Stranger in the Moonlight
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Contents
‘Moonlight Masquerade’ Excerpt
Edilean, Virginia
1993
In all of
her eight years, Kim had never been so bored. She didn’t even know such boredom could exist. Her mother told her to go outside into the big garden around the old house, Edilean Manor, and play, but what was she to do by herself?
Two weeks ago her father had taken her brother off to some faraway state to go fishing. “Male bonding,” her mother called it, then said she was
not
going to stay in their house alone for four whole weeks. That night Kim had been awakened by the sound of her parents arguing. They didn’t usually fight—not that she knew about—and the word
divorce
came to her mind. She was terrified of being without her parents.
But the next morning they were kissing and everything seemed to be fine. Her father kept talking about making up being the best, but her mother shushed him.
It was that afternoon when her mother told her that while her father and brother were away they were going to stay in an apartment at Edilean Manor. Kim didn’t like that because she hated the old house. It was too big and it echoed with every footstep. Besides, every time she visited the place there was less furniture, and the emptiness made it seem even creepier.
Her father said that Mr. Bertrand, the old man who lived in the house, had sold the family furniture rather than get a job to support himself. “He’d sell the house if Miss Edi would let him.”
Miss Edi was Mr. Bertrand’s sister. She was older than he was, and even though she didn’t live there, she owned the house. Kim had heard people say that she disliked her brother so much that she refused to live in Edilean.
Kim couldn’t imagine hating Edilean, since every person she knew in the world lived there. Her dad was an Aldredge, from one of the seven families that founded the town. Kim knew that was something to be proud of. All she thought was that she was glad she wasn’t from the family that had to live in big, scary Edilean Manor.
So now she and her mother had been living in the apartment for two whole weeks and she was horribly bored. She wanted to go back to her own house and her own room. When they were packing to go, her mother had said, “We’re just going away for a little while and it’s just around the corner, so you don’t need to take that.” “That” was pretty much anything Kim owned, like books, toys, her dolls, her many art kits. Her mother seemed to consider it all as “not necessary.”
But at the end, Kim had grabbed the bicycle she’d received for her birthday and clamped her hands around the grips. She looked at her mother with her jaw set.
Her dad laughed. “Ellen,” he said to his wife, “I’ve seen that look on your face a thousand times and I can assure you that your daughter will
not
back down. I know from experience that you can yell, threaten, sweet talk, plead, beg, cry, but she won’t give in.”
Her mother’s eyes were narrowed as she looked at her laughing husband.
He quit smiling. “Reede, how about you and I go . . . ?”
“Go where, Dad?” Reede asked. At seventeen, he was overwhelmed with importance at being allowed to go away with his dad. No women. Just the two of them.
“Wherever we can find to go,” his dad mumbled.
Kim got to take her bike to Edilean Manor, and for three days she rode it nonstop, but now she wanted to do something else. Her cousin Sara came over one day but all she wanted to do was explore the ratty old house. Sara loved old buildings!
Mr. Bertrand had pulled a copy of
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
out of a pile of books on the floor. Her mom said he’d sold the bookcase to Colonial Williamsburg. “Original eighteenth century and it had been in the family for over two hundred years,” she’d muttered. “What a shame. Poor Miss Edi.”
Kim spent days reading about Alice and her journey down the rabbit hole. She’d loved the book so much that she told her mother she wanted blonde hair and a blue dress with a white apron. Her mother said that if her father ever again went off for four weeks her next child just might be blonde. Mr. Bertrand said he’d like a hookah and to sit on a mushroom all day and say wise things.
The two adults had started laughing—they seemed to find each other very funny. In disgust Kim went outside to sit in the fork of her favorite old pear tree and read more about Alice. She reread her favorite passages, then her mother called her in for what Mr. Bertrand called “afternoon tea.” He was an odd old man, very soft-looking, and her father said that Mr. Bertrand could hatch an egg on the couch. “He never gets up.”
