Mending the Moon (41 page)

She knows this slightly giddy peace won't last, knows there will be all kinds of grief to work through, but right now, all she has to do is walk the dog. She gets dressed, gulps down some orange juice, puts a bagel for herself in one pocket and puppy-poop bags in the other, whistles for Bart, and clips him to his lead.

Walking down the driveway, she wonders how they'll split everything. She'd like to keep the house, and she's certainly been spending more time here than William has, but maybe that won't be possible. She'll have to work. Without the house, she could move away from Seattle, move somewhere sunnier. Arizona. Reno. She laughs again. Wouldn't Melinda's crew be surprised?

Jeremy and the others are on the road back home now, she suspects, and she's on a road, too, one long deferred and long intuited. She loves Seattle. She'll stay here if she can, if she can afford it, if she can support herself. William wants it amicable. Is alimony amicable? Does she even want it? She'll need it, for a while, until she can get on her feet, but she doesn't think she needs a moat anymore. Maybe she'll move off the island, into the city. If she can't keep the house.

She walks down the hill, Bart happily lifting his leg to all his usual trees. The sun's out, for a wonder, and it glints on the water, and she thinks as she always does about Percy, about the last time he saw this view. Will William leave her half of Percy's ashes? Will William want any of them?

She shudders, just for a moment, and Bart, heeling as obediently as he always has, looks up at her, concerned. “Okay,” she says, and touches his head. “I'm okay.” Percy, helping her along the path. There is no one to help her along this new one, this road to another life.

She will, she supposes, find people. Friends, lovers, business associates. She'll have to find them. That's what always happens, after divorces. She's seen enough of them to have faith in the future, even if she can't imagine what it will look like.

Bart does his business, and Anna cleans up after him. She's chilled, now. She needs to go back, drink coffee, shower. She needs to steel herself for the draining business of calling lawyers.

But she stands by the side of the road, looking through the woods at the water. Another minute, here. Just another minute. There's a faint trail meandering between the trees, made by deer or dogs or kids, and Anna thinks again of that day in the Cascades.

And an image comes to her. She sees herself walking Bart along that trail, sees herself negotiating the difficult places, going carefully, being deliberate. She will go there soon: next weekend, maybe, this week, whenever she can get away from the legal mess. She will drive to that trailhead in the Cascades, and the dog will be with her, and she will bring Percy's ashes. And she will scatter them along the trail wherever she can, but especially in the difficult places, around tree roots and rocks.

Percy helped her over those patches when he was alive. Maybe that was the only good thing he ever did, but he did it for her, and now he will do something else for her. Because she has survived his death, and Melinda Soto's death—because she has survived all the doubts and the questions and the tears—she knows she can survive a divorce, too.

It's a small lesson, the tiniest of gifts, but it's something. Anna breathes, tugs at Bart's leash, and turns. She walks back up the hill, back to the house, back to the ruins of her marriage and the remains of her child.

*   *   *

Melinda lies in her hotel room in a spreading, sticky pool of blood. The blood's warm, but she's cold. The boy who just left the room has beaten and brutalized her, has stabbed her. She tried to reason with him and failed; she tried to fight him and failed. She tried to scream and couldn't, because he'd gagged her with a towel.

It all seems very far away now. As she lies there, she knows she is dying, and she is not afraid. She is only afraid if she remembers what just happened to her: the boy from the pool, the boy who was so polite this morning, grown feral and ferocious, forcing his way into her room, forcing his way into her body with his own flesh and then with bright cold metal. “Don't scream or I'll kill you,” and she couldn't, because of the towel, but he did anyway.

When she remembers that, she is terrified.

So she tries to remember other things: her son, her friends, her job. All of that frightens her again, because she knows she'll never again see the people she loves, knows they'll grieve and grasp for meaning. She knows they'll suffer. She doesn't want them to. She can't help them. She knows they will help each other and help Jeremy, but that's not enough. Her inability to comfort her child clenches her hands into fists. Her helplessness hurts more than anything her murderer did to her, because what he did is already over, and this new pain has just begun, is omnipresent.

To escape it, she remembers people who are already dead, who cannot feel pain anymore. Her father, tying fishing flies. Her mother, baking cookies.

Where Melinda lies on the hotel room carpet, the blood a lukewarm lake now, she can see a piece of the sky through the window above her. She sees a glowing whiteness. Melinda sees the moon. It is not full—it is partial, broken—but it is very bright.

And Melinda, at the end of her life, remembers the beginning, remembers the first time she saw the moon. She must have only been a baby then. She remembers how perfect it was, remembers the wonder it awakened in her.

She remembers the moon before it was broken, before she saw its flaws and holes. She knows she has mended it at last, performed the task she has been joking about her whole life, almost. The moon, in memory, is beautiful.

She still remembers the brutal boy, still remembers her friends, her job, her child, but all of that is receding, along with panic and worry and pain. All of that is very far away now, and the moon is very close, so close that she could touch it if only she could lift her hands.

The white light grows, and spreads, and swallows her. Melinda no longer has hands, or a body, or the memory of loss. She dissolves into the brightness, and then there is only the moon shining in the window, onto emptiness.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank Tor Books for asking me to write this novel, and Patrick Nielsen Hayden for editing it. As always, I am grateful to Kay McCauley, who is not only my literary agent but a dear friend.

Sharon Walbridge, Jim Winn, and Gary Meyer read and commented on an earlier, very different version of this story. When I decided to rewrite the novel from scratch, Jim Winn—brilliant pianist and composer, one of Entropy's worthiest adversaries—gave me a profoundly helpful pep talk.

Gary Meyer, eagle-eyed editor and beloved husband, has read every word of every version of this book, multiple times.

Christina MacDonald did an excellent job of copyediting.

Danielle Mayabb is the original source of Rosemary's metaphor of Christ as compass.

Todd Renwick of the University of Nevada, Reno Police Services, answered my questions about how the investigation into Melinda's murder would be likely to proceed.

Eric Heidecker briefed me on the availability of junk food in Nixon, Nevada.

Liz Lasater, Sheila Young, Christian Lindke, Melissa Walton, Lucy Larsen, Teresa Poulson, and Nancy Espin—all better traveled than I—confirmed my description of the terrain between Reno and Klamath Falls.

Victor Montejo's
The Bird Who Cleans the World and Other Mayan Fables
is a real book, and was an invaluable resource.

I am indebted to the University of Nevada, Reno, for the boon of a professional development leave from my teaching duties, during which I finished this book.

Thank you all. As always, all errors and infelicities are mine alone.

 

TOR BOOKS BY SUSAN PALWICK

Flying in Place

The Necessary Beggar

Shelter

Mending the Moon

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Susan Palwick is an associate professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her debut novel,
Flying in Place,
won the Crawford Award for best fantasy debut. Her second novel,
The Necessary Beggar,
won the American Library Association's Alex Award. She lives with her husband in Reno, Nevada.

 

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

MENDING THE MOON

Copyright © 2013 by Susan Palwick

All rights reserved.

Cover design by Jamie Stafford-Hill

Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor
®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Palwick, Susan.

    Mending the moon / Susan Palwick.—First edition.

        p. cm.

    “A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

    ISBN 978-0-7653-2758-1 (hardcover)

    ISBN 978-1-4299-8715-8 (e-book)

    1.  Murder victims—Fiction.   2.  Suicide victims—Fiction.   3.  Mothers and sons—Fiction.   4.  Friends—Fiction.   I.  Title.

PS3566.A554M46 2013

813'.6—dc23

2012043362

e-ISBN 9781429987158

First Edition: May 2013