Beneath the Patchwork Moon (Hope Springs, #2) (21 page)

“I chose myself,” he sniped back, then more calmly, “I chose myself. Selfish? Maybe. But I had to get away. My father standing there, looking at me, telling me I was no longer his son…”

Even now, the power of those words spoken in that voice, the same voice that had cheered at his football games, praised his craftsmanship as they’d built the family’s table and chairs…

“He said that to me? After I had been the one to pick up all the slack he couldn’t be bothered with because he was
called
to play his guitar. Funny how he was never
called
to fix the washing machine so his kids could have clean clothes. Or
called
to make sure there was enough gas in the car to get us to school. And that was high school. College was even worse,”
he said, and pushed off the door to pace. “I was the one who kept my brothers and sisters from going hungry, from having to live in the dark. Did you know my junior year at Cornell I ate one meal a day? It was a good meal, granted, usually something a customer in the restaurant where I worked sent back to the kitchen. Sometimes leftovers that would’ve gone into the trash.

“And you want to know why I ate one meal a day? Because I had no money. I waited tables. I bussed tables. I mopped floors. Anything I could to get more hours because I needed the money to send home. Sierra couldn’t work because her music took up all the time she wasn’t in school. Isidora wasn’t old enough, though she did wash dishes at Butters Bakery on weekends. Emilio and Felix and Teresa? Yeah, they helped out around the house, but they were kids, and they never got to
be
kids. I hated my parents for that.”

She looked up at him, tears rolling down her cheeks, silent tears, desperate tears. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this then? We were together for three years. More than three. Almost four.”

He stopped, scrubbed both hands down his face, and sighed. “Because you were my escape. My time with you was the only time I didn’t have to think about the real world.”

“So what we had wasn’t real. I wasn’t real.”

“No, Luna. You were the only thing that was. And that’s why I wanted you with me when I came home that last time. I wanted my parents to know how important you were to me. I thought if they saw us together, something might click. I don’t know. Like they would wake up and realize that you’d done what you’d thought best to help Sierra. I never thought…” He took a deep breath, gathered his words. “I never thought
they’d pretend you weren’t even there. At least until they yelled at you to go. I thought they’d see how happy you made me. How you meant as much to me as you’d ever meant to Sierra.”

She swiped at her face, swiped again, finally gave up and just stared at him. “Why couldn’t you trust me to tell me what it was like for you?”

“I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want anyone to know. My home life couldn’t have been more dysfunctional, yet on the outside we looked like one big happy family. I was the football star. Sierra the musical prodigy. The Caffeys were so lucky. Just look at all that talent under one roof,” he said, and then he was done, dropping to squat on the balls of his feet, banging his head against the doorframe behind him.

“You didn’t have to walk away,” was what she finally said, her voice tiny and hurt in this room full of more pain than any family should know.

“Yeah. I did. I’d failed my sister. I’d failed my parents and siblings. If we’d stayed together, I would’ve failed you, too. I couldn’t ruin your life.” But he’d been unable to get over her either. Unable to believe what he’d lost. It had been easier to disappear, to not exist. “I screwed up. You were the best thing that ever happened in my life, and I couldn’t see it because of the worst.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

L
una’s suite of rooms in her parents’ home was the size of a small apartment, which meant she’d hoarded an apartment’s worth of junk over the years. As daunting and unappealing as the task was, she was going to sort through it all as she packed. No way was she going to haul boxes filled with grade-school artwork, and gossipy middle school notes from friends, and all the photos and autographs she’d collected in high school to her new place. Mementos, yes, but only the most valuable. She had so few, and almost all were connected to Sierra.

Sierra. Angelo. Moving day.

Cleaning out Sierra’s bedroom after the girl’s brother had stormed out of the room had given her too much time to think—about the things he’d said, about the things she’d found, about how she hadn’t known the Caffeys at all. They’d been her favorite family in the world, next to her own, of course, yet it seemed she’d been seeing a façade. It broke her heart to realize that. But it broke her heart even more to learn the true atmosphere Sierra and Angelo had grown up in—especially when her home life had been the stuff of dreams.