Kim had seen that few of the men in town liked Mr. Bertrand, but all the women seemed to adore him. On some days as many as six women would show up with bottles of wine and casseroles and cakes, and they’d all laugh hilariously. When they saw Kim they’d say, “I should have brought—” They’d name their children. But then another woman would say how good it was to have some peace and quiet for a few hours.
The next time the women came they’d again “forget” to bring their children.
As Kim stood outside and heard the women howling with laughter, she didn’t think they sounded very peaceful or quiet.
It was after she and her mother had been there for two long weeks that early one morning her mother seemed very excited about something, but Kim wasn’t sure what it was. Something had happened during the night, some adult thing. All Kim was concerned with was that she couldn’t find the copy of
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
that Mr. Bertrand had lent her. She had
one
book, and now it was gone. She asked her mother what happened to it, as she knew she’d left it on the coffee table.
“Last night I took it to—” The sentence wasn’t finished because the old phone on the wall rang and her mother ran to answer it, then immediately started laughing.
Disgusted, Kim went outside. It seemed that her life was getting worse.
She kicked at rocks, frowned at the empty flower beds, and headed toward her tree. She planned to climb up it, sit on her branch, and figure out what to do for the long, boring weeks until her dad came home and life could start again.
When she got close to her tree, what she saw stopped her dead in her tracks. There was a boy, younger than her brother but older than she was. He was wearing a clean shirt with a collar and dark trousers; he looked like he was about to go to Sunday school. Worse was that he was sitting in
her
tree reading
her
book.
He had dark hair that fell forward and he was so engrossed in her book that he didn’t even look up when Kim kicked at a clod of dirt.
Who was he? she thought. And what right did he think he had to be in
her
tree?
She didn’t know who or what, but she did know that she wanted this stranger to go away.
She picked up a clod and threw it at him as hard as she could. She was aiming for the top of his head but hit his shoulder. The lump crumbled into dirt and fell down onto
her
book.
He looked up at her, a bit startled at first, but then his face settled down and he stared at her in silence. He was a pretty boy, she thought. Not like her cousin Tristan, but this boy looked like a doll she’d seen in a catalogue, with pink skin and very dark eyes.
“That’s
my
book,” she yelled at him. “And it’s
my
tree. You have no right to them.” She grabbed another clod and threw it at him. It would have hit him in the face but he moved sideways and it missed.
Kim had had a lot of experience with older boys and she knew that they got you back. It didn’t take much to set them off, then you were in for it. They’d chase you, catch you, and pin your arm behind your back or pull your hair until you begged for mercy.
When she saw the boy make a move as though he meant to get down, Kim took off running as fast as she could. Maybe there’d be enough time that she could reach what she knew was a great hiding place. She wedged her small body in between two piles of old bricks, crouched down, and waited for the boy to come after her.
After what seemed like an hour of waiting, he didn’t show up, and her legs began to ache. Cautiously and quietly, she got out from the bricks and looked around. She fully expected him to leap out from behind a tree, yell “I got you!” then bombard her with dirt.
But nothing happened. The big garden was as still and quiet as always and there was no sign of the boy.
She ran behind a tree, waited and listened, but she heard and saw nothing. She ran to another tree and waited. Nothing. It took her a long time before she got back to “her” tree, and what she saw astonished her.
Standing on the ground, just under her branch, was the boy. He was holding the book under his arm and seemed to be waiting.
Was this some new boy trap that she’d never seen before? she wondered. Is this what foreign boys—meaning ones not from Edilean—did to girls who threw dirt at them? If she walked up to him, would he clobber her?
As she watched him, she must have made a sound because he turned and looked at her.
Kim jumped behind a tree, ready to protect herself from whatever came flying, but nothing did. After a few moments she decided to stop being a scaredy-cat and stepped out into the open.
Slowly, the boy started walking toward her, and Kim got ready to run. She knew not to let boys she’d thrown things at get too close. They prided themselves on the quickness of their throwing arms.
She held her breath when he got close enough that she knew she’d not be able to get away.