Stranger in the Moonlight

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  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Epilogue

  ‘Moonlight Masquerade’ Excerpt

  Prologue

  Edilean, Virginia

  1993

  In all of her eight years, Kim had never been so bored. She didn’t even know such boredom could exist. Her mother told her to go outside into the big garden around the old house, Edilean Manor, and play, but what was she to do by herself?

  Two weeks ago her father had taken her brother off to some faraway state to go fishing. “Male bonding,” her mother called it, then said she was not going to stay in their house alone for four whole weeks. That night Kim had been awakened by the sound of her parents arguing. They didn’t usually fight—not that she knew about—and the word divorce came to her mind. She was terrified of being without her parents.

  But the next morning they were kissing and everything seemed to be fine. Her father kept talking about making up being the best, but her mother shushed him.

  It was that afternoon when her mother told her that while her father and brother were away they were going to stay in an apartment at Edilean Manor. Kim didn’t like that because she hated the old house. It was too big and it echoed with every footstep. Besides, every time she visited the place there was less furniture, and the emptiness made it seem even creepier.

  Her father said that Mr. Bertrand, the old man who lived in the house, had sold the family furniture rather than get a job to support himself. “He’d sell the house if Miss Edi would let him.”

  Miss Edi was Mr. Bertrand’s sister. She was older than he was, and even though she didn’t live there, she owned the house. Kim had heard people say that she disliked her brother so much that she refused to live in Edilean.

  Kim couldn’t imagine hating Edilean, since every person she knew in the world lived there. Her dad was an Aldredge, from one of the seven families that founded the town. Kim knew that was something to be proud of. All she thought was that she was glad she wasn’t from the family that had to live in big, scary Edilean Manor.

  So now she and her mother had been living in the apartment for two whole weeks and she was horribly bored. She wanted to go back to her own house and her own room. When they were packing to go, her mother had said, “We’re just going away for a little while and it’s just around the corner, so you don’t need to take that.” “That” was pretty much anything Kim owned, like books, toys, her dolls, her many art kits. Her mother seemed to consider it all as “not necessary.”

  But at the end, Kim had grabbed the bicycle she’d received for her birthday and clamped her hands around the grips. She looked at her mother with her jaw set.

  Her dad laughed. “Ellen,” he said to his wife, “I’ve seen that look on your face a thousand times and I can assure you that your daughter will not back down. I know from experience that you can yell, threaten, sweet talk, plead, beg, cry, but she won’t give in.”

  Her mother’s eyes were narrowed as she looked at her laughing husband.

  He quit smiling. “Reede, how about you and I go . . . ?”

  “Go where, Dad?” Reede asked. At seventeen, he was overwhelmed with importance at being allowed to go away with his dad. No women. Just the two of them.

  “Wherever we can find to go,” his dad mumbled.

  Kim got to take her bike to Edilean Manor, and for three days she rode it nonstop, but now she wanted to do something else. Her cousin Sara came over one day but all she wanted to do was explore the ratty old house. Sara loved old buildings!

  Mr. Bertrand had pulled a copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland out of a pile of books on the floor. Her mom said he’d sold the bookcase to Colonial Williamsburg. “Original eighteenth century and it had been in the family for over two hundred years,” she’d muttered. “What a shame. Poor Miss Edi.”

  Kim spent days reading about Alice and her journey down the rabbit hole. She’d loved the book so much that she told her mother she wanted blonde hair and a blue dress with a white apron. Her mother said that if her father ever again went off for four weeks her next child just might be blonde. Mr. Bertrand said he’d like a hookah and to sit on a mushroom all day and say wise things.

  The two adults had started laughing—they seemed to find each other very funny. In disgust Kim went outside to sit in the fork of her favorite old pear tree and read more about Alice. She reread her favorite passages, then her mother called her in for what Mr. Bertrand called “afternoon tea.” He was an odd old man, very soft-looking, and her father said that Mr. Bertrand could hatch an egg on the couch. “He never gets up.”

  Kim had seen that few of the men in town liked Mr. Bertrand, but all the women seemed to adore him. On some days as many as six women would show up with bottles of wine and casseroles and cakes, and they’d all laugh hilariously. When they saw Kim they’d say, “I should have brought—” They’d name their children. But then another woman would say how good it was to have some peace and quiet for a few hours.

  The next time the women came they’d again “forget” to bring their children.

  As Kim stood outside and heard the women howling with laughter, she didn’t think they sounded very peaceful or quiet.

  It was after she and her mother had been there for two long weeks that early one morning her mother seemed very excited about something, but Kim wasn’t sure what it was. Something had happened during the night, some adult thing. All Kim was concerned with was that she couldn’t find the copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that Mr. Bertrand had lent her. She had one book, and now it was gone. She asked her mother what happened to it, as she knew she’d left it on the coffee table.

