Page 38 of Clashing Moon

“Birthday cards,” I managed, my voice breaking. “They came every year, but he kept them from me. They were all unopened.”

“Why would he keep them?” Rafferty muttered under his breath.

“He tied them up with that ribbon and put them in this box. I can’t understand it.”

I handed him the card in my hand. “This is the last one. It explains why she left.” I found the one she’d sent on my seventeenth birthday and handed it to him. “But read this one first. It explains why she married the bastard in the first place. He’s a predator. She was only sixteen.”

He sat beside me and opened the card she’d sent on my seventeenth birthday, then read the last one. His expression changed from sadness to anger, his neck flushing red. Then he raised his gaze to mine. “No one looked after her. They should have protected her from him. She was sixteen. My God.” He rubbed his cheeks as if he wanted to wake a muscle. “And thenhe pushed her down the stairs. Her addiction was because of him.”

“I know,” I whispered. “I know.” I started to cry again.

Rafferty pulled me onto his lap and held me, his chin placed atop my head. Despite my grief, I could practically hear his mind sorting over what he’d just learned. “Do you want to try to reach her? We can try calling the number she wrote down. Just to see if anyone answers?”

“I don’t know if I’m ready.” I needed time to process everything and to come to terms with the facts. In addition, I needed to prepare myself. She might not still be alive. “If she’s moved or changed her number or…whatever…I don’t know if I can face the disappointment.”

He stroked my hair. “Whatever you want, baby. Whenever you want, this is nearly impossible to take in.”

“There’s more stuff in there,” I said. “In the box. Will you help me look?”

“Yes, let’s do it together.”

Together. Rafferty was here for me. No matter what I found inside.

10

RAFFERTY

Arabella crawled out of my lap and knelt near the box. First, we found several articles from the now-defunct local paper.The Bluefern Starhad closed about ten years previous, unable to compete with the digital world. But before that, the paper had covered all local events.

Arabella held one of the articles aloft. “This is about a production ofOur Townat the high school. My mother’s in it. She played Emily.” She thrust it toward me. “Sally Nixon. That’s her on stage.”

I looked down at the article. Indeed, the photograph was of a young woman with dark hair and big eyes wearing a costume reflecting the early 20thcentury—a woman who looked remarkably like Arabella. The writer of the article was complimentary of the cast but especially of Sally Nixon, who played Emily Webb.

I read it out loud. “Miss Sally Nixon, who played Emily Webb, was remarkably good, bringing this crusty old writer to tears several times during the play. We have a little star right here in Bluefern. I’m sure I’m not alone in wishing this young woman good luck when she graduates in the spring and goes to the University of Montana to study theater.”

“I had no idea she wanted to be an actress or that she was the star of high school plays.” Arabella took the article from my hand, clearly reading it again.

We dug through the rest of the box. There were report cards and several essays written by a young Sally, with A-plus marks on the top of the page. Journals from various ages with the same neat handwriting dated back to the mid-80s. I scanned the first page of one but quickly discarded it, feeling as though I was spying on a teenage girl. Of what I read, it was a typical diary of a teenager, talking about friends and a boy she liked but was too shy to even say hello to.

Next, Arabella pulled out a yearbook. “Look at this.”

My mother had yearbooks from high school as well, but she was older than Arabella’s mother by four years, so they were not the same ones I was looking at now. How strange, though, that Mama and Sally Nixon had endured the same fate—getting pregnant and marrying right out of school, giving up their college dreams in exchange for living with a monster.

“Have you ever asked my mother about Sally? She might have known her.”

“No. I did what my father wanted me to—act as if Sally Nixon never existed.”

My chest tightened, thinking about Sally and the abuse she must have endured while married to Collins. Robbing a woman of her child was perhaps the greatest cruelty one human could do to another.

“What a horrible man he was,” Arabella said simply.

We opened one of the yearbooks and quickly found Sally’s senior year photograph, as well as photos of her from several more school plays.

“She’s only fifty,” Arabella said. “Unless she went back to drugs, it’s very likely she’s still alive.”

“Agreed.” I wanted to pick up the phone and call immediately, but knew it was not my choice to make.

“Why did my father keep all this stuff? Was he going to share it with me at some point and then changed his mind?”

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