Page 20 of The Sun and the Moon
She points two fingers at me, sweeping them up and down. “Have you looked at yourself in the mirror? You’re wearing hiking boots. You’ve got aSave the Forestenamel pin on your denim jacket.” She grins. “Your hair is windswept and wild.” The wordwildtwists through my gut, so loaded and still so welcome as it trips from her lips.
“LA is a very outdoorsy place.” I clamp down on the exhilaration.
“But, like, in theREI membership, hike Runyon Canyonkindof way.” I want to be offended, but I’m not sure why. She’s not wrong. “So you’re suspicious of this engagement, too?”
“Too?” I can’t keep the surprise out of my voice this time.
“You first.” Another cock of her brow. A clear challenge.
“Moira never wanted to get married. She was adamantly against it for herself, claiming her soul needed to be free, not bound to another person.” This gets a guffaw from Sydney.
“She’s a trip,” she grunts.
“You have no idea.” There’s a twinge of pity in her eyes. It doesn’t linger, but for a moment I see understanding reflected there. “Marriage, commitment,” I plod on, resisting the urge to spill everything. To addfathersto the list. I don’t want to unpack all of my trauma and inner thoughts for this woman. “The wholetill deathandtrue lovething wasn’t for her. So, what? Suddenly that’s changed?”
“You don’t think so?” she asks. “You said you haven’t been home in four years. You don’t sound like you’re on the best terms.” She shrugs, playing devil’s advocate now, when seconds ago she was readily agreeing that this betrothal is fishy. “Maybe she’s changed.”
“Moira doesn’t change.”
She looks me over, nibbling the edge of her lower lip as she considers. She crosses her arms and leans back, a more defensive, less vulnerable stance.
“My dad hasn’t dated much since my mom passed,” she says, her tone more guarded now than before. “And when he has, the relationships usually fizzled out pretty fast. But not this one. It went so fast that I haven’t even met her yet, and sure, I’ve been busier than normal lately, but…” She pauses, nostrils flaring. Annoyed, I think, and maybe it’s with herself. “He didn’t tell me it was serious, which makes me even more sus.”
“How fast has it moved?” I ask, because I genuinely don’t know, and because I think it could be a clue to Moira’s motive.
“Like three months? They went from meeting up for coffee to my dad basically living with her.” She crosses her legs, pretzeling up as she leans forward. “He’s bringing Chicken for sleepovers and sunset dinners.”
I’m confused, and I don’t try to hide it. “Chicken?”
“His old-man Chihuahua.”
“Moira hates dogs,” I counter. And many other living things that require her attention for their survival. “There’s no way.”
“Well, Chicken is a nonnegotiable,” she says. “And she’s getting all cozy. He sent me a pic showing them snuggled up.”
“The speed of the relationship is a red flag to me.” I am cautious to a fault when letting people into my inner world, my life. It takes time to build trust, to really see the truth of another person clearly enough that I can be sure letting them in will be worthwhile. That level of trust is something I haven’t achieved in a long time, not romantically. Not even with friends—not really.
I came by this trait genetically.
“No offense, but it’s hard to imagine my dad being the one to ramp up this timeline. At least not without hefty encouragement,” she continues, treading carefully. I don’t think she wants to offend me by outright suggesting my mother could be that outside influence or that the reason for the red flag timeline is rooted in Moira’s malicious intent.
“Moira must have a reason for pushing this forward so fast. That’s the only explanation.” I say what she is scared to. She is taken aback.
“What reason could she possibly have?” She’s searching myface for a clue. It’s the first time I’ve felt shitty about my suspicions. Thinking them is one thing, admitting them out loud feels like it makes them all the more plausibly true.
“I have a hard time believing love is driving her decision to get married.”
“What, like she’s conning him or something?” She outright cackles at the suggestion. But when I don’t immediately dismiss it, her expression tightens. “You’re serious?”
“There’s no way to know for sure without doing some investigating, but…” I pause, feeling wholly ridiculous. What am I, a private eye? “I haven’t been here in four years. I didn’t come here to celebrate.”
She curls her lip again. Mischievous. The spark in her irises is just as sneaky.
“You came here to break up the engagement.”
As soon as the words leave her mouth, I recognize them to be true. I hadn’t fully thought of what I was doing here as that direct, but it is. There’s no other way to say it. I came here because I don’t trust my mother, and if I can prevent another person from getting unwittingly yanked into her orbit, sucked through the event horizon into her black hole of a personality, then I must.
I know too much not to.
