Page 8 of The Sun and the Moon

“You never were a very good gambler,” she replies.

My mouth purses. She moves, closing the small gap of distance that remains between us.

I go stiff as she enfolds me in a hug, closing my eyes, trying to block out her scent—lavender and sage with a hint of citrus, probably lemon.

All to ward off evil spirits or intentions that might try to come her way.

“Is Lola cooking something?” she asks. The question moves my hair, tickling my ear.

“Snickerdoodles,” I reply. She releases me, sidestepping toward the kitchen. She doesn’t motion for me to follow. It’s just heavily implied in her energy that she expects me to.

I root into the ground, determined not to give her what she wants.

Especially not without an explicit request. But the sound of Lola and Elise walking back toward the checkout desk and the smell of snickerdoodles growing stronger—likely because she’s removing them from the oven herself—are why I move.

Or I tell myself they are, anyway.

I shove through the swinging door to the kitchen, and I am immediately smacked in the face with nostalgia.

Years of sitting in this kitchen at all hours of the day, doing homework, stamping note cards with wax seals, brewing tea; late nights making margaritas (virgin for us kids) with Louisa and Lola as if we were the Owens sisters from the classic Alice Hoffman novel, or the Nicole Kidman–Sandra Bullock adaptation of it from the late nineties.

A rectangular room, with a large cream-colored tile-topped island in the center.

The backsplash is a lavender-and-orange combo.

The floor is adorned with turquoise-and-cream linoleum.

Herbs hang in front of the window drying.

Plants tuck into crevices and hang from crocheted holders in brightly colored pots.

The huge vintage stove, also turquoise, sits heavy and dominant against the opposite wall. Moira kicks the oven door closed, rising with a mitted hand holding a baking tray of perfect snickerdoodle cookies.

The smell is overwhelming. Moira plops the tray onto the burners on top of the stove and then turns.

“She’s getting pretty good at the dough.” She sets the oven mitt to the side, leaning down to touch the tops of the cookies with her finger. Testing their doneness. “But her timing remains shitty.” Her eyes whip to mine. “You look well. Nice color in your cheeks.”

She means my slight tan, which never lasts long and always leaves behind a few more freckles when it goes. She takes every inch of me in; her eyes don’t move, and yet I know she perceives me. Catalogs every change I’ve made in the four years since I last saw her.

“I work in the great outdoors. I’m bound to catch some UVs.”

She nods, and her eyes finally bounce away from me. “The house looks good, doesn’t it?” She takes in the kitchen with a glance, a smile.

“The same, just older.”

“I hope your next statement isn’t that you could say the same about me,” she quips. “I won’t allow it.” Her eyes flash with humor.

“You know you don’t look older,” I reply, biting back a smirk. “Still bathing in virgin blood?”

“Pssh, like there are any of those left in LA.” Quick on the draw in every sense. She lifts a spatula from the ceramic pot beside the stove and begins shoveling the cookies onto a rack Lola must have set out before. “Just good old cold cream and clean living.”

I almost believe her, except that her forehead doesn’t move up and down with same dexterity it used to and her teeth have definitely been whitened.

I run my fingers through my hair, a little self-conscious of the signs of my age.

Thirty is respectably adult, but in her presence I still very much feel like a little girl, even if my cheekbones have sharpened and my eyes have set into some of their very own tiny spider lines.

“You’re doing natural curls,” she says as she admires my hair.

I always longed for mine to look like hers—straight and impossibly shiny—but after years of fighting the frizz or frying it with a straightener, I finally gave in.

My fingers brush the ends that fall right at my breast. “How was your flight?” She finishes setting the cookies on the cooling rack and walks toward me, a cookie in each hand. “Water? Iced tea?”

She hands me a cookie. I take it robotically.

“Not thirsty,” I reply to her second question first. Her hand twitches, anxious for some activity. She settles on chewing the cookie. “The flight was long and expensive.”

“I’m happy to pay you back for your travel expenses,” she says as she moves toward the back door, where I know she probably has her purse slung on a coatrack. “Having you here is everything to me—”

“You are not paying for anything.” Curt, no room for interpretation.

She stops in her tracks. Her eyes trail back to me. “If you’re sure.” She’s already moving, though, back in my direction and away from her checkbook.

That was a little too easy. A thought pings through me like a pinball on a collision course. Would that check have bounced if I’d let her write it and tried to cash it?

“Then at least stay in your room, here—free and clear.” She motions above her. “It’s my yoga sound bath studio now, but I could easily get Lola to blow you up an air mattress.”

“I have a hotel with a real bed and everything,” I say, internally cringing at the thought of stepping foot in my old bedroom turned wellness retreat.

Moira may have told people I’d come back any day, may have acted like the life I chose was little more than a detour, but it didn’t stop her from taking the one space in this house that was once mine—to do whatever I wanted with—and turn it into another shrine to her desires.

She crosses her arms. My short, clipped replies are starting to bug her. The flare in her nostrils and taut shape of her full lips are proof. It gives me a little thrill that I have to contain from reaching my face.

“Rick will be thrilled to pieces to meet you—he likes to play skeptical. Keeps me grounded.” Rick. The man she’s marrying. The poor schmuck. “I told him you’d come, but he kept reminding me that even if you didn’t, this weekend would be the perfect celebration of our engagement.”

I can’t pass up this chance to get her to talk about Rick, get some clues about who he is, what he does, whether he’s a gullible sap or just a fool.

“Rick, right.” I take a step toward the island, tugging one of the stools out to sit on.

