Chapter 2
Luna
“Even the most tangled yarn can be unknotted.”
—Eloisa Hobby
Luna Montgomery Boudreaux was six years old when she first realized she couldn’t trust her mother.
Middle of the night. Stormy winds lashing the panes. Thunder growling throughout the hollow. Stark lightning electric bright. Jeanie’s eyes wide, hair wild. Shaking Luna from sleep. Dragging her off the bare mattress. Snatching up Luna’s clothes from the floor and stuffing them in a black garbage bag.
“Come on, honey, wake up. We gotta get out of here. Our last chance.”
Luna confused, yawning, stumbling into threadbare sneakers and the hand-me-down jacket that was two sizes too big. It wasn’t the first midnight awakening, and it wouldn’t be the last. Jeanie’s urgent murmuring to “hurry, hurry, hurry.”
“Where we goin’?” Luna asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“Shh, shh, don’t wake the others.”
“Why?”
“No questions. Just do as I say.”
Mad dash from the derelict house in the drenching rain without an umbrella, trash bag bouncing against Jeanie’s side. Jumping into the Bondo jalopy. Shivering on the cold seat as Mom popped the clutch. They shot from the driveway, tires squealing.
Careening down the pothole-filled dirt road, making a clean getaway, but then a figure stepped from the shadows in front of the car, blocking their escape.
Daddy.
Rain-soaked and furious, Jack carried a bottle of Wild Turkey by the neck between two fingers.
Mom gunned the engine and for one horrifying second, Luna thought she would run him over. She cringed, brought her knees to her chest, curled her icy fingers into fists, swallowed a whimper, and braced for impact.
But Jeanie slammed on the brakes just in time, coming within inches of hitting Luna’s swaying father. He hunched his shoulders and lowered his head like a bull ready to charge, nostrils flaring, eyes black as the night.
He bellowed louder than the howling wind. “Jeanie!”
Jack and Jeanie stared at each other through the windshield, and it was as if a strange, hypnotic spell wove over her mother.
Dad flung the whiskey bottle into the ditch. Mom tumbled from the car, leaving the door hanging wide open and rain blowing in.
Jeanie ran to him.
He caught her in his arms, spun her around, and covered her face in kisses, rain falling in sheets, wipers squeaking across the glass as Luna bit her fingernails and feared another vehicle would come around the curve and hit them.
Dad, smelling of whiskey, climbed in behind the wheel. Mom wrapped her hand around Luna’s wrist, putting her into the back seat with a capricious promise whispered against her ear, “Everything will be all right now.”
Now, thirty-four years later, on this sunny spring day in early June, Jeanie wrapped her arm around Luna’s wrist again and whispered in her ear, “Everything will be all right now.”
The old memory whipped through her and the hairs on Luna’s nape lifted. To her those words were code. Your world is about to collapse.
But despite that unnerving warning, things weren’t bad. Far better than they’d been in a long time.
It was Saturday, June 1, and Luna, her mother, and Luna’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Artemis, stood on the wharf in the Gulf Coast village of Everly, where the limo driver, who’d driven them two hundred miles from their hometown of Julep, Texas, had just deposited them in this charming seaside setting.
The weather was mild, and the water was calm.
Birds chirped.
Fluffy white clouds drifted by.
Honeysuckle scented the breeze.
By all accounts, a pleasant day.
Last week, Jeanie had received the golden ticket, inviting her to a summer stay on Hobby Island—all expenses paid—plus entry into the coveted quilting contest that carried a one-hundred-thousand-dollar grand prize.
Keen on winning the competition, Jeanie had been in an excited dither ever since.
To her chest she clutched the best quilt she ever made wrapped in butcher paper and slipped inside a cloth covering, positive that she would snag that grand prize.
Luna loved her mother with all her heart, and Jeanie was an excellent seamstress.
In fact, she was the best Luna had ever seen, but creative design was not her mother’s strength.
Luna wasn’t sure if Jeanie’s expert sewing skills could make up for the quilt’s uninspired composition.
But she would never tell her mother that.
Jeanie took everything to heart, and the last thing Luna wanted was to hurt Mom’s feelings.
Besides, if she counted her mother’s shortcomings, that meant Artie got to catalog Luna’s.
Jeanie had done her absolute best, and Luna didn’t doubt it.
Although sometimes her best simply hadn’t been quite good enough.
Did Artie feel the same way about her?
Considering what happened with Herc, most likely. Maybe this stint on Hobby Island would bring them all closer.
Or pull you further apart.
Luna nibbled her lip and looked around for her daughter. Spied Artie feeding money into the vending machine, never mind that Luna had packed plenty of snacks. They had to watch every penny, and she wondered where Artie had gotten the money. From Jeanie?
Artie punched the button, and then leaned down to claim her overpriced Cheez-Its.
