Page 44 of Blood Moon
Bobby shrugged it off and tried to convince me to follow him into the dining room with a wave of his hand. “The food’s in here, Bug. Eat up,” he said, but I didn’t move, didn’t give in. This wasn’t the Bobby I knew. This wasn’tmydad.
He twisted his mouth, touched at his mustache. “I suppose it’s not all about the bear,” he said, and he placed his hands on his hips. He was caught, but I was unsure if he was surrendering. “Like I said, we aren’t sure, and I’m in the middle of connecting past cases that were similar to this one.” He motioned to the mess in the living room, and then he ruffled his hair. “That’s why the house looks like this.”
“What does this have to do with mom?” I said, coming right out with it.
Those first few words came out fumbled, aghast. “What?I’m …” He was breathless, shaking his head. “I’m confused about what you mean?”
But he wasn’t. “I was here the other day. I saw the collage you had on the wall, the papers, the pictures of Mom. You were tracking cycles of the moon. You were connecting her to the attacks. Why? Do you think she did it? Do you think the animals were involved somehow?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know, or you won’t tell me?”
“Mirabella.” His voice was stern, and he held his palms out, as if to calm me down. “You arepressingyour luck here.”
There was a lump so heavy in the middle of my throat, it was hard to say the next few words. “This isn’t you, Dad,” I said between gritted teeth, trying to keep my knees from buckling as tears rushed down my face. “And I feel like you’re not telling me the truth.” I paused, sucked in air. “Did mom …did she do this?” All his evidence had pointed to her.
Red lines pierced his eyes, and he trembled as he sputtered out, “She’s connected, but I don’t know how!”
The house seemed to slant then, everything rushing at us as we tried to keep our balance. “What do you mean?”
“I mean … your mother got caught in some things she shouldn’t have, okay? And I don’t know what they might be. I don’t have the answers, even if I should. She was secretive, damn it.” He paced the sloped floors like he stood on the deck of a sinking ship. “And I’m embarrassed. I should have known. Do you know how many cases I’ve helped solve?”
He shook his head roughly, as if convincing himself this wasn’t real. “But this … this was right under my nose, and I was too close to see the breadcrumbs. The scars on her skin, the pine in her hair. The boot prints that matched the very ones she wore. But the physical act of her doing it—it was impossible, Bug.”
He glanced out the window, foggy at the corners. “The thing is, the marks on the bodies were proven to be from an animal, so when I say I don’t know how your mother is connected, Idon’tknow. But whatever is happening, she’s at the center of it somehow, and it’s haunted me for years.”
“And the moon?” I was afraid to ask.
Bobby wrestled with whatever was in his head. “I don’t know,” he said before pressing two fingers to his mouth. “I had a theory about the moon … but I’m not so sure about anything these days, and I can’t …” He paused, lowered his voice as if he was suddenly stricken with fear. He seemed afraid that the cobwebs would somehow tell our secrets. At the drop of a dime, he changed his mind, rested a hand on his head. “I’m sorry. I can’t dive into that right now.”
And when he said that, I felt as though I was drowning. Like we were all drowning. No lifeboats. No lights signaling help on the way. When would this madness end? “What about the most recent attacks?”
He shrugged, and I saw how much Bobby was a lump of himself. He was clay, barely molded, packed tight with air bubbles, in no condition to be fired. “That’s what I’m trying to piece together. There’s so much of this I don’t know.”
How could my mother, who’d been so loving, be connected to this? My mother, who taught us how to dream, how to love.How?There were bodies. Multiple victims. Facts that drew arrows to her.
Maybe the truth was that we never really knew her anyway.
My voice was unsteady, my palms covered in sweat. “Do you think she killed those people? Do you think … she’s a murderer?”
“No,” he breathed, and I swelled with a glimmer of hope. “I think she was trying to cover something up.”
CHAPTER24
The worst sin, perhaps, was believing that history did not repeat itself.
Article I, Lost Letters from Aadan the First
My mother, an accomplice to murders. It didn’t sound right.
In fact, so much of it was wrong. What could she gain from being involved? What was she covering up? There had to be something significant on the edge of this, but deciphering what that was seemed impossible without her.
Alone, in my dorm room, I resorted to my old ways, pressing my nails into the pad of my mattress, willing myself not to break anything, to control my confusion and anger. So desperate, I needed to get my hands around something, feel it break and shatter into my palms. That desire pricked like a whisper down my spine, pleaded with me to let the violence in.
Took a breath.This wasn’t me.It was the voice I’d been trying to silence. In a quick move, I put on my running shoes and sprinted around campus, ignoring the cramping in my muscles as the tears in my eyes blurred the edges of the world.
After my post-run shower, I wept.