Luna’s own bedroom was the same one her parents had brought her to from the hospital, the four-poster iron frame of her queen-size bed the same glossy white as her crib had been, or so she’d learned from pictures. She’d painted the walls a couple of times over the years, almost coming full circle. The original sunny yellow she’d seen in the photos with the crib was now a deep autumn maize, with one accent wall colored like red West Texas clay, and the hardwood floor a buffed buttery brown.

In the interim years, her father had added onto her room, turning it into a full wing. She had her own bath and dressing room, her own study and sitting room, her own entrance. Except for sharing the house’s kitchen, her living quarters were fully self-contained. Skye was going to love this room. She’d be the envy of her friends, the go-to girl for sleepovers. And their poor parents, dealing with all those giggling girly girls, then all those squealing, drama queen tweens, and then all those moody, broody teenagers.

Laughing, she taped the bottom of a box, tossing it up against her shelving unit. She taped a second for trash and a third for anything she might want to donate. She had way too many clothes. And her shoes would almost require a separate moving van. An exaggeration, of course, but she really needed to curb her shopping habits. Her money would be much better spent pulling the arts center together. There was so much to arrange for, so much to buy… and that had her laughing, too, as it struck her how happy she was with, as her mother had called it, her new vocation as the director of the Caffey-Gatlin Academy.

Was this another part of the break from her past? Giving up extravagance for austerity? Not that she’d truly been the
former, or would ever be the latter, but this tectonic shift in her priorities was leaving no part of her life alone. That was one thing she and Sierra had never shared. Her best friend had loved to go shopping with her, but she’d never wanted to buy anything.

Except once, Luna remembered, when Sierra had fallen in love with a pair of earrings that had to be two inches long. Feathers and beads and distressed metal charms… a tiny key, an even tinier book, the tiniest heart Luna had ever seen. Luna had returned to the store the next day and bought them, gifting them to Sierra two months later for her birthday. Strangely, Sierra had seemed less excited to receive them than she had the day she’d found them on the store shelves.

Luna had always wondered about that, if something about the earrings made her friend sad, or if it was Luna having money she didn’t that bothered the other girl, or if Sierra had felt out of touch with her peers because none of the girls at St. Thomas would have been caught dead wearing the colorful peacock feathers she’d loved. Looking back now, and with all she’d learned from Angelo about the family’s hopes for Sierra, she couldn’t help but wonder if the earrings had reminded her friend that her talent was as much burden as blessing.

Sierra couldn’t concern herself with fashion, or with fitting in. She couldn’t spend money frivolously when there were camps and workshops not covered by her scholarship. She couldn’t run off for an impromptu movie or concert; she barely had time for TV.

Maybe that was why being with Oscar had consumed her. He’d become her world while understanding her world. It was the land he’d come from, too. A land few understood. Luna certainly hadn’t. She loved listening to the music they
played, but that was all it was for her. For Oscar, for Sierra, it was everything.

Luna had never seen Sierra wear the earrings. In fact, the last time she’d seen them, they’d been stashed away in the tree trunk that served to support the Caffeys’ tree house. How many times had they sat inside it the summer of Sierra’s pregnancy, talking about the decision Sierra and Oscar had made to give the baby away? Who knew how many things of Sierra’s might still be hidden there? Most likely, time and the elements had ruined anything that remained, but Luna didn’t care. She wanted to find any pieces of Sierra she could.

And since she was so not in the mood to start packing, she saw no reason she couldn’t go looking for them now.

CHAPTER TWENTY

S
he reached for the ladder rung hammered into the trunk of the tree, pulled at it, tugged, testing its give. It shifted, a corner broke free, but it held. The one beneath her foot remained stable, too, and she made her way slowly up the tree, holding her breath the entire way and praying she wouldn’t crash to the ground. Breaking a bone would be bad enough. Having to explain to Angelo she’d done so for a pair of peacock earrings was worse.

