Page 38 of The Moonlight Healers

“Go,” she said to Helene. “Have them bring a stretcher.”

Helene leaned in so Cecelia couldn’t overhear. “I’m sorry,” she said to Thomas.

“For what?”

Helene could see the afternoon sun reflecting in his gray eyes. He seemed lit from within, despite the events of the day, with a brightness, a hope Louise hadn’t seen in years. She had spent hours surrounded by death, by the destruction and carnage of war, but something about her proximity to Thomas, simply being next to him, made her feel like not all was lost.

“That you have to go.”

Thomas’s right hand toyed with a rock next to him, then he looked up and smiled. “Don’t worry about me.”

Helene tried to return his smile, the profoundness of the moment welling up inside of her.

Cecelia’s hand clamped down on her shoulder, the final axe falling. “Go on now, Paré. Back to the tents. Send along help.”

Helene smoothed her skirt as she rose. “Good luck, Thomas.”

He reached out his hand. “You as well, Helene.”

She tried to memorize the feel of his skin against her own, the weight of it, both nothing and everything all at once.

CROZET, VIRGINIA

2019

11

LOUISE

Jim strode toward Louise, lit behind by the late-afternoon sun. He had always seemed like a giant to her, as though he were carved out of the same mountains that surrounded the Shenandoah Valley.

One of his cheeks was puffed out with a wad of chewing tobacco. “Bears are wild animals,” he said finally. “In case you forgot.”

Louise’s hands shook, still tingling with energy. She slid them into her pockets. “Of course. I should never have… I wasn’t thinking,” she mumbled, unable to explain why he had caught her kneeling so close to an injured bear.

But he didn’t push. He peered down at Louise, his brow furrowing. “Come on then, I’ll walk you back up to the house.”

“Sure,” Louise stammered. She looked over her shoulder. “I just need to…to grab something.” Quickly she walked back to where she had sat earlier and tucked the small journal into her waistband before falling into step beside Jim.

They were both silent, the only sound the gravel under theirfeet once they made it back to the main road, the orchard running in long, lush rows of green on either side of them. She felt ten years old again, caught by Jim eating her weight in peaches, his features stern as he led her back to her grandmother’s house.

“You shouldn’t mess with things like that,” he said, his accent thick. Even after so many years on the other side of the mountain, he carried the lilts and intonations of the valley. “You should know better. And your grandmother wouldn’t be happy about it. Not about the bear. Or the healing.”

She stopped walking, sure she had heard him wrong. If her own grandfather and great-uncle hadn’t known about their abilities, certainly Jim wouldn’t know. “What are you talking about?”

Jim removed his hat and wiped at his brow. His eyes were softer than she remembered, two gentle ponds in the otherwise rugged terrain of his features.

“I’ve been around this orchard since I was a lot younger than you, kid. My mama worked as a nurse in the valley, until she moved here after she got married. Then she met your great-grandmother, Miss Helene.” He set his hat against his chest, almost reflexively, as though all these years later he still felt the need to show respect. “You’re not the only family withabilities.”

Louise was stunned. Even though her grandmother told her there were other healers, she hadn’t considered the possibility they were so close to home. “Your mom was a healer?”

He showed the ghost of a smile. “She was one of the best.”

Louise bit the side of her lip as she tried to process the fact that Jim had known her family’s history years before she even did. She didn’t want to show the hurt this realization caused.

“Miss Helene took my mama in, after my daddy died. She treated me like a son. She was a great lady. And I grew up with your grandma. Knew her back when she was Cami, all wild hair and moody.” There was a real tenderness in his voice, and Louise recalled her earlier conversation with her grandmother about her rebellious phase, how she’d turned down the boy hermother preferred. Had Jim been that boy? She wondered if that was the reason he had always stayed with the orchard, never married, if he’d spent his life waiting for Camille to choose him.

“Not my place really.” Jim’s voice cut through her thoughts. “It’s a family matter, but…with all that’s been going on, you know, getting it all ready for sale, and all of it, are things sorted? Between your mom and your grandma? I saw she was here with you. Seems like a step in the right direction.”

---