a grocery store, anywhere there was air conditioning and bright lights.
The old Luna might never have come at all.
But the old Luna was dead.
It was nearing sunset, and the rest of the campers were in the lake, taking advantage of the light for one last swim.
Luna stood up on a hill to the east; she could see the dock in front of her and feel the low sun on her left cheek.
She was waiting, leaning against the trunk of a stubby pine tree, waiting for a boy, a fellow camper who was a year older and from a small town outside Calgary.
When they had met that first weekend in July, she had asked him why he was at a camp on the West Coast when Banff and Canmore were so close to where he lived.
And he had replied, “I had to come all this way to meet you, didn’t I?
” And Luna blushed and grew dizzy as he stared at her with his sharp green eyes.
This boy—whose hair grew frizzy in the humidity, who said he wanted to be an ophthalmologist when he grew up, who buried his face in her long black hair and sniffed as if her scent was keeping him alive—asked her questions because he wanted to know the answers, held her because it felt right, brought her tiny bouquets of bleeding heart, thistle, and goldenrod.
She had never felt like anything in her life made sense, and she knew that was because she had been living in the shadow of loss and grief and old wounds.
But in the moments when she was with him, everything was exactly as it should be, and Luna was exactly the girl she was always meant to be.
Staring into her eyes, he had said, “Once I made a list of all the things I wanted in a girlfriend—hot, sweet, beautiful smile—and you are exactly her. You couldn’t be more perfect. ”
It was then that she understood what real love was.
Luna thought of her parents, about how they had gripped each other’s hands at Luca’s funeral as if they might otherwise splinter into tiny shards of razor-sharp sadness and float away.
Weeks later, when her father came home after work and hugged her mother hello, they both seemed slack and hollow, as if they were doing everything they could to stay upright and in motion, as if these unconvincing touches and kisses on foreheads could ever be the equivalent of a real, rekindled love, the kind of all-encompassing love that overwhelms, makes you want to do better, makes you believe you’re invincible.
She thought of Jas too, who had shown up one morning on the sidewalk in front of her school, waiting, it seemed, for her mother’s car.
He had looked shrunken, his right arm in a dirty cast. As he limped toward the open driver’s side window, his eyes fixed on Alice, he said, “Can we talk? You won’t answer my calls or any of my texts.
I need to know what happened. I can’t remember anything.
” He started to cry then, the tears leaving trails on his cheeks.
“It’s driving me crazy, Alice. Please.” Her mother had turned to Luna and hissed, “Get out now.” She barely had time to slam the passenger door shut before she heard Alice say, her voice cracking as if the words were razors in her throat, “Stay away from me and stay away from my daughter.” Then the car sped off, leaving Jas staring after her.
Her parents, her mother, had never had real love. But now Luna did.
She could hear the other campers splashing in the water, hear their laughter as it echoed off the rocks and up.
She smiled. It was nice to hear the sounds of fun and joy and not feel excluded, or as if she didn’t deserve the same happiness.
Luna nervously patted down the baby hairs around her forehead.
He was late. But then he was usually late, usually apologizing for losing track of time while he stacked life jackets in the shed or helped the counsellors guide the little kids to the Sitka spruce grove down toward the cliffs.
He was adorably absent-minded, his shirts always smeared with dirt or food, his shoelaces always untied.
The first night they were alone, they had snuck out of their cabins and met on the dock, where he unfolded a blanket so they could lie down and watch the stars and satellites and airplanes.
“That’s Cassiopeia,” he said, pointing at what looked like the letter W to Luna.
“She was a queen who did terrible things, and she was punished.” He laughed.
“Not very romantic, sorry.” And then he kissed her and ran his hands over the skin on her legs, and she turned to liquid in his arms. When he unbuckled his belt and pushed his jeans down, she saw his body in the moonlight, shadowed and then not, lit in places and dark in others, and she suddenly felt cold, as if a finger of dread was tracing lines up and down her body.
She didn’t know if she wanted to have sex with him, if she wanted his nakedness so close to her, touching her. Her stomach flipped.
“Come on, babe,” he said. “I showed you mine. Your turn.”
And she did. And he came closer and he touched her and touched her. And she smiled the whole time because she wanted to make him happy, of course she did.
