The Last of the Moon Girls(71)

In the distance, she heard the slap of the mudroom door. Rhanna appeared moments later, barefoot as she crossed the lawn. She had plaited her hair into two long braids and tied the ends with matching yellow ribbons. They slapped her shoulders as she walked. She broke into a grin as she halted and clicked her bare heels.

“Rhanna Moon, reporting for soap duty, sir.”

“At ease,” Lizzy replied dryly, backing out of the doorway to let Rhanna in. “I was starting to think you weren’t coming.”

“I said I would, and here I am, keeping my promise.”

Lizzy reached for Althea’s remedy book and flipped to the page she’d marked several days earlier. “That was quite a show you put on for Evvie,” she remarked finally. “For a minute there, I thought she was going to swat you with the frying pan.”

Rhanna’s smile wavered. “She doesn’t like me.”

“She doesn’t know you. All she has to go on is what she’s heard.”

“Well, then. I’m doomed.”

Lizzy thought of her own first encounter with Evvie. The unspoken disapproval. The wary distrust. “Evvie’s big on loyalty. Especially when it comes to Althea. You have to earn your way in with her.”

“Three thousand miles,” Rhanna said softly. “Most of it on foot. Does that count for anything?”

Lizzy studied her. She looked young in her bare feet and braids, startlingly vulnerable. “It does, actually. Or it will, in time. She needs to know that she can trust you. So do I, though I’m not sure that’s actually possible.”

“You can trust me, Lizzy. I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s true. Before, when I said I owed a lot of people—I was mostly talking about you. I’m not asking for anything but a chance.”

“And you’ve got one,” Lizzy said evenly. “But only one. Screw up and you’re gone. Now, let’s get this show on the road. I’m tired.”

They worked in silence for a while, divvying up the various parts of the process and settling into a rhythm. Lizzy measured out the sodium hydroxide, then held her breath as she stirred the crystals into a beaker of distilled water, eyeing the thermometer as the chemical reaction between the two began to generate heat. Rhanna melted the shea butter on the hot plate, then measured out the oatmeal, vanilla, and lavender oil.

Lizzy couldn’t help stealing an occasional glance while she waited for the lye solution to cool. In a million years she couldn’t have imagined working side by side with Rhanna to make soap—or anything, really. Her mother had always had a knack for disappearing anytime there was work to be done, which on a farm was pretty much always. Now, here she was, earning her keep as promised, and making a surprisingly good job of it.

“I think the lye’s cooled down,” Lizzy announced. “How’s it coming over there?”

“Good. And it smells fantastic.” Rhanna took the pan off the hot plate and walked it over to Lizzy. “I think we’re ready to mix. You’re going to pour the lye water into the oil mixture. Go slow, though, and pour it down the shaft of the spatula. You don’t want air bubbles.”

Lizzy followed Rhanna’s instructions, then set the empty measuring cup aside. “Are you sure this is right?” she asked, scowling at the bowl of gelatinous slop. “It looks like breakfast gone terribly wrong.”

Rhanna answered with a snort. “It’s fine. Now we mix.” She leaned in, careful as always to avoid contact. “That’s right. Slow and easy. No, don’t scrape the sides. Just stir, and watch.”

Lizzy cocked an eye at her. “What am I supposed to be watching?”

“This.” Rhanna dropped in a spatula of her own, then lifted it out slowly. “You want the dribbled batter to lie on top instead of sinking the way it did just then. It’s called trace. It’s how you know the soap’s ready to cook. It may take a bit, though. We’re doing this old-school method. They use stick blenders now. And Crock-Pots. Once we hit trace, it goes back on the hot plate. The oatmeal goes in after that.”

Lizzy looked at Rhanna in wonder as she took back the spatula. “How do you know all that? I don’t remember you ever taking an interest in what happened out here.”

Rhanna shrugged. “I didn’t back then. I was too busy being a brat. But life has a funny way of giving you what you need. Even if you don’t know you need it. I moved to Half Moon Bay for a while, with this guy I met. Actually, I liked the name of the place more than I liked the guy, but that’s a story for another day. I took a job at an herb farm. Grunt stuff mainly, but when I had a break, I’d hang out where they made the scrubs and soaps, and watch. If I closed my eyes, it was like I was back here. It helped a little.”

Lizzy looked up from the pot, the spatula still. “You were homesick?”

“Didn’t expect that, did you?”

“I didn’t. No.” Lizzy went back to her stirring, letting the quiet spool out as she tried to reconcile this startling revelation with the Rhanna she used to know, the one who’d gone out of her way to make tongues wag. “Why’d you do it?” she asked finally. “That day in the coffee shop, why did you say all those terrible things—the stuff about cursing the whole town, making sure Salem Creek got exactly what it deserved—when you knew what it would mean for Althea? For all of us?”