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Chapter 57

Luna found Dilly walkingalong the edge of the corn rows, near the lavender walkway, spiraling around talking to herself, the way she always did when she was writing a poem. “Can I interrupt?”

“Of course Luna, I’m singing to the bees, a little ditty masquerading itself as a poem, but you’ll hear tomorrow night at our gathering.” Dilly was wearing overalls, a tube top stretched across her chest. Her hair was, as she often said, “Growing out because it had lost all reason.” It was going gray, and Dilly, perturbed, had decided to wear it long in protest. Flowers stuck out of her hair in a few places, and the ends of her hair stuck out in all directions, curly. She called it “insensible” and “ornery.”

“I was hoping to talk to you, I wanted to see how you were faring after your conversation last night with Beckett?”

Luna dropped into a garden chair. “I’m okay — or, not, but . . .” Luna stared over the hedgerow. Bees spun up and around in a busy circle. Watching bees was a new experience for Luna. Her circular thoughts used to follow eddies, and currents, not insects, but here she was on a mountainside among the bees. “I don’t know what to think, I feel like Beckett isn’t telling me something.”

Dilly nodded slowly. “I agree. He has a big thing, something he sees, that he can’t tell you about. And you have a big thing, something you feel, that you can’t tell him about. And the things, big things, are piling around you both.”

“I want to tell him. I was planning to tell him today. Here.”

“Yet his big thing, is keeping him from learning your big thing. And so it goes. I sense it too, and I wish I could advise you better. But this — Beckett loves you. He must feel like what he’s seeing, or doing, is too big to tell you about. He might be wrong. I have known you now for a little over three months, not long, not long enough to know your story, just little things, the way you circle the house in the night, the way you cry curled up when you can’t sleep, the way you stare off into the horizon at dusk, the way you look at the stars, and even the way you laugh, truly letting go with joy, a joy like that means there’s a sadness there too — you can’t have one without the other. But all those things makes me believe Beckett is wrong — you’re strong enough to hear what he believes he needs to hide.” Dilly dropped into a garden chair beside Luna.

“I am. I can handle it. Should I tell him I can?”

“Maybe. But sometimes something is so scary it’s hard to be fearless enough to even tell someone about it. You might need to accept that he’s hiding something, but he doesn’t want to, but he has to. You might have to trust him even so.”

“Oh. I never thought about that.”

“You have things too. Beyond the baby. Things you’re not fearless enough to tell. Right?” Dilly peered into Luna’s face.

Luna nodded.

“It’s the words. They can be really hard. Sometimes it can be nice if the person you love hears you without speaking a word.”

Luna’s eyes drifted up to the sky. “So I shouldn’t pack my suitcase and drive to his base and demand he tells me what he’s hiding?”

Dilly squinted her eyes. “You know as well as I do that he’s not there.”

Luna nodded. “Yeah, he’s in the east, fighting.”

Dilly followed Luna’s eyes to the sky. “This was not what Beckett was supposed to be doing. Chickadee and I have devoted the last fifteen years to keeping him safe. But here he is. All we can do is sing to the bees begging them for distraction like me, or like Chickadee does, write congressmen, or like you—?”

“I whisper to him by the Monarch Constellation.”

Dilly squeezed Luna’s hand. “And that is a perfectly poetical thing to say. It’s all we can do, this — and wait.”

“And hope it’s enough.”

“The rest is up to Beckett coming home.”

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