Page 34 of The Hunting Moon
Winnie fell asleep with a new plan floating right there at the top of her brain.
After a quick splash of water on her face in the bathroom, Winnie’s feet carry her to the hall’s end, where the door into the attic awaits, its rectangular frame fixed into the ceiling and a rope dangling down.
Winnie pulls. The door creaks wide, revealing shadows and a scent like old insulation and mothballs. She spares a quick peek out a nearby window,but Mom has not staged a surprise return. Winnie quickly lowers the ladder and heads into the darkness.
Wink.The attic light turns on with the plucking of a string. Then there are the boxes Winnie found just over two weeks ago. She zooms for the one she needs, and with none of the care she exhibited the first time she came here, she digs past old photos until she finds the stack of cards left from Dad. She has opened each of hers, but Darian’s remain untouched.
She withdraws the four unopened cards and lifts them up. They look just like the ones Dad sent to her: red, square envelopes withFor my son Darianwritten in Dad’s distinctive print that always has the dot for theinot quite over its intended mark.
It’s time to open these cards. Past time, probably, but Winnie hasn’t had the heart to face what might be inside them—nor the heart to bash open the same Dad-shaped lockboxes hidden inside Darian. And while yes, shecouldopen these cards without ever telling Darian about them…
It feels wrong. An invasion of privacy. The theft of a gift that, admittedly, Darian probably doesn’t want, but that belongs to him all the same.
Winnie inhales, feeling her lungs press against her ribs. Then she exhales, closing the shoebox and returning it to its spot in the larger box. As she is rearranging things to look exactly as she found them, she spies one photograph that has fluttered free from the rest: it’s of Winnie and Darian as kids, on one of their rare trips to visit Grandma Harriet. They’re at a gas station two states over, Harriet with her arms around her grandkids’ shoulders.
She has thick auburn hair like Dad’s and Winnie’s, except with gray that is only just starting to shoot through. She’s smiling, but there’s something uncomfortable about the expression. Like she isn’t quite sure she’s doing this wholepose with your familything right. Dad always said that although Harriet wasn’t a bad mom, she wasn’t a particularly present one either. It was like she never got the hang of motherhood, and then she had even less interest in getting the hang of grandmotherhood later on.
When Dad left Winnie’s life, so did Grandma Harriet. It was never something Winnie dwelled on. It just was. The woman she awkwardly visited once a year became the woman she never visited at all.
For a moment, Winnie wonders if maybe this was where Dad went four years ago. Back to his mom, back to the life he had before, back to the house he grew up in six hours away.
She banishes the idea as soon as it strikes, then she shoves the photograph back into its box—and Harriet back into her lockbox of pointless memories.
In moments, Winnie has descended the ladder.THWACK.The door slams into place, and she hurries down the hall. Yet rather than go into her room, she pushes into Mom’s. The lights are off. The curtains are closed. There is a smell like Mom’s shampoo coupled with a staleness that reveals how little she is actually in here. The bed is made—if crudely—and the pillows are lined crookedly against the pine headboard.
It was a long-standing argument between her and Dad: Mom saw no point in making a bed you were going to mess up again the following evening. Dad, meanwhile, made the bed very precisely every single morning. Perfect corners. Fluffed pillows. A ruler-straight line for the duvet.
Ever since Dad left, Mom has attempted to make it too. Winnie has never understood why, and even now, watching dust motes flicker through the shadows, she doesn’t understand. Did Mom just change her stance on bed neatness, or is she clinging to some old way that can never be again?
But what if itcanbe again?asks a part of Winnie’s brain that she is too afraid to look at.What if Dad really is only six hours away and can come home again?
She snaps her head sideways. She will not indulge those thoughts. She willnotlet them rise any higher. They are basilisks who will turn her eyes to stone if she stares too closely at them.
With loping steps, Winnie reaches Mom’s bedside table and yanks the phone off its charging stand. Then, cards safely clasped in one hand, phone in the other, Winnie steals back into her bedroom. She shoves the cards deep into a sketchbook at the bottom of a deskside stack and finally punches in Darian’s number. He does not answer.
This isn’t surprising. He probably thinks it’s Mom, and as much as Winnie knows he loves their mother, shedoestend to call him a lot. (And in Mom’s defense, Darian has been her only friend for a really long time.) So Winnie calls again. Then a third time. And finally, on the fourth attempt, Darian picks up. “Oh mygod,Mom.”
“Not Mom,” Winnie says. “It’s me. What are you doing right now?”
“Oh. Win.” A sound like scraping fabric fills the receiver, as if Darian is pinning the phone between his shoulder and jaw. “I’m helping get thewerewolf test site set up at the pier. This is almost as complicated as the Masquerade preparation. You would not believe how many boxes have to be unloaded—Sandra!That is not where that goes!”
For several seconds, Darian is distracted ordering Sandra about (which must beextremelysatisfying given how Sandra treated him for so many years before he replaced her as Dryden’s assistant). Then the fabric scrapes again and Darian returns.
“What do you need, Win? I’m kind of busy here. The scale of this is just bananas. You would not believe how many microscopes we needed. And Dryden is insisting we make it all lookfunso as not to detract from the Floating Carnival. As if werewolf testing isfun—”
“Right,” Winnie cuts in before Darian’s rant can really hit its stride. “I need to see you. Is there a moment we can meet? Just us two.”
“You can come over tonight. I’m making a risotto—no,Sandra. No. What don’t you understand about ‘keeping the arrow on the boxes pointed up’?”
“Will Andrew be there?”
“Of course.”
“I saidjust us two,Darian. As in,just us alone.”
“Oh.” For the first time since picking up the phone, Darian seems to still on the other end. Winnie can feel his whole attention latch on to her. “What’s going on, Winnie?”
“I’ll explain in person.”