  “Last night I took it to—” The sentence wasn’t finished because the old phone on the wall rang and her mother ran to answer it, then immediately started laughing.

  Disgusted, Kim went outside. It seemed that her life was getting worse.

  She kicked at rocks, frowned at the empty flower beds, and headed toward her tree. She planned to climb up it, sit on her branch, and figure out what to do for the long, boring weeks until her dad came home and life could start again.

  When she got close to her tree, what she saw stopped her dead in her tracks. There was a boy, younger than her brother but older than she was. He was wearing a clean shirt with a collar and dark trousers; he looked like he was about to go to Sunday school. Worse was that he was sitting in her tree reading her book.

  He had dark hair that fell forward and he was so engrossed in her book that he didn’t even look up when Kim kicked at a clod of dirt.

  Who was he? she thought. And what right did he think he had to be in her tree?

  She didn’t know who or what, but she did know that she wanted this stranger to go away.

  She picked up a clod and threw it at him as hard as she could. She was aiming for the top of his head but hit his shoulder. The lump crumbled into dirt and fell
down onto her book.

  He looked up at her, a bit startled at first, but then his face settled down and he stared at her in silence. He was a pretty boy, she thought. Not like her cousin Tristan, but this boy looked like a doll she’d seen in a catalogue, with pink skin and very dark eyes.

  “That’s my book,” she yelled at him. “And it’s my tree. You have no right to them.” She grabbed another clod and threw it at him. It would have hit him in the face but he moved sideways and it missed.

  Kim had had a lot of experience with older boys and she knew that they got you back. It didn’t take much to set them off, then you were in for it. They’d chase you, catch you, and pin your arm behind your back or pull your hair until you begged for mercy.

  When she saw the boy make a move as though he meant to get down, Kim took off running as fast as she could. Maybe there’d be enough time that she could reach what she knew was a great hiding place. She wedged her small body in between two piles of old bricks, crouched down, and waited for the boy to come after her.

  After what seemed like an hour of waiting, he didn’t show up, and her legs began to ache. Cautiously and quietly, she got out from the bricks and looked around. She fully expected him to leap out from behind a tree, yell “I got you!” then bombard her with dirt.

  But nothing happened. The big garden was as still and quiet as always and there was no sign of the boy.

  She ran behind a tree, waited and listened, but she heard and saw nothing. She ran to another tree and waited. Nothing. It took her a long time before she got back to “her” tree, and what she saw astonished her.

  Standing on the ground, just under her branch, was the boy. He was holding the book under his arm and seemed to be waiting.

  Was this some new boy trap that she’d never seen before? she wondered. Is this what foreign boys—meaning ones not from Edilean—did to girls who threw dirt at them? If she walked up to him, would he clobber her?

  As she watched him, she must have made a sound because he turned and looked at her.

  Kim jumped behind a tree, ready to protect herself from whatever came flying, but nothing did. After a few moments she decided to stop being a scaredy-cat and stepped out into the open.

  Slowly, the boy started walking toward her, and Kim got ready to run. She knew not to let boys she’d thrown things at get too close. They prided themselves on the quickness of their throwing arms.

  She held her breath when he got close enough that she knew she’d not be able to get away.

  “I’m sorry I took your book,” he said softly. “Mr. Bertrand lent it to me, so I didn’t know it belonged to anyone else. And I didn’t know about the tree being yours either. I apologize.”

  She was so astonished she couldn’t speak. Her mother said that males didn’t know the meaning of the word sorry. But this one did. She took the book he was holding out to her and watched as he turned away and started back toward the house.

  He was halfway there before she could move. “Wait!” she called out and was shocked when he stopped walking. None of her boy cousins ever obeyed her.

  She walked up to him, the book firmly clutched against her chest. “Who are you?” she asked. If he’d said he was a visitor from another planet, she wouldn’t have been surprised.

  “Travis . . . Merritt,” he said. “My mother and I arrived late last night. Who are you?”

  “Kimberly Aldredge. My mother and I are staying in there”—she pointed—“while my father and brother go fishing in Montana.”

  He gave a nod, as though what she’d said was very important. “My mother and I are staying there.” He pointed to the apartment on the other side of the big house. “My father is in Tokyo.”

  Kim had never heard of the place. “Do you live near here?”

  “Not in this state, no.”

  She was staring at him and thinking that he was very much like a doll, as he didn’t smile or even move very much.

  “I like the book,” he said. “I’ve never read anything like it before.”

  In her experience she didn’t know boys read anything they didn’t have to. Except her cousin Tris, but then he only read about sick people, so that didn’t count. “What do you read?” she asked.

  “Textbooks.”

  She waited for him to add to that list, but he just stood there in silence. “What do you read for fun?”

  He gave a slight frown. “I rather like the science textbooks.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  He seemed to realize that he needed to say more. “My father says that my education is very important, and my tutor—”

  “What’s that?”

  “The man who teaches me.”

