Bedful of Moonlight - Raven Held (best love novels of all time txt) 📗

through the amber dust, muttering, “Frangipani, frangipani,” over and over like someone shaking a compass, hoping to find North.
The tree he was looking so hard for was obscured by a circle of gnarly trees looking sort of parched. The frangipani tree sat there amidst the carpet of grass, looking protective of what lied at its feet. The gravestone read In Memory of Bridget Lean, 1923 – 2005.
“I think it’s here, Caleb,” I called out.
He joined me shortly and placed the bunch of flowers at the foot of the gravestone. “Oh, grandma. Clearly, I didn’t inherit your sense of direction.”
“I thought guys were usually the ones with the good sense of direction.”
“Guess I’m not your typical guy.”
“Guess you’re not.” I stared at him. What was going on here?
He looked self-deprecating, as though he believed that was not a good thing. “Anyway, grandma, this is Kristen. She and her dad just moved in with us. Kristen, meet my grandma.”
“Hi, grandma,” I said, feeling slightly self-conscious, but kneeling down next to him before her grave too. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Did I tell you? The day after she died, Oliver was born,” Caleb said. “Grandpa was torn up like you wouldn’t believe – he didn’t have the heart to continue running the Old Belle – but Oliver took his mind off things slightly. He devoted his life to the boys thereafter. After that, his philosophy changed. He told me that every time someone lost something, he – or someone else – would have found something, gained something else.”
“Do you believe that?”
He shrugged. “It hasn’t really been proven so far, except in his case, but I’m open to that idea. I mean, he’s not the only who proposed it. Ralph Waldo Emerson did too.”
“So is it sort of like karma?”
He considered that. “It’s more like the universe’s way of maintaining the balance. Someone gains, someone loses. Someone loses something now, but earns something else the next moment.”
I was denied the moment to think about that, because Caleb’s cellphone rang suddenly. We cringed at the successive shrillness of each ring.
The phone call was short, and the speaker sounded curt from where I could hear. Despite all that, Caleb grew noticeably excited, like a boy going for his first fishing trip with his father. There was a silent anticipation that made his eyes gleam, the way my mother’s would when she completed another of her mobile art projects.
“My mom’s back,” he said as he stuffed his phone into his pocket. “Gabriel too.”
“That’s great,” I said, wondering what that meant. The house was crowded enough as it was. “Who’s Gabriel?”
There was a pause before he answered, “Her husband. My stepfather.”
“Is he nice?” It sounded inane, the way I posed that question, but there was something in his demeanour that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
“He is.” Upon my insistent gaze, he said, “Really, he is. It’s not some sob story about an abusive stepfather, Kristen. Gabriel’s a decent guy, end of story.”
What I had to know, apparently, was that Caleb’s parents – okay, mom and stepfather – were relative big shots in Wroughton, and that it was not always that they came home after another one of their business trips. Caleb’s stepfather, Gabriel Burnstead, headed a consultant firm that had multinational dealings – hence the frequent travelling and long periods of absence each time.
“They’ll throw a party again,” Caleb was saying, as we made our way home, him wheeling the bike by his side. “They always do, within the week they’re home.”
The clean-cut white house (like all others) soon came into view, and Reilly, in a two-piece that matched her shades, was lounging on the beach chair out on the manicured lawn, catching the last of the rays.
“Reilly,” Caleb said, shaking her awake.
Reilly’s eyes popped open and she pulled her headphones out of her ears. “Hey, Cale. Nice to see you too. Excuse me if I don’t seem to reciprocate your enthusiasm.” Then she wound up her headphones and got up from the chair. The sun had set, after all, almost all the way.
Caleb ignored her. “Mom’s back, did you hear?”
She snapped to attention. “When?”
“Tonight,” he said with a grin. “They just landed.”
“Great,” Reilly said, snatching up her towel and barging into the house. “They couldn’t have given me more time to get out of here?”
Caleb frowned. “Get out of here?” His voice trailed Reilly into her room. He stood on the other side of the door while I made my way to my room. “But why?”
I stopped along the hallway as Reilly thrust open her door. “Because, Cale, I don’t want to see her. Or her husband.”
Caleb still looked puzzled. “But – well I know you and her don’t really get along –”
“That’s an understatement.”
He rolled his eyes. “Okay, I know that, but do you really have to leave the house whenever she’s in it? She gave you a proper place to live in, at the very least.”
Reilly’s face began to turn a mottled shade of red. “I don’t owe her anything. She was the one who tried to grab us and run after … after it happened. She betrayed dad, Caleb. She blew everything out of proportion. And when I said I didn’t want to follow her, she told me to leave, by all means. If dad didn’t … If he didn’t get into all that trouble, and I weren’t quite so desperate to get back to school, I wouldn’t even have come here, Caleb.”
Her gaze flicked to me suddenly, and I felt the profound shame of being somewhere I should not have been. So I scurried into my room and shut the door, hoping to forget what I had just heard.
