The Last of the Moon Girls(37)
TWELVE
Andrew watched, cursing himself as Lizzy moved down the front walk. What was he thinking? She’d come to him for help, and instead of offering advice, he’d babbled on like some lovesick teenager and run her off.
Again.
She’d always been skittish around him. Around everyone, really. Why should things be different now? Could he blame her for keeping her guard up? Eight years might seem like a long time to most, but not in a town like Salem Creek, where minds changed slowly—if at all. Though he supposed she knew that better than he.
It had taken less than twenty-four hours for things to get ugly after the Amber Alert went out for Heather and Darcy Gilman. By the next morning the town’s whisper mill had sputtered to life, grinding out a series of ridiculous and baseless speculations. In small New England towns where nothing much ever happened, gossip was a favorite pastime, like high school hockey or cornhole contests at the Sunday barbecue. And like good barbecue, the locals lapped it up.
By the time the girls’ bodies were recovered from the Moons’ pond, the torch-and-pitchfork brigade had begun to clamor for their own brand of justice. After Rhanna’s coffee shop escapade, several churches banded together to organize a midnight vigil—to pray away the evil dwelling in our midst, and see the Lord’s will done.
Flyers had gone up all over town the day before, in shopwindows and on telephone poles, inviting the faithful to gather and pray for the soul of their God-fearing town. The name Moon wasn’t mentioned that night. There was no need. Everyone understood.
All three local news channels had covered the event, complete with plenty of B-roll capturing a sea of righteous faces lit by flickering white candles. When the story was picked up by the larger news outlets, a feeding frenzy ensued, and Randall Summers had been forced to issue a statement urging patience while law enforcement did its job—a hedge against the possibility that such talk might be seen as a call to action by those looking to take matters into their own hands.
Even now, the thought of it made Andrew sick. He’d had every intention of attending that night, prepared to tell every last one of them what they could do with their so-called prayers, but his father had urged him to stay away, explaining that the surest way to fan the flames was to point fingers and pit neighbor against neighbor. He promised that right would win out in the end, that the truth would come to light and the Moons would be left alone. His father hadn’t been wrong about much in his life, but he’d been wrong about that. Salem Creek had never forgiven the Moons. Not for the murders of two young girls, but for the sin of being different.
The day after the vigil, Rhanna had skipped town—proof of the power of prayer, the candle wavers had claimed. Althea had done the only thing she could: keep her head down and fight to hold the tattered remains of her business together. And Lizzy had retreated to the barn, out of the reach of customers and curiosity seekers. And him.
He’d hung around after undergrad at UNH, taking postbacc classes and helping his father with the store, inventing one lame excuse after another to put off applying to grad school. Not that he’d actually fooled anyone. Still, he rarely saw her. Unless he manufactured a reason to walk over to the farm, which he’d done with embarrassing regularity. She’d been a riddle he needed to solve back then, the answer to some question he’d yet to fully form. He’d never walked in her shoes—the other in a world that rewarded sameness and conformity. Instead, he’d been president of the student council, a high school all-American, the son of a respected businessman, who graduated with a fistful of scholarships to his name. It was the kind of white-bread existence guys like him tended to take for granted. But Lizzy had lived a very different reality.
Her family’s history, their choice of livelihood, even the way she looked, was so far from conforming to the norm that she was punished for it. But instead of lashing out, or embracing what made her different, she had withdrawn. And when that didn’t work, she left.
It was Althea who had broken the news. He’d gone over to the farm on some made-up errand for his father, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Her car, a battered blue Honda Civic, was gone. It should have been his first clue. She’d stopped going into town by then. He was pretending to check the flue in the parlor fireplace, trying to think of a way to bring Lizzy into the conversation, when Althea finally volunteered the truth. She was gone, off to New York to study fragrance.
After that, it didn’t take his father long to convince him that it was time to quit moping over a girl who didn’t know he was alive and get himself to graduate school. Eight weeks, maybe ten, and he’d left town, bound for Chicago and the Illinois School of Architecture, vowing that his days of pining for the illusive Lizzy Moon were over.
Now he was back—and so was she.
THIRTEEN
July 23
Evvie was pulling a pan of lemon–poppy seed muffins from the oven when Lizzy came down the stairs. She straightened, the fragrant steam fogging her glasses. “You’re up early.”
Lizzy checked the clock above the sink. It was just after six, early even for her, but after a night of jumbled dreams in which Fred Gilman’s face kept morphing into Andrew’s, she was more than ready to be up and moving. “I had a rough night.”
“That’s what happens when you skip supper. Sit, and I’ll fix you some breakfast.”