  “Oh,” she said again, but had no idea what he was talking about.

  “I am homeschooled,” he said. “I go to school inside my father’s house.”

  “That doesn’t sound like fun,” Kim said.

  For the first time, he gave a bit of a smile. “I can attest that it is no fun whatever.”

  Kim didn’t know what attest meant, but she could guess. “I’m good at having fun,” she said in her most adult voice. “Would you like me to show you how?”

  “I’d like that very much,” he said. “Where do we begin?”

  She thought for a moment. “There’s a big pile of dirt in the back. I’ll show you how to ride my bike up it then race down. You can stick your hands and feet straight out. Come on!” she yelled and started running.

  But a moment later she looked back and he wasn’t there. She backtracked and he was standing just where she’d left him. “Are you afraid?” she asked tauntingly.

  “I don’t think so, but I’ve never ridden a bicycle before, and I think you’re too young to teach me.”

  She didn’t like being told she was “too young” to do anything. Now he was sounding like a boy. “Nobody teaches you how to ride a bike,” she said, knowing she was lying. Her dad had spent days holding her bike while she learned to balance.

  “All right,” he said solemnly. “I’ll try it.”

  The bike was too short for him and the first time he got on it, he fell off and landed on his face. He got up, spitting dirt out of his mouth, and Kim watched him. Was he one of those boys who’d go crying to his mother?

  Instead, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve, then gave a grin that nearly split his face in half. “Huzzah!” he said and got back on the bike.

  By lunchtime he was riding down the hill faster than Kim had ever dared, and he jerked the front wheel upward, as though he were going over a jump.

  “How’d I do?” he asked Kim after his fastest slide down the dirt hill. He didn’t look like the same boy she’d first seen. His shirt was torn at the shoulder, and he was filthy from head to toe. There was a bruise forming on his cheek where he’d nearly crashed into a tree, but he’d pulled to the left and only grazed it. Even his teeth were dirty.

  Before Kim could answer, he looked over her head and stiffened into the boy she’d first seen. “Mother,” he said.

  Kim turned to see a small woman standing there. She was pretty in a motherly sort of way, but whereas Travis had pink in his cheeks, she had none. She was like a washed-out, older, female version of him.

  Without saying a word, she walked to stand between the two children and looked her son up and down.

  Kim held her breath. If the woman told Kim’s mom that she’d made Travis dirty, Kim would be punished.

  “You taught him to ride a bike?” Mrs. Merritt asked her.

  Travis stepped in front of Kim, as though to protect her. “Mother, she’s just a little girl. I taught myself to ride. I’ll go and wash.” He took a step toward the house.

  “No!” Mrs. Merritt said, and he looked back at her. She went to him and put her arms around him. “I’ve never seen you look better.” She kissed his cheek then smiled as she wiped dirt off her lips. She turned to Kim. “You, young lady . . .” she began, but stopped. Bending, she hugged Kim. “You are a truly marvelous child. Th
ank you!”

  Kim looked up at the woman in wonder.

  “You kids go back to playing. How about if I bring a picnic lunch out here for you two? Do you like chocolate cake?”

  “Yes,” Kim said.

  Mrs. Merritt took two steps toward the house before Kim called out, “He needs his own bike.”

  Mrs. Merritt looked back, and Kim swallowed. She’d never before given an adult an order. “He . . .” Kim said more quietly. “My bike is too small for him. His feet drag.”

  “What else does he need?” Mrs. Merritt asked.

  “A baseball and bat,” Travis said.

  “And a pogo stick,” Kim added. “And a—” She broke off because Mrs. Merritt held up her hand.

  “I have limited resources, but I’ll see what I can do.” She went back to the house and a few minutes later she brought out sandwiches and lemonade. In the afternoon she returned with two big slices of freshly baked chocolate cake. By that time Travis had learned to do wheelies, and she watched him with a mixture of awe and terror. “Who would have thought that you’re a natural athlete, Travis?” she said in wonder, then went back in the house.

  In the early evening, Kim’s uncle Benjamin, her cousin Ramsey’s father, yelled, “Ho, ho, ho. Who ordered Christmas in July?”

  “We did!” Kim yelled, and Travis followed her as she ran to her uncle’s big SUV.

  Uncle Ben wheeled a new shiny, blue bicycle out of the back. “I was told to give this to the dirtiest boy in Edilean.” He looked at Travis. “I think that means you.”

  Travis grinned. He still had dirt on his teeth, and his hair was caked with it. “Is that for me?”

  “It’s from your mother,” Uncle Ben said and nodded toward the front door.

  Mrs. Merritt was standing on the step, and Kim wasn’t sure but she looked like she was crying. But that made no sense. A bicycle made a person laugh, not cry.

  Travis ran to his mother and threw his arms around her waist.

  Kim stared at him in astonishment. No twelve-year-old boy she knew would ever do something like that. It wasn’t cool to hug your mother in front of other people.