After boosting herself up and onto the floor, she swung her legs around and crawled to the corner where the tree trunk served to support the asymmetrical room. She’d never been able to stand up while inside, but on her knees she could reach deep into the knothole Sierra had carved away in the trunk, creating a niche where she’d hidden anything she didn’t want to fall into her parents’ hands—much the same way she’d hidden things from her siblings in the tallest of the kitchen cabinets.

Instead of the earrings, Luna found a small leather case shaped like a jeweler’s necklace packaging box, and except for the embossed initials on top, it was identical to one Luna had in her room. Identical to those given to all St. Thomas Preparatory School freshmen the first day of class, along with
a fountain pen and a leather-bound journal. The three items made up one of the least practical school supply bundles Luna had ever seen, but it was a tradition she imagined this year’s incoming students had seen continued.

The box was wrapped in a sealed plastic bag, that one shoved in a second bag, and those shoved in a third. Sierra had taken great care to keep whatever was inside clean and dry and from becoming bug fodder. Her heart racing, Luna took the same great care removing it from its coffin of protective layers, peeling away the plastic as she would the tissue paper from one of her Patchwork Moon scarves.

And then the box was free, and her hands were shaking around it. Sierra had hidden this out here for a reason. Wrapped it and wrapped it and wrapped it for a reason. Whatever was inside, she hadn’t wanted it found, or destroyed before she could get back to it. Luna swallowed hard, murmured a rough, “Wow,” wondering what had been going on with her friend, and if Luna had a right, all these years later, to know.

The case sat in her lap, and it weighed almost nothing. She could lift it with one hand, hold it like a serving tray, bounce it back and forth like a hot potato, but she didn’t. It was too important, and splitting open the outside bag had felt like a total disregard for something that couldn’t possibly be more precious. This was Sierra. This was a secret even Luna hadn’t known. One she doubted Angelo had known either.

She ran the tip of one finger over Sierra’s embossed initials, thinking of other things he didn’t know. He didn’t know that Luna loved him. That her love for him had been alive longer than Sierra had been dead. That she’d thought of him every day since meeting him, even the years he was away, even with the distance between them. He was everything to her, and she
didn’t know why, but wasn’t that the way of love? Knowing? Accepting? Trusting the emotion unconditionally?

Maybe she was romanticizing instead of being practical. But love wasn’t practical. It rarely made sense. What she did know was that she wanted Angelo with her when she opened the box, and yet she wanted him far, far away. She wanted to rush through, get it over with, glance through the contents, and then return the box to the trunk of the tree. She wanted to open the box slowly, give everything she’d find inside its proper due.

She closed her eyes, squeezed them, felt the sting of hot tears on her hands before she realized she was crying. She wiped them off on her jeans and made sure the box was dry. Then she flipped the latch, happy to find it unlocked, and lifted the lid. She waited, counting to ten, then to ten a second time, before finding the strength to open her eyes. It took another count before she was able to look down at what she held.

Sierra had knitted the booties inside. She’d labored over the needles and pattern while the two of them had sat in this very tree house and talked about school and clothes and how much they hated wearing uniforms, but how doing so had made the pregnancy easier; Sierra had never had to explain why she was wearing the same baggy outfits over and over again.

Luna had shown her friend her mother’s selection of yarn, and Sierra had chosen orange. She didn’t yet know the sex of the baby, and orange would be perfect for the little one’s first Halloween. The booties were flawed and the stitches uneven, one bootie slightly longer than the other, and Luna was caught between laughing over the memory of Sierra’s
frustration, and crying at the realization that the booties had never been worn.

Beneath the booties was a Polaroid of Sierra’s first sonogram. It had still been too early to determine the baby’s sex, but one tiny hand was obvious, as was the baby’s head, and bulges that that would one day be eyes. Sierra had been as anxious to find out the baby’s eye and hair color as anything. And then when they’d learned they were having a girl, she’d sobbed. By then they’d made the decision to give Lily a new home and family, and her friend’s anguish had left Luna wrecked.

Underneath the Polaroid she found the two gold wedding bands her friends had never got to wear. Sierra’s fingers had been too swollen, and Oscar had told her he’d save wearing his, too. They’d planned to make a big deal of slipping them on. More plans that never saw fruition.