Her daughter had inherited Herc’s mahogany brown hair, chocolate brown eyes, and olive complexion. Luna was glad Artie hadn’t gotten her dishwater blond hair, blah hazel eyes, and pale skin that burned to a crisp instead of tanning.
Luna also admired Artie’s fearlessness.
Even though Artie’s bravery often caused her trouble.
Luna’s sweet-natured son, Beck, had skipped second grade because he was so very smart and therefore graduated high school at seventeen and was now, at eighteen, enrolled in his freshman year at the University of Oklahoma on a baseball scholarship.
He had been an easygoing child, giving her not an ounce of grief.
Raising Beck had been a breeze and Luna cakewalked through early motherhood.
Then three years later, along came Artemis. Her daughter charged through life like a general executing a battle plan, full of courage and zeal, mowing over everything in her path.
Perhaps it was Luna’s fault for naming her daughter after the Greek goddess of the hunt, but she didn’t regret giving her child a noble identity.
Beside her, Jeanie shifted the quilt in her arms to check her watch. “The ferry should be here any minute.”
“Mom, you don’t have to carry that quilt. Why don’t you put it with the luggage.” Luna nodded at the suitcases the limo driver had stacked on the pier.
“Got to make sure nothing happens to it. This quilt is worth one hundred thousand dollars.”
“All right.” Luna let it go. If Mom wanted to lug the quilt around with her, let her lug it.
They were still finding the shape of their relationship after Luna and Artie had moved in with Jeanie just two short weeks ago.
They were living in the run-down Victorian house that had been in Jeanie’s family for four generations.
And while there was plenty of room, it hadn’t been an easy adjustment.
Returning to Julep had been humbling, but Luna was ready for stability. Stability was not a quality she associated with her mother, but what Jeanie lacked in grit, she more than made up for in comfort.
Her mother was the kind of mom who threw back the covers and invited her to snuggle in the bed with her.
She adored Hallmark movies, baking cookies, and hot chocolate with little marshmallows.
She kissed Luna’s skinned knees, braided flowers in her hair, and would often burst into song to lighten dark moods.
And for now, Luna relished her mother’s simple comforts.
She had lost a lot over the course of the past thirteen months when the hospital called her at two in the morning and broke the news that Herc had gotten hit in the cross fire between two rival gang members he’d been patching up in the ER.
“But he’s okay,” she said, her grasp on reality slipping. “He’s fine, right?”
“I’m so sorry. We did all we could, but Dr. Boudreaux didn’t make it.”
Long ago, Herc had chosen the high-pressure world of emergency medicine over private practice.
He claimed the specialty better suited his ADHD, but Luna believed an addiction to the life-and-death drama was a much more likely motivation.
His high-octane personality was part of what attracted her to him.
Herc brought to the relationship what she lacked—excitement, charisma, and supreme self-confidence.
She thought grieving her husband of nineteen years was the worst of it, but she’d been wrong.
A month after the funeral, Herc’s best friend and lawyer informed her that her late husband had left behind a staggering amount of gambling debt, and she was almost penniless.
No life insurance policy because Herc had stopped making payments when he got in deep to his bookie.
He drained their savings, 401(k), and brokerage accounts, leaving her with just a few thousand dollars in checking.
Nor had he been paying their taxes for the past three years and the IRS wanted their share ASAP.
The only thing he hadn’t touched were the kids’ college funds.
She supposed she should be grateful for that.
She liquidated their assets in an estate sale, sold off Herc’s Porsche and her Tesla, keeping their sixteen-year-old minivan.
The proceeds had been just enough to live on until she sold the house and paid off the government.
Their marriage had been conventional.
Herc took care of the finances, Luna raised the kids.
She liked the traditional roles, and it was an honor raising decent human beings while Herc provided the means for her to do so.
She thought she made a solid choice in a life partner.
She’d thought by marrying him she would never suffer the financial struggles her parents went through.
But Herc had a gambling problem he hid for years.
Did he hide it? Or had she just turned a blind eye?
Yeah. That last part.
She shouldered as much responsibility for the situation as Herc. She checked out of their marriage long before his death, focusing on the kids and ignoring the holes in her and Herc’s relationship. Time to stop blaming Herc and move on.
Questions popped inside her head. The same questions that had been percolating since she arrived in Julep two weeks ago. What now? Where did she go from here? What did she want from life? Who was she? Because he had graduated a year earlier, Beck was out of the nest and Artie not far behind. What was next for Luna?
Then Jeanie got the golden ticket. An impromptu vacation seemed the perfect way to sort herself out. So here Luna was, lost and confused, but riding the wave life threw at her. Not much different from when she was a kid.
Maybe this was her best chance at reconnecting with her mother, righting past wrongs and forming a closer bond with her daughter.
For the next two months, this was Luna’s simple goal.