Page 12 of Lady and the Butcher
Another buzz followed. Same number.
Full moon makes for restless nights. Leave your porch light on.
The air went thin.
I told myself it could be a prank. That someone at the circle had seen my Notes app. That this was Charleston and everyone knew everyone else’s business in three moves or less.
Then a third message.
Two nights. Be ready.
I didn’t reply. I didn’t breathe. I didn’t do anything except sit there with the world narrowed to a glowing phone screen and the drum of my pulse in my ears.
Out back, a stray tea light I’d missed flickered on the steps as dawn yawned open.
“Okay,” I whispered to no one. To him. To myself. “Okay.”
I slid the phone under my thigh like that could muffle fate, pressed my palms to my eyes until colors burst, and let a laugh leak out—sharp, a little feral.
Because the full moon had come and done her work.
She’d brought a baby.
And maybe, she’d also brought my ruin.
5
Two days passed in a blur that tried very hard to look normal.
The morning after the full moon, I had driven over to Mom’s with a basket of clippers and a guilty conscience. Sure enough, the front yard looked like it had been dipped in snow. The blooms were outrageous, fragrant enough to make me forgive them for attracting every bee in Charleston County. We worked side by side, me in my cutoffs, her in the wide-brim straw hat she swore made her look like Katharine Hepburn.
We talked about nothing and everything. Which is to say, she talked about the twins’ classes and whether Stephen’s new girlfriend could cook—news to me; he hadn’t mentioned a girlfriend, and when exactly had he found time to meet someone while he was out of the country?—and I deflected any attempt to aim the conversation toward my love life. It was the same dance we’d done for years—comfortable, familiar, safe. The opposite of what was still buzzing under my skin.
The next day at The Nesting Place, I restocked shelves, reordered nipple balm, signed up a new doula client due in October, and helped a very pregnant woman debate the meritsof a birthing ball versus a peanut ball like we were on Shark Tank. It was the kind of work that grounded me. That let me pretend the only messages I’d gotten lately were from suppliers and sleepy new moms sending baby photos.
I even managed to convince myself I’d dreamed the texts. That they were some bizarre, hormone-adjacent hallucination brought on by too much moonlight and not enough REM sleep.
Until the second night arrived.
And now here I was, pulling into the lot at Stephen’s birthday party with my stomach tight in that way it gets when you’re waiting for something and pretending you’re not.
My brother had gone all out this year—thirtieth birthday apparently being the milestone that unlocked his inner Gatsby.
Instead of the usual backyard barbecue, he’d rented out The Cistern at the College of Charleston.
By day it was a postcard-perfect sweep of grass and live oaks draped in Spanish moss, flanked by those pale pink columns that make every student’s graduation photo look like it belongs in a Southern Living spread. By night—well, tonight—it was strung with a canopy of lights, jazz spilling out of rented speakers, and a bar set up under the branches.
It was beautiful. And, if I’m honest, mildly infuriating.
Because the man—if it was a man—had said two nights.
And this was night number two.
The rational part of me knew I wasn’t under house arrest. That I could go out, toast my brother, dance under the moss without missing a damn thing. The irrational part—the part that had been humming ever since those three messages lit up my phone—was convinced that if I wasn’t home, I’d miss him.
Which was ridiculous. And also entirely possible.
I sat in my car a minute longer than necessary, watching the slow drift of people in cocktail dresses and linen shirts crossing the lawn. Stephen’s laugh carried over the music, bigand unselfconscious, the same as when we were kids. I loved him for it. I hated myself for not being able to shake the thought that somewhere—maybe even right now—someone could be walking up my front steps.
