The Last of the Moon Girls

eyed the toolbox in his right hand. Evvie had said someone would be coming by to repair the greenhouse. That it turned out to be Andrew Greyson shouldn’t really surprise her. He’d been a kind of fixture around the farm when they were kids, and even at school, always turning up at awkward moments, like some jock in shining armor, always bent on rescuing her, whether she wanted him to or not.
There was the time he’d ambushed her at homecoming assembly. She’d been sitting by herself, as usual, when he dropped down beside her, grinning goofily as he held out an open pack of Twizzlers. Every eye in the gym had suddenly fixed on them. At least that’s how it felt at the time. She’d wanted to crawl under her seat. Instead, to the delight of his jock pals, sitting two rows up, she’d bolted. Unfortunately, it hadn’t deterred him. He kept turning up, tagging along with his father when he came to repair a faucet or a bit of fencing, appearing out of nowhere to offer her a ride home when the sky opened up one day and rained pea-size hail all over Salem Creek. And then the night at the fountain, when Rhanna had made a drunken spectacle of herself in front of the whole town, he had turned up again, to rescue her from the hecklers. It still baffled her. He’d been one of the hottest guys in school, honor student, captain of the football team, the clichéd big man on campus. She couldn’t imagine what he’d want with someone like her. Maybe it was pity. Or curiosity. The Moons were nothing if not curious.
And now, here he was again.
He was taller than she remembered, and harder somehow, but still ridiculously good-looking—his russet hair cropped close to his head, his face lean and tanned. The last time Althea mentioned him, he was in Chicago, designing swanky homes for well-heeled corporate types. But that was before his father died. Was he here to stay then, or had he merely returned as she had, to tie up loose ends?
“Hello,” he said stiffly. “You might not remember me. I’m—”
“Andrew. From next door.”
He nodded, shifting the toolbox from his right hand to his left. “I didn’t know you were back. I’m sorry about your grandmother. I know you used to be close.”
Lizzy bristled at the suggestion that that was no longer the case. “We were still close.”
“Right. I didn’t mean—”
“She wrote me that your father died. I’m sorry. I remember him being a nice man. Nice to Althea.”
“Yes, he was, and thank you. I was on my way over to do some work on the greenhouse.”
“Evvie said you’d be by. Well, not you, but someone.”
An awkward silence spooled out as the small talk dried up. Andrew shifted the toolbox again and took a step forward, as if planning to accompany her back to the house. Lizzy turned away, heading down the path at a clip. She had a decision to make, and she didn’t want company. Andrew Greyson’s least of all.
Back at the house, she found Evvie seated at the kitchen table, surrounded by saucers filled with an assortment of colorful beads. She was stringing a necklace, threading a series of marbled blue spheres onto a thin leather cord. After a moment, she looked up.
“How was your walk?”
“You said someone was coming to work on the greenhouse. You didn’t say it was Andrew Greyson.”
Evvie shrugged. “Didn’t think it mattered.” She peered at the beads she’d just strung, adjusting several before looking up. “Does it matter?”
“I was just surprised to see him. I didn’t know he was back.”
“Almost three years now. Came back when his daddy got sick, and never left. Truth be told, I think he was looking for a reason.”
“A reason?”
“He knew where he belonged. Chicago never really agreed with him. Salem Creek did. Simple as that. How was your walk?”
Lizzy blinked at her. She had a habit of doing that, changing the subject so abruptly you weren’t sure you’d been following the actual thread of the conversation. “I ended up at the pond,” she said quietly. “Seeing it again, after all these years, started me thinking. All the hideous things people said, the things they believed . . . I can’t help wondering if that’s why Althea got sick. Maybe she just . . . gave up.”
Evvie laid down her cord of beads and shot a look over her glasses. “Your gran never gave up on a thing in her life.”
“You weren’t here, Evvie. You can’t imagine what it was like, the way people looked at her after they pulled those girls up out of the water. And the worst part is nothing’s happened to change their minds. The people who believed it then still believe it.”
“Maybe. But there’s nothing to be done about it now. Once folks make up their minds, there’s not much chance of changing them. Not without proof.”
“What if there was proof?”
Evvie lifted her head. “Where are you going with this, little girl?”
Lizzy scooped a bead from the saucer, letting it roll against the flat of her hand, deep sea-blue flecked with gold pyrite, like a tiny world resting in her palm. Lapis lazuli, for revealing hidden truths. She dropped the bead back into the saucer and met Evvie’s gaze.
“Last night you asked me why I was here, and I said I came back to handle Althea’s personal effects, but the truth is I wasn’t planning to come at all. Then I found a note from Althea tucked into the journal you sent me. She said I was the best of the Moons, and that there were things that needed mending. Maybe that’s why I’m here—to mend things.”
“Mending things,” Evvie repeated thoughtfully. “What does that look like?”
Leave it to Evvie to jump straight to the thorny part of the equation. “I don’t know, exactly. But there’s got to be something I can do, some way to find out what really happened, and clear Althea’s name.”
Evvie slid her glasses off,