Blood moon.
Outside the window, there’s no moon in the sky—it’s full dark with only the flicker of distant flames glowing against the horizon.
Maybe Anneliese means the blood moon in the book. There’s a drawing of a moon after one of her journal entries.
I hurriedly scan the pages until I come to the section Anneliese wrote shortly before her death. Beneath the words, the illustrated crescent moon glows a lurid red. I read the entries again, quickly, eyes darting over the words, hoping to parse some meaning, but my mind is so addled that none of it makes sense. I try different combinations of words and letters. The closest I come to finding anything coherent is when I combine the fancy first letters of each entry on the page to spell M-E-Z-R-O-T-H—which has absolutely no meaning to me. It’s just nonsense.
My eyelids droop with exhaustion, but I don’t want to sleep, just in case the fire spreads and comes up the mountain. I need to stay awake, at least until Caro comes home. I close the grimoire and climb down the ladder. Ebba must be over her snit. She kneels at Granny’s side, holding her hand. I hear her singing softly in Swedish. If Granny dies, it’s gonna hurt Ebba as much as it’ll hurt me. The two of them are like sisters.
I find Abby out on the front porch, sitting in the swing. She cradles a cup of coffee in her hands, and she slowly rocks back and forth, tipping her feet from heel to toe. I sit down next to her, and she sighs, leaning her head on my shoulder. The thought-reading power seems to have gone, and I’m thankful for that. Out over the ridge, the fire still burns bright against the indigo-violet sky. It’s eerie, because up here on the mountain, it’s quiet, peaceful. Even the mockingbirds are singing.
“Think they’ll put it out by morning?”
“I hope,” Abby says. “I’m worried about it coming up the mountain if the wind shifts.”
“Surely it’ll get to the crick and stop?”
“Not afore it burns through Hosea’s orchard. He’s gonna be hell to deal with after this, Gracie. Bellflower better hope his pockets are deep enough to pay the Rays for the damage.”
Abby’s still blissfully unaware of what Bellflower truly is. I take the cup of coffee from her and drink. It’s full coffee for once, not cut with anything. Ebba must have brought it from town. The bitter taste clears some of the muddiness from my head. My eyes still sting from the smoke, and I’m so bone tired I could fall over. Still, being here with Abby provides some respite.
“This fire might put a halt on my weddin’. Pa had arranged things for this Sunday, after church. You’ll be there, or at least come to shivaree us, won’t you?”
And just like that, my peaceful respite is over. I think of the way Harlan’s fingers crawled up my skirt in town. How he made me twist and choke in the tent tonight. I stand up from the swing, the hot coffee sloshing over the rim of the cup. I don’t even feel it scald my hand. “You’re actually goin’ through with marrying that bastard?”
“Gracie, I have to. It’s what Pa wants.” Abby tries to grab my hand. I push it away. “He’s only got a few days left, according to Doc Gallagher. He’s wasted away to a scrap of what he was. He ain’t even eating now.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Abby. But does your pa know he’s marryin’ his only daughter to a rapist?”
“Harlan can be a little forward in his ways, but to say he’s—”
“No.” I don’t let her finish. If Abby’s gonna marry this bastard, she deserves to know the truth. “He knocked up little Corinne Baker. She came here last month, asking for Granny’s secret tonic.”
“What?”
“It’s a purgative tonic, to end a pregnancy. If you take it early enough, it works.”
“No.” A horrified look passes over Abby’s face. “She’s just a baby herself.”
“Yup. I sat there and held that little girl’s hand while she cried and told me how scared she was that her daddy’d find out about Harlan sneakin’ in her window. She was even more scared of the hellfire she’d face if God wouldn’t forgive her for killing her baby. I told her if God couldn’t forgive a scared kid for doing what she had to do, he’d better not forgive Harlan Northrup, ’cause that ain’t the kind of God I want to believe in.”
My lip trembles and I start to cry, tears of anger and frustration bubbling over. I wipe them away angrily. “But she ain’t the only one. He cornered me outside the mercantile yesterday and shoved his hand under my skirt. Touched me. He wanted to do a whole lot more.”
“Gracie, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Well. Now you do. And since you were at that camp meeting tonight, you saw for yourself what he did to me there. So, no. I won’t be comin’ to your wedding, Abby. I won’t bless your marriage to a man cut from the same cloth as my daddy. In every way.”
It takes a minute for my words to hit Abby fully. I can see the shock wash over her like a cold rain. “Gracie ... Your pa did that to you? Why’n’t you ever tell me?”
“Because it ain’t something I care to remember. Or talk about.”
No. I don’t want to remember, but I do anyway.
I remember the night Shep Doherty came in from a drunken tear and found his way to my bed. I’d just turned thirteen three weeks before, and I’d shot up like a spring sapling. Before he’d done what he’d done, he’d whispered my mother’s name—as if looking like her gave him the right to touch me.
“Things didn’t go farther than groping. But I think they would have.” My words sound distant, hollow. It’s easier to imagine I’m talking about somebody else. “I was just thankful the whiskey made his dick so soft he couldn’t do more. He never touched me again ... not in that way. But he still found ways to hurt me—sometimes with his words. Sometimes with his fists.”
Abby’s eyes fill with sympathetic tears. “I’m so sorry.”