Now Luna heard steps on the gravel path behind her and hurriedly looked at her reflection in her phone camera.
She hadn’t felt like eating much in the heat and humidity these last few days, only drinking juice and water and a few scoops of fruit salad straight out of the camp fridge.
She knew she didn’t look her best, that her summer tan seemed to have faded overnight while her belly bloated with the lack of solid food.
In the camera, she ran her fingernail over the line of her lip gloss and wiped at a stray flake of mascara on her cheek.
Maybe it was just PMS, except Luna couldn’t remember when her period was due.
There seemed to be no point in keeping track of time out here, where there were no TVs, no wi-fi, only one old computer in the camp office where they could check their email once a day, except no one ever bothered.
The last time Luna logged in, there had been messages from her father, one of her school friends, and Poh Poh. She had only opened Judy’s, wondering if it was an update on her health.
Have fun in the sun and don’t worry about me. I am quite beautiful with a bald head! When you come home, I will be all fine and then you and I can fly to Hong Kong and see Nam Koo like I promised. We have those old keys to return. After all, they are doing no good making noise in my Chanel purse.
Luna had logged out without answering. She knew that this trip would likely never happen, and not just because of her grandmother’s health.
Her mother would never let her go anywhere alone with her grandmother now, not after Luca had found his way back to the house that night, not after all the shame and guilt Judy was still feeling.
Luna held her phone out farther so she could see more of her strappy black tank top (Was it cutting into her shoulders?
Did she look a little chubby?), stretching out her arm as straight as it would go.
The path behind her was lined with trees—birches and pines and vine maples—and she could just see where it turned toward the cluster of cabins.
She smiled and her small camera-self smiled back at her.
The steps grew louder and Luna hurriedly put her phone in her pocket.
He always told her that she shouldn’t ever wear makeup or worry about her looks, that he liked girls who were naturally beautiful.
And Luna winced because he had no idea what natural meant, that every girl came to camp with pimple patches and niacinamide serums and charcoal masks and shapewear, and even if she wasn’t wearing a drop of concealer, her natural self was something he had never seen.
Though she was sure he only meant to compliment her, a small voice inside her head whispered, Or is he trying to control you?
How would he even know how to do that? It was a ridiculous thought, and Luna tried very hard never to think it again. But she did.
Footfalls on gravel. Laughter from the lake. The resident owl calling out from the tops of the trees. Why was he walking so slowly? She closed her eyes, and her ears ached with the effort of listening.
Just as she was about to turn around to watch him come down the path, she felt a hand on her stomach.
“There you are,” she said, and she grasped the hand with her own.
But this hand was cold—as cold as Luca’s cheek when she had touched it as he lay in his casket, so motionless and babyish she had wanted to pick up his small body and run away, just the two of them.
This hand was bloodless, just thin skin stretched over brittle bones and sharp knuckles, as if whatever pulse that used to thrum under its surface had long since dried up.
Luna loosened her grip and opened her eyes.
There were the long grey fingers and the even longer talons gently circling her belly button.
It was then that she knew.
In each of her old nightmares, the ones where she was running and running through the overgrown, rotting garden at Nam Koo, there was something she hadn’t understood, some key to the story of her family that she hadn’t figured out, something that would reveal what her role was in this generational cascade of pain and loss.
It had been over a year since she had refused to speak of their old life ever again, even when her mother took out the album she had made of Luca’s life and wept, even when her father asked her over and over again what she remembered about Luca’s security system or favourite video game because his brain injury meant there was so much he had forgotten.
She had said nothing, simply walked away as her parents stared after her, pathetic and sad.
And then she had stopped dreaming altogether.
She learned to bury the memory of how she had once searched for clues in that chaotic mess of dream images.
But tonight on this island, she was awake, and now she knew.
For the first time in her life, just like her mother and grandmother and all the women before her, Luna was harbouring what the ghosts had always wanted—brand-new, unscarred life.
How silly to think she could run away to an island and everything would be fine.
How silly to think she would be spared when her ancestors were not. She could cry at her own stupidity.
As the sun dipped under the treeline and that skeletal, clammy hand continued to probe the skin on her belly with the edge of its nail, Luna counted to three before she opened her mouth and began to scream.