Page 14 of The Sun and the Moon
“I knew you’d come,” she says. It’s the only thing she could say, I guess, and yet I wish she had chosen different phrasing.
“That’s bold. I definitely didn’t have this on my bingo card for the year.”
“You never were a very good gambler,” she replies. My mouth purses. She moves, closing the small gap of distance that remains between us. I go stiff as she enfolds me in a hug, closing my eyes, trying to block out her scent—lavender and sage with a hint of citrus, probably lemon. All to ward off evil spirits or intentions that might try to come her way.
“Is Lola cooking something?” she asks. The question moves my hair, tickling my ear.
“Snickerdoodles,” I reply. She releases me, sidestepping toward the kitchen. She doesn’t motion for me to follow. It’s just heavily implied in her energy that she expects me to.
I root into the ground, determined not to give her what she wants. Especially not without an explicit request. But the sound of Lola and Elise walking back toward the checkout desk and the smell of snickerdoodles growing stronger—likely because she’s removing them from the oven herself—are why I move.
Or I tell myself they are, anyway.
I shove through the swinging door to the kitchen, and I am immediately smacked in the face with nostalgia. Years of sitting in this kitchen at all hours of the day, doing homework, stamping note cards with wax seals, brewing tea; late nights making margaritas (virgin for us kids) with Louisa and Lola as if we were the Owens sisters from the classic Alice Hoffman novel, or the Nicole Kidman–Sandra Bullock adaptation of it from the late nineties. A rectangular room, with a large cream-colored tile-topped island in the center. The backsplash is a lavender-and-orange combo. The floor is adorned with turquoise-and-cream linoleum.Herbs hang in front of the window drying. Plants tuck into crevices and hang from crocheted holders in brightly colored pots.
The huge vintage stove, also turquoise, sits heavy and dominant against the opposite wall. Moira kicks the oven door closed, rising with a mitted hand holding a baking tray of perfect snickerdoodle cookies.
The smell is overwhelming. Moira plops the tray onto the burners on top of the stove and then turns.
“She’s getting pretty good at the dough.” She sets the oven mitt to the side, leaning down to touch the tops of the cookies with her finger. Testing their doneness. “But her timing remains shitty.” Her eyes whip to mine. “You look well. Nice color in your cheeks.”
She means my slight tan, which never lasts long and always leaves behind a few more freckles when it goes. She takes every inch of me in; her eyes don’t move, and yet I know she perceives me. Catalogs every change I’ve made in the four years since I last saw her.
“I work in the great outdoors. I’m bound to catch some UVs.”
She nods, and her eyes finally bounce away from me. “The house looks good, doesn’t it?” She takes in the kitchen with a glance, a smile.
“The same, just older.”
“I hope your next statement isn’t that you could say the same about me,” she quips. “I won’t allow it.” Her eyes flash with humor.
“You know you don’t look older,” I reply, biting back a smirk. “Still bathing in virgin blood?”
“Pssh, like there are any of those left in LA.” Quick on the draw in every sense. She lifts a spatula from the ceramic potbeside the stove and begins shoveling the cookies onto a rack Lola must have set out before. “Just good old cold cream and clean living.”
I almost believe her, except that her forehead doesn’t move up and down with same dexterity it used to and her teeth have definitely been whitened. I run my fingers through my hair, a little self-conscious of the signs of my age. Thirty is respectably adult, but in her presence I still very much feel like a little girl, even if my cheekbones have sharpened and my eyes have set into some of their very own tiny spider lines.
“You’re doing natural curls,” she says as she admires my hair. I always longed for mine to look like hers—straight and impossibly shiny—but after years of fighting the frizz or frying it with a straightener, I finally gave in. My fingers brush the ends that fall right at my breast. “How was your flight?” She finishes setting the cookies on the cooling rack and walks toward me, a cookie in each hand. “Water? Iced tea?”
She hands me a cookie. I take it robotically.
“Not thirsty,” I reply to her second question first. Her hand twitches, anxious for some activity. She settles on chewing the cookie. “The flight was long and expensive.”
“I’m happy to pay you back for your travel expenses,” she says as she moves toward the back door, where I know she probably has her purse slung on a coatrack. “Having you here is everything to me—”
“You are not paying for anything.” Curt, no room for interpretation.
She stops in her tracks. Her eyes trail back to me. “If you’re sure.” She’s already moving, though, back in my direction and away from her checkbook.
That was a little too easy. A thought pings through me like a pinball on a collision course.Would that check have bounced if I’d let her write it and tried to cash it?
“Then at least stay in your room, here—free and clear.” She motions above her. “It’s my yoga sound bath studio now, but I could easily get Lola to blow you up an air mattress.”
“I have a hotel with a real bed and everything,” I say, internally cringing at the thought of stepping foot in my old bedroom turned wellness retreat. Moira may have told people I’d come back any day, may have acted like the life I chose was little more than a detour, but it didn’t stop her from taking the one space in this house that was once mine—to do whateverIwanted with—and turn it into another shrine to her desires.
She crosses her arms. My short, clipped replies are starting to bug her. The flare in her nostrils and taut shape of her full lips are proof. It gives me a little thrill that I have to contain from reaching my face.
“Rick will be thrilled to pieces to meet you—he likes to play skeptical. Keeps me grounded.” Rick. The man she’s marrying. The poor schmuck. “I told him you’d come, but he kept reminding me that even if you didn’t, this weekend would be the perfect celebration of our engagement.”
