The Killing Moon: A Novel

The warm body she had once clung to like a life raft: he had been her dream of a man. No background. No past history, no baggage. No family to impress or avoid. He came perfectly shaped, and perfectly empty, to be filled up any way she liked.

Now he had a past. Now he had a history and regrets and shortcomings. Now he was real.

This was the only way it could end. His departure had been predestined, like a merman needing to return to the sea.

But really, she shouldn't be sullen. She had been warned, hadn't she? And repeatedly—every goddamn step of the way—something he would no doubt remind her of yet again tonight. It was temporary, it was short-term, it was going to end. Her bad for falling in love. Wish him well, and hope he remembers her fondly as he goes off on his merry journey back into the world.

She was sick of being the gracious loser. Sick of being kept back in life and expected to accept it as her lot. The farm and her mother and this land. Who else was she ever going to meet in Black Falls? Who else was going to blow into town except those already banished from the world? Who else but lepers visited this colony?

If only she were hard enough to stand him up tonight. To be as cruelly dispassionate. But she didn't even bother with retributive fantasies because, pathetic little hopeful bird that she was, she would go, she would listen, she would hope, she would let him feel better about himself, and then she would hug him good-bye as he ground his heel into her chest.

Rosalie nodded like she understood. Tracy admired the llamas; their fierce protective instincts when guarding herds of sheep, goats, cows, or horses; their tireless work ethic; the aggression they displayed when sensing a threat. They were popular guard animals because they were fearless about hurtling their three-hundred-pound bodies full speed at any predator, be it dog or coyote or wolf or even small bear, wailing a high-pitched alarm. What they lacked in grace and refinement, they more than made up for in pride and attitude and strength. Even a yearlong pregnancy never got Rosalie down. She didn't need a male companion to make her feel whole, or special, or loved.

Though she had needed one to get pregnant.

Lightning flashed on the barnyard dirt outside, Rosalie emitting a throaty groan. Tracy worried that the storm might trigger her labor. No Dr. Bolt to check her over now. Tracy was going to have to see Rosalie through this one all by her lonesome.

Rosalie got to her feet, a warble rolling in her long throat. She shuffled back and forth in the stall, jutting her head over the door. Her hooves scraped the hay-strewn flooring, Rosalie growing agitated. The same way she had been a few nights before, when the coyotes ran out of the forest and the hills, loping through town.

Tracy reached out to pat her head but Rosalie bucked away, stomping the planks. "What is it, girl?" said Tracy, looking out the open door.

Another high, cloud-smothered ripple of lightning created a shadow that appeared to retreat from the wood ramp leading outside.

Rosalie warbled and hissed.

"Mom?" Tracy said. She was not in the habit of calling out to her deaf mother, but thunder and lightning will do that to you. She walked to the doorway where the old ramp was hinged and peered around the corner. Another pulse of suffused cloud lightning moved shadows under the trees, but there was no one in sight.

She saw the sink light on in the kitchen, the stained-glass sun she had made in fourth grade hanging from a suction cup inside the window. Tracy hopped down to the dirt, needing to see if her mother was indeed inside.

She was. Blond hair marbled with streaks of white she refused to dye. Rinsing vegetables in the sink. Tracy watched her mother catch sight of herself in the mirror the interior light made of the window. Staring, just a moment, her wet hand coming up to touch her softly wrinkled neck. Then returning to her vegetables, as though nothing had happened.

Those were the moments Tracy would find most difficult to endure. The reveries that led straight to regret.

Rosalie raised another cry, lightning rippling again, but brighter this time, putting Tracy's shadow down on the dirt—and another shadow, this one rising behind her. She turned just in time to see the figure emerge from beneath the ramp, long dark hair whipping in the wind as it raised some sort of weapon.

Tracy never felt the blow. She tasted dirt, a pair of hands pulling at her back as she attempted to crawl toward her mother. Then something fell on the back of Tracy's neck, and she went out.

58

PINTY

PINTY SAT UP AGAINST the many hospital bed pillows. His toes under the sheet at the end of his dead legs seemed a mile away.