The Last of the Moon Girls

Althea wanted, but what would I do with a farm?”
“Same as she did. Grow things. Make things. Help folks.”
“I already have a job—one I worked hard to earn—and it’s in New York.”
Evvie folded her hands on the table, lips pursed, as if deliberating what to say next. “Your gran told me about you,” she said finally. “How you were something special. She couldn’t stop bragging about you—not just your gifts, but who you were and what you’d made of yourself. You had a dream, and you chased it. She was proud of you for that, even if it did mean leaving her. She knew you had some things to work out, but she never lost faith that you would work them out one day. And that you’d be back.”
Lizzy set down her mug, determined to make herself clear. “Yes, I’m back, but not the way you mean. There’s nothing for me here.”
Evvie grunted, a sound Lizzy was starting to recognize as skepticism. “You came all this way just to stick a sign in the ground, and then scurry back to New York?”
Lizzy didn’t like the word scurry, but couldn’t argue with the premise of the question. “Yes. Mostly.”
“You have someone there?”
“Have someone?”
“Someone,” Evvie repeated. “Someone who makes you soup when you’re sick, holds your hand when you’re sad. Someone who means something.”
Lizzy considered lying, but knew better than to think she could get anything past Evvie. “No. I don’t have anyone who fixes me soup.”
But then that was the deal she’d struck with herself. No one to fix her soup also meant no one to ask awkward questions about her family, or wanting things she wasn’t free to give. No strings. No hassles. No baring her soul. She’d never learned the art of opening up to another person. Alone was what she’d learned instead, and what she’d gotten good at. Alone was safe.
“I’m too busy for a relationship right now,” she told Evvie evenly.
Evvie responded with another grunt.
The gesture irked Lizzy. “I know you and Althea were friends,” she said, pushing back her plate. “But there are things you don’t understand about the Moons. We’re not like other people. We don’t do the whole love-and-marriage thing.”
“That right?”
“Yes, that’s right. I don’t expect you to understand—”
Evvie stood, collecting Lizzy’s abandoned plate. “I understand more than you think. I also hear what you’re not saying—that this is none of my business.”
“No,” Lizzy shot back. “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying there are things you don’t know. Things we don’t talk about.”
Evvie clamped her lips tight, swallowing whatever she’d been about to say. “How long you planning to stay?”
Lizzy was both surprised and relieved that Evvie had changed the subject. She’d already said more than she should about the Moons. “I don’t know yet. A week, maybe. I thought I’d walk the property this morning and get a feel for what needs to be done before I can list with a Realtor.”
Evvie scowled as she placed the empty plate in the sink. “Almost forgot. There’s a man coming by later to do some work on your gran’s greenhouse. It’s in awful shape, but he swears he can fix it.”
“Does that really make sense? Spending money on repairs when the new owners will probably just knock it down?”
“Probably not, but your gran set it up before she died. She loved that greenhouse.”
“I know she did,” Lizzy said somberly, opting to let the matter drop. “Thanks for breakfast. I’ll be back in a bit.”
Lizzy stepped out the back door and headed for the greenhouse, as good a place as any to begin her tour. Evvie’s assessment of its condition had been generous at best. Several of the glass panes were cracked; others were missing entirely. Inside, the tables were mostly bare, strewn here and there with rusty tools and stacks of empty clay pots. In one corner, several bags of potting soil had split open, spilling their contents onto the packed earth floor.
She walked the lavender fields next, or what remained of them. Hidcote, Grosso, Folgate, Lavance. They had all grown here once upon a time—Althea’s pride and joy. Now, only stunted patches of green remained, leggy and budless after too many untended winters. The sight made her heart sink. Why hadn’t Althea picked up the phone and asked for help?
The question quickly segued to another. Would she have come? If Althea had in fact picked up the phone, would she have dropped everything and returned to the farm? She wanted to believe the answer was yes, but she couldn’t help wondering. The truth was she’d never considered such a scenario, preferring to pretend Althea would live forever, because anything else was simply unthinkable.
She arrived at the apple orchard a short time later to find that it had fared only slightly better. While the trees themselves seemed not to have suffered, the ground was riddled with last year’s fruit, left to decay where it had fallen, luring swarms of greedy yellow jackets. A small wooden shed stood beyond the last row of the trees, its shingled roof sagging and green with moss. In better days, it had been used to store bushel baskets and picking poles for the locals who would descend each fall to pick their own apples—back before the Gilman girls went missing.
Strangely enough, speculation about Althea’s role in the disappearance had initially been a boon for business, luring curiosity seekers eager to purchase a vial of lavender oil in exchange for a glimpse of the woman suspected of murdering two teenage girls. For nearly three weeks speculation grew and the money had poured in. For those who knew Althea, locals who’d come to trust her remedies and charms over the years, the talk seemed ludicrous. But even they began to doubt when the swollen bodies of Heather and Darcy Gilman were recovered from the pond and zipped into heavy black bags. Overnight, the avalanche of customers slowed to a trickle. Eight years later, the memories were still fresh, a wound that