Page 20 of The Moonlight Healers

Helene had the nauseating feeling that he saw her the same way a cat would see a mouse, as a toy, there to taunt at his will. She had heard whispers from the other girls about him, unsettling encounters in the hallways, questions that felt probing.

Just then, the door at one end of the hall creaked loudly on its hinges. A matron in a white nursing uniform appeared, carrying a tray full of empty glass medicine vials. Her sense of purposereminded Helene of Agnes, walking down a quiet Honfleur street, her gray skirt skimming the sidewalks, her leather bag slung over her shoulder, off to homes all over town, called, as always, by death or illness or new life.

“Back to your ward, Paré,” she said sternly. “Off you go then.”

“Yes, Matron,” Helene said, and she moved quickly away.

Vogel didn’t try to stop her, but she could feel his eyes on her, his hard, calculating stare following her long after she was out of sight.

CROZET, VIRGINIA

2019

7

LOUISE

Louise lay awake in the old wooden spool bed in the guest room, watching her mother’s face on the pillow next to hers. Her grandmother had offered to sleep on the couch so Louise could take her bed, but Bobbie had refused, unable to accept any peace offering, no matter how small.

Louise had tossed and turned the entire night. Being back there with her mother had brought all of the old memories back, flitting through her consciousness like a slideshow: driving away from the orchard in the moving truck, her mother silent beside her as Louise cried, begging her to let them stay. Her monthly visits after she left, when her mother dropped her off but refused to get out of the car.

Her great-grandmother’s funeral, sitting in a folding chair at the community center in town, the space packed full of people Louise had never met, men and women from all over Virginia, driving hours to say goodbye to the nurse who had cared for their loved ones. Bobbie had been unwilling to bend even then,sat stiffly beside Camille without touching her, stayed out on the porch at the reception.

As though she could feel herself being watched, Bobbie’s eyes opened with a start. She blinked several times before pressing her cheek into the worn yellow sheets. “I forgot how uncomfortable this bed was.” She groaned as she sat up. “Spring beds were not made for someone middle-aged.”

Louise sat up too and leaned back against the wood frame. “How long have you known you could…that we could heal people?” She had to say it quickly, before she lost her nerve. Though her mother told her the basics after the accident, that healing touch was an ability passed on to each new generation through the female line, Louise still couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that her mother would have quit nursing if she were a healer, that she would hate the profession so much if she had such an extraordinary, innate skill to use as a nurse.

“A while,” Bobbie said. She pushed herself up and out of the bed and walked to the dresser for her glasses.

“How long is a while?”

“It’s complicated. More than you could know.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Louise asked in a small voice. Of all the questions that crowded her mind, that had kept her awake for hours the previous night, this one was the most painful for her. But she had to know.

Bobbie’s face sagged slightly. “I didn’t… It was complicated.”

“Stop saying that. It’s an excuse.”

Bobbie wrung her hands, and the vulnerability in her features made Louise’s anger subside slightly. “I promise we can talk more later. But I have some work calls to make this morning. One of my clients wants to make an offer on the house we saw yesterday morning, before…before the accident. The internet here is terrible so I’ll have to go to the coffee shop in town.”

“You’re leaving?” Louise was incredulous. Her mother wasgoing to leave her there alone without answering a single one of her questions, after everything that had happened?

“Just for a little bit. While you spend time with your grandmother. And then we can all talk more later before I take you back home.”

Louise’s mother was running away, refusing to put her anger in the background, even for Louise’s sake. “What about Grandma? What about me?”

“Your grandmother doesn’t need me here.” Her expression softened. “And you’ll be okay, honey. It will…it will all be okay.” Bobbie turned away and opened one of the dresser drawers. “I guess I’ll have to wear what I wore yesterday. All that’s in here are my old field hockey uniform and some cloth napkins.”

“Mom.”

“I’ll call you, when I’m on my way back. Shouldn’t be later than noon.”

“Mom!”

“I can’t stay here,” Bobbie said, her back still to Louise. Above her was one of her grandmother’s newer paintings, an impressionistic portrait of the orchard in the spring, dashes of pink against green ripples. “I’m sorry, honey, but I can’t. I want this to all make sense to you. I want you to understand what happened, and why I didn’t tell you, why…” Her shoulders rose and fell, and she shifted around to face Louise. “I want to tell you all of it, Louise. But I can’t.Shecan. And she will. She owes me that. She owes us both that. Grandma will tell you everything. Answer any question you have. I promise. I thought I could be here. But I can’t… I just need to get out of this house. Can you understand that?”

Louise wanted to question her mom, yell at her, make her explain, stay. But their roles were too ingrained, and after all this time Louise didn’t know how to be anything other than what her mother needed her to be.

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