The Moon Tells Secrets (16 page)

We stopped at a diner on the way home, a typical Jersey one filled with the smell and sounds of hamburgers being fried and simmering chili. “This place reminds me of Mack,” Davey whispered in my ear when we went inside, and I knew that despite the fun of the day, nothing had changed.

Night still lay before us.

 

11

cade

Dennie was on Cade's mind as he drove them home. He'd never been much good at reading women. It was one of the things Dennie had teased him about, hinting that like most men, he thought with his “small head” rather than the big one on top of his neck. Just thinking about her voice when she said it, the funny way she would shake her head followed with a quick eye roll, made him smile. He glanced at Raine now, studying her tight lips, fingers folded neatly in her lap with their bright red nails matching the color of her lipstick. She was coiled so tightly, he wondered what would happen if he touched her, so he did, lightly on her elbow.

“You okay?”

“Fine,” she said too quickly. She gazed out the window not with the casual demeanor of simply enjoying the ride but with a furtive uneasiness, as if searching for someone in the night. Davey, earphones in ears, gazed into the darkness, too, but there was a relaxed smile on his lips, as if reliving the day, and that quickened Cade's heart, made him glad they'd come.

Raine worried him. Each time they were together—and it had been nearly every day in the past few weeks—he felt closer to her. It scared him how quickly he'd grown to care about her. He was as wary as he'd been those first few weeks of loving Dennie, falling so quickly, deeply, that he couldn't catch his breath. Yet this was different, slower. The instant he met Dennie—in the cafeteria when he'd dropped his wallet and she had picked it up—she surprised him. It had shocked him—weird thing for a strange woman to do, he'd thought, until she smiled, and he, Mr. Badass, was caught in her grin.

Raine? He knew himself in love. This was close to it, but something had to change between them. He couldn't take another heartbreak, even a little one. He knew that, too.

“Did you have a good time?” He didn't think she heard him, she seemed so lost in thought. “Raine?”

She turned away from the window with a smile that wasn't quite one and nodded. “Better than I've had in a long time.”

“Sure about that?”

“Yeah. I've got a lot of stuff on my mind, Cade. That's all.”

“Davey seemed to have enjoyed himself.”

Her smile was full-blown now, no doubt how she felt about that. “Thanks, Cade.”

“For what?” He noticed her eyes were moist. Tears. Again.

“For everything. For being there for me, for my son.”

“Hey. You know how … Yeah, okay, thanks.” You know how I feel about you, he'd almost said, but he'd told her that already, he realized. In the car, coming over, with that talk about not playing games. She hadn't said much then, hadn't fallen over herself assuring him that she felt the same way about him, that she had the same feelings. Maybe she didn't. But it had been bad timing to say anything with Davey sitting in the backseat.

That scared him, too, how close he'd gotten to Davey. Watching the boys talking and walking together, keeping an eye on them but not close enough to let them know, it was like being a father, the father he'd always dreamed of becoming, the one he'd never had. That was the best thing about today, seeing Davey in his own element, with friends. Like a normal kid.

“So are we still on for tonight?” For those secrets you promised to tell me, he almost said but didn't, for something else he was afraid to admit to himself. Was that a sigh he heard, coming from her so softly? Was it that hard for her to be alone with him? This would be one of the few times they were completely alone. Not in a movie theater, restaurant, or sitting on Luna's back stairs while he watched her draw. Alone with him in the house he used to share with Dennie. Maybe he wasn't ready for that yet either. Even to talk. Only to talk.

“Yeah,” she said. “But I need to tuck Davey in first.”

“Tuck Davey in?” He raised his eyebrow so high, Raine laughed—at the thought of it, he was sure. As if anyone could tuck in a fast-growing eleven-year-old boy who had just recently discovered hip-hop and heavy metal.

“You know what I mean,” she said, and he nodded like he did, but he didn't. She was far too protective of her son, who struck him as more than able to take care of himself. When he'd first met Davey, he wasn't sure exactly how old the boy was, somewhere between nine and ten, he'd guessed, but the boy had grown up both physically and emotionally in the past few months, as emotionally mature as any eleven-year-old going on fourteen could be.

Sometimes when he looked at Davey he saw himself at that age. The awkwardness and secretive longings. The sadness touched with bravado and vulnerability. Maybe that was why he liked teaching kids that age, trying to find that forgotten space between boyhood and adolescence that was within himself.