Later, all I could hear was silence from Caleb.
“Look, I’m sorry I said that,” Reilly said, her voice diminished. I knew it was not just because of the distance between us now. “That didn’t come out the way I meant it. I just don’t want to see her, okay? I don’t want her to lord it over me, like I was grovelling for her help –”
The door slammed. “You guys!” I heard Jade yell. “Mom and Gabriel are back, did you hear?”
My father was not back yet. I felt like I had barely seen him at all these two days, but I didn’t mind that. Sometimes, looking at him made me miss mom so much I would start calling her cellphone again even though she obviously wanted nothing more to do with us.
What I had been wondering for the past month was how anybody could just drop her family and leave after so many years of being with them. How could she love us – love me – for seventeen odd years and then suddenly take flight and cut off all contact with us? She had to have been planning it. Maybe she just had enough of us.
I only heard the door open again when I heard Caleb and Jade burst out of wherever they were.
“Hi, mom! Hey, Gabriel.”
So I headed out of my room.
Jade had pounced onto her mother, who staggered slightly and almost immediately pulled her off, a tight smile stretching across her face.
“Hi, Mr and Mrs Burnstead,” I said, going down the stairs as Caleb hugged his mother a little more politely than I had expected. My father was with them. “Hey, dad.”
“We met your father along the way,” Mrs Burnstead said in a crisp tone clear of any accent whatsoever, but it still sounded stiff, too deliberate.
“And I hope all of you haven’t eaten yet, because we got you dinner,” Mr Burnstead said with a mild smile. It felt almost too polite.
“Reilly, get down here!” Jade screamed. I noticed the wavering of Mrs Burnstead’s frozen smile.
“Come down for dinner, at least,” Caleb called out. He turned back to us. “She’ll come.”
“Just this one?” Jade asked, looking around them for their luggage.
“We’re only on a short break home,” Mr Burnstead said.
Mrs Burnstead walked straight into the kitchen after relieving herself of her single Louis Vuitton tote. “We’ll be leaving in a week’s time, maybe earlier.”
“Oh.”
“I guess we couldn’t have expected anything more,” Reilly said.
Everyone turned to look at her. She had her arms crossed, staring at her mother. Mr Burnstead looked uncomfortable. He didn’t look like the type who could deal with difficult stepdaughters.
“I’m happy to see you settle well in here,” Mrs Burnstead said. “Maybe in a few days, you’d be better adjusted and keep that tone to yourself.”
“Unlikely,” Reilly said, and then strode into the kitchen.
We took her lead and sat down at the dining table. Dad rubbed my arms briefly.
The kitchen, like the rest of the house, followed a minimalist concept, so it was sparse and scarily neat. But it felt cluttered, right then, with all the things nobody was saying. I could practically feel the words elbowing between me and Caleb, who sat on my other side.
“We wouldn’t have to keep coming and going, really, if you’d all just consider living in Cali –”
“No, Gabriel,” Mrs Burnstead said, in a tone so sharp everyone almost straightened their backs in unison. Softening, she muttered, “We’ve talked about this before.”
“It’s great that you guys are back,” Caleb said quickly. “How was Vancouver?”
“Cold,” Mr Burnstead said, unwrapping his dinner of dory fish and fries. “But it was brilliant. The director took to us instantly and after going through our company’s track record, he was sure we were the ones for the job. So you can say we nailed it on the spot.”
Reilly yawned silently and poked at her fries with a plastic fork. Mr Burnstead’s gaze flicked towards her, understanding that as the cue to shut up.
“How’s your work, Reilly?” Mrs Burnstead inquired. Inquired sounded like the most accurate word because of the politeness in her voice.
“It’s going great.” The tightness in her voice dared anyone to challenge that fact. “I love my job.”
Caleb snorted a little, but quickly started choking on his food upon the look Reilly shot him.
“That’s good to know,” Mrs Burnstead said, primly crunching on a long bean. A brief silence passed before she said, “I told you before, you don’t have to work –”
“Yes, and I told you before, I want to. It’s the only way I can get into university.” She sipped on her water, her eyes fixed on the glass cabinet behind me.
Mr Burnstead cleared his throat uncomfortably. “I’d like to propose a toast” – he raised his glass of water – “to welcome Daniel and Kristen. I hope you’ll grow to love this estate and this house.”
We all toasted and dad and I thanked them, all in the pleasantly polite way that reminded me of separate people in separate cubicles, toasting the air.
“Yeah, I hope you guys enjoy living with the most screwed up family ever,” Reilly quipped.
Mrs Burnstead dropped her fork with a clatter, and I saw Jade flinch. “And I hope, Reilly, you will see what I’m doing for you and your ungrateful mouth.”
“Here’s to hoping,” someone muttered.


Six


“Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again.”
~ Saint Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (French writer, 1900 – 1944)


There was hardly room to slip past each other, so everyone figured it would be best to stay in our respective rooms – me in Jade’s, that is.
My father and I had quickly slipped back into our routine before we