This concession will play well. Make her think I’m at least not about to bolt at any second.

“How did you two meet?” Her lips twitch into a smile, but I can’t tell if it’s a reaction to my question or to my ass hitting the stool.

“You’ll think it’s silly of me,” she says.

Is Moira seriously trying to be coy with me right now?

This is a new game. I crunch Lola’s snickerdoodle between my teeth and chew.

“I wasn’t getting any younger or less lonely.

” Her eyes dart to mine. Subtle, Moira. Really .

“And Louisa was always trying new men on for size, bringing them around here.” Moira’s eyebrow cuts up in a hook of annoyance.

“To be fair, Louisa abandoned her daughter and vanished without a trace. Maybe she shouldn’t be your role model,” I cut in. Moira smirks, a bit malicious, definitely conspiratorial. My face goes neutral. Can’t let her get any ideas—I am not trying to be friends here.

“Well, I thought—what’s stopping me from having a little fun?” She flourishes her hand in the air. “Lola helped me get on the app—”

I cough, spitting snickerdoodle crumbs from my lips as I exclaim, “You got on a dating app to find a guy?” The shock ripples through me.

She straightens, looking almost offended.

“Are you trying to say you aren’t on dating apps?

” she asks. I can’t dignify that curiosity with a response, because it’s not an innocent question.

Moira wants me to open up about my life, to let her in on the status of everything, and—most importantly—to ascertain if I’ve found love outside the narrow parameters she gave me in that tarot reading when I was sixteen.

“I date,” I say. “But we’re talking about the love of your life here, not mine.”

“Oh, Cadence,” she says, her tone downshifting to something almost gentle. “He’s not the love of my life.” Her eyes sheen. My stomach clenches as the meaning of her words sinks in.

You are the love of my life , she might as well say.

The air in the room feels thin, as if we’ve just stepped up to a different altitude.

I push through the threat, zeroing in on a question to redirect us.

“What does Rick do?” My voice wobbles only slightly. Moira used to have a dramatic dimple at the right-side corner of her lip. It’s mostly folded into the smile lines that have deepened in her skin, but I can still make it out as her lips quirk.

“He was a pilot for years before he lost his wife.” Pilots make good money.

In college I had a friend whose dad worked for Delta.

“But when he became a single dad, he decided to quit so he could stay home to raise his daughter.” Her eyes mist up, as if this story somehow makes him a hero and not just a decent human being capable of putting the needs of his offspring before his own desires.

Unlike some people.

“He works as a tour guide at Universal Studios right now and is studying to become a magician,” she continues with a crackle of glee. “He’s such fun, even if he still dresses like the manager of a furniture store most days.”

I immediately imagine khakis and a pin-striped short-sleeve button-up. She pulls her phone out and shows me the two of them on her lock screen.

Rick is handsome in a classically dignified white dude type of way.

He’s got a clean-shaven face, close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, a strong jaw, bright blue eyes, and a charming, effervescent smile.

It’s a selfie, so I can’t see if he’s wearing khakis, but I can confirm, the beige-and-light-green button-up is right in line with my imagination.

She pulls the phone back, turning it around to look at for another beat.

Her face squishes up, her eyes adoring in a way that most people would call swoony , but I know better.

Moira doesn’t swoon. She doesn’t feel vulnerable emotions like need or dependence or…

love. Narcissism means she may think she feels those things, and she may be able to convince the unsuspecting of the fact, but I’m not one of them.

I’ve been smart to her ways far too long.

Rick looks kind. Despite my continued desire to flee, I’m glad I came. Hopefully I can save this sap from being swindled or having his heart smashed to bits when he inevitably loses his usefulness.

I’m about to ask her when I’ll get to meet him when I hear a ding-dong from the foyer. The chime that indicates someone has entered Kismet. Moira’s eyes blink as she snaps out of one performance mode, readying for another.

“That’ll be Gordon,” she says, tucking her phone back into the folds of her dress where I assume a pocket must be hidden. “He comes once a month to get his energy cleansed. He works at a hospital.” She leans in, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Morgue.”

Our eyes lock. “Lucky he has you.”

“Come to dinner with us tonight,” she says.

It isn’t a request, technically, but it somehow doesn’t sound like a demand.

There’s a waver in her voice. An uncertainty that makes a shiver shoot up my spine all the way to my ears.

Moira wants something from me. “Rick will be there, and his daughter, Sydney.” She emphasizes the S at the start of her name.

“She’s a pilot, just like Rick used to be.

I haven’t met her yet.” Her hand flinches, like she’s considering reaching out, but fortunately she doesn’t. “I’ll be outnumbered.”

As if having me there would mean she has someone on her side.

I search her face. This close, I can see every freckle and line, the subtle shifts in tone, the hint of foundation and the pop of color in her cheeks. It all comes together to form a map of my mother’s life in her face, a face that I used to search for any resemblance to my own.

Despite not wanting to offer an olive branch, I know I have to take her up on dinner. The sooner I meet Rick, the sooner I can figure out what’s going on between them for real and find a way to drive a wedge there. Save him, or at least shorten his stay in Moiraland.

The sooner I can get back to my life.

“Count me in,” I say just as Lola bursts through the kitchen door. Moira can’t resist now. She grips my hands in hers, squeezing.

“Gordon’s pacing,” Lola says. “You told me pacing is a bad sign.”

“Good to have you home,” Moira says, winking.

But this isn’t home. And she doesn’t have me.