His father's drinking hadn't really gotten to him until then. He'd always been aware of it, but it wasn't until he was eleven that he'd understood all the shit that came with it, what the word “drunk” really meant, even though he'd heard his mother hurl it at his old man a hundred times a day, out loud and under her breath, until the night she died.

Lousy drunk, useless drunk, lazy drunk, disgusting drunk, filthy drunk.

Maybe someday he'd be able to talk about his mother to Raine. He'd been married to Dennie a year before he could bring himself to share the depth of the wound his mother's death had left. Davey talking about his “weirdness” had brought out memories of his own. He thought again about the boy at the street carnival today, and how after his initial discomfort when Ken had asked about his school, how quickly he'd fit in.

He'd ask her about the school again tonight, he decided. It was near the end of August, and she should have made some kind of decision by now. He glanced over at her again, her eyes focused so intently on the darkness, hands rigidly folded in her lap. Why hadn't she bothered to tell him how she felt about him? Hadn't he made it clear how important she was, they both were, to him?

“Maybe an hour or so, about eight? Will your baby be tucked in by then?” He grinned to let her know he was teasing, and she smiled back briefly, her face turning serious again.

“Maybe a little later. Something has … well, come up, and I need to talk about it with him tonight.”

“Something serious?”

“Yeah.”

Short and sweet and soft, the yeah. If he hadn't been listening closely, he wouldn't have heard it.

*   *   *

He hadn't realized what a mess his place was until he saw it as he imagined Raine would. Dirty dishes piled high in the sink, dust clumped on the floor in tiny balls, grimy spots on the kitchen floor. Davey was used to it; Raine wouldn't be. They stopped having tea here after their first date. He swept under furniture and soaked the dishes in the sink. After pulling out the vacuum cleaner, which hadn't been used since Dennie's death, he tried to turn it on, then realized he had no idea where the switch was. He found it tucked under a lever, cursed to himself about the craziness of putting it there, and made a swipe at the floors and the rug in the living room. When he finished, he realized with some disgust that it looked pretty much the same.

The woman is coming for … whatever, he reminded himself, but he knew it was more than that. Slowly, methodically, he began to clean all the places he thought she might go. He took the grimy glasses off the living room coffee table, slippers from under the couch, moved papers he had yet to file.

He glanced at Dennie's office. The door was tightly closed. He checked it to make sure.

He thought about cleaning upstairs—the bedroom, bathroom—and then felt foolish that he would even consider taking Raine upstairs, then spent the next ten minutes guiltily wondering what it would be like to make love to her. He'd certainly thought about that more than once. Then, out of nowhere, he began to wonder why exactly he'd invited her over in the first place.

“To talk,” he'd told her, realizing how insistent he'd been about sharing whatever was on her mind. He'd asked for some kind of truth-telling—sharing of truths, he'd called it. But maybe it was none of his business. Maybe she didn't want the relationship to go any further; women were the ones to lead in this kind of thing, not men. He'd never been good at doing it, anyway.

He thought about taking a shower, then remembered he'd taken one that morning. He thought about dashing to the store to get something to serve—cookies, sandwiches, appetizers—then laughed out loud for his silly anticipation. He could almost hear Dennie laughing at him, too, then stopped to yell at himself about Dennie when he was considering being with another woman.

And what kind of a place was this to bring Raine, anyway, the house where your wife was murdered? But hadn't she been here before with Davey?

Should he call it off, ask her to meet him somewhere else, anywhere else, but it was nearly nine and there was nowhere else for them to go. Just to talk. And wasn't that what they were going to do?

We've known each other long enough to be honest. I know how I'm beginning to feel about you, how much I care about you. I've been through too much to do anything but play fair. I can't play games anymore with anyone.

He'd blurted out the words before he knew he was saying them, but it was the damn truth, that he was tired of the life he had and the way he was living it, and for the first time since Dennie's death, he had begun to see a light, and that light was Raine. She was here, and he had to know where they stood.

*   *   *

“Hard time getting Davey tucked in?” he joked when she stepped into the kitchen. She'd come in through the back door, like Davey always did. Hell, nobody came to the front door except the damn cops. The moment after the words left his mouth, he wished he hadn't said them. He couldn't ignore the wrinkles of distress on her forehead. “Come on in,” he quickly added. Something about Davey, no doubt. Preteen shit. She'd tell him later if she wanted him to know.

They settled down at the kitchen table like they had when they were first getting to know each other, but there was uneasy distance between them now, and again he had second thoughts about having invited her. What did he have to say that hadn't been said already? Yet as he watched her sipping her Coke, so thoughtfully, oddly seductive, he was glad he had. After a few moments, he came out with what was really on his mind.

“I'm worried about you, Raine. I'm scared that I'm going to lose you; that you're going to disappear from my life the way you came into it, without a trace, and I don't think I could take that.”

The look she gave him, so tender and deep, told him he had said the right thing, and as he had done before he took her hand, thinking how small and soft it was, how vulnerable. He saw tears come into her eyes. “What's going on, Raine? Every time I look at you, you're crying. Can't you tell me?”

“I don't know if I'm ready.”

He decided to leave it there, not force anything else, and after a while, she laughed—a light, charming, devil-may-care chuckle that he knew was meant to put him at ease and suddenly he was.

“Want something to eat?”

“What do you have?”

He realized then what a stupid thing it was to ask, since he didn't have a damn thing, so he shrugged. He should have bought something, he realized, dips, chips. Dennie would scold him; he could almost hear her voice. You don't invite a lady on a date at your home and have nothing to serve her! What kind of suitor are you? Suitor! A word only Dennie would use, and that thought made him smile.

“How about some popcorn?” He suddenly remembered the bag he'd bought for his class at the end of the year that he forgot to take to school.

“Sounds good. Do you have butter and salt?”

“That I do have.” He went to the cupboard, pulled out the ancient bag of popcorn, and gave it to Raine. “Okay?”

“I think we need a pot with a cover, popcorn popper, microwave?”

“Oh—oh yeah, of course.” Embarrassed that she'd had to ask, he quickly pulled out the cast-iron pot Dennie had used to pop corn and handed it to her.

“Cade, would you like me to pop it?” she asked with a patient, good-natured grin.

“Oh, no, no, of course not! Sorry,” he muttered. Dennie always popped the corn when they made it. When he popped it now, it was always the microwave popcorn; he had no idea how to do it from scratch. He took back the pot, poured in some oil, the popcorn, placed it on a front burner, and began to shake. When smoke and the stench of scorched popcorn filled the small kitchen, he realized too late he'd put in too much corn and not enough oil.

“Damn it!” he mumbled, snatching the pan off the burner and throwing the whole mess—pot, burned popcorn, smoking oil—into the sink. “Can't even do that right.”

Raine, standing behind him, watched as he dumped the contents into the garbage disposal. “Hey, you do just about everything else right,” she said. Without warning, she kissed him on the back of his neck. It was an awkward, tender kiss, sweetly given, which he felt straight down to his groin.

“Should burn popcorn more often if that's what it gets me.” He realized after the words left his mouth how phony they sounded, like something out of a silly romantic comedy. But she kissed him again, turning his head around to touch his lips with her full, soft ones and his body, the pleasure of her against him warming him everywhere he felt her. He pulled away, self-conscious about his reaction, not sure if he wanted her to know what his body was telling him to do.

That was the problem with being a man, he thought, you couldn't hide what your intentions were; your dick always gave you away. As a kid, slow-dancing with a neighborhood girl for the first time, he had gotten so hard so quick, he'd been embarrassed to pull away, knowing it would be standing out like a flagpole, straight and proud, in front of him. Luckily, the room had been dark, lights turned out, moonlight seeping in from the half-pulled blinds the only illumination. He'd been proud of it, though, how hard it got, but ashamed of it, too, because it telegraphed to Linda, Marsha, whatever her name had been, that he was her slave. You want to do it, don't you? she'd whispered, hot and wet into his ear, as she licked his earlobe with the lusty inexperience of a fourteen-year-old. You know where to put it? she'd asked, mocking him, and he'd nodded. So they'd gone into a dark corner of the basement and done “it” on the floor. He'd fucked, had sex, made love with so many women since then, he had a hard time attaching names to faces, and only the special ones stood out, the ones who took his heart and twisted it to the point where he didn't know it belonged to him.