Moon Dance Read online

  "Excuse me?" Her hands rolled into fists, her nails biting against her palms.

  "I said, you are not staying here. This is as much my house as it is Laura's, and I don't want you here. We'll find another tenant."

  "May I remind you that Laura and I have an agreement?" she asked with much more calm than she was feeling.

  "Un-agree." He brushed her aside as he limped through the back door, across the back porch, and down the steps.

  Georgia's fists found their way to her hips as she marched behind him. "I moved out here in good faith—"

  He turned to her and said, "I'd like you to be gone by Wednesday."

  "That's ridiculous." She planted both feet firmly on the ground and stared him down. "I'm not going anywhere."

  "By Wednesday, Miss Enright." Matt whistled for Artie, who had been sleeping in the grass near the garden fence. "Come on, boy."

  The dog headed for Georgia and, in spite of her anger, she bent down to give the dog a good-bye rub under the chin.

  "Artie, come!" Matt yelled without turning around as he headed toward his pickup. When he reached the cab, he opened the door and waited for Artie to jump in before climbing in himself and closing the door. He started the engine and turned the truck around in a narrow arc at a higher rate of speed than he should have, causing stones to fly and the tires to grind out cranky groans as he sped toward the end of the drive.

  "Wednesday!" he shouted curtly as he passed by in a cloud of dust.

  Georgia fought the urge to make an obscene gesture in his direction.

  "Wednesday," Matt struggled not to yell into the phone. "Wednesday, Laura."

  "Matt—" Laura sighed heavily. She'd been expecting this. "Matt, calm down and let's discuss this."

  "Laura, there's nothing to talk about. I don't want anyone named Enright living in our house and sleeping in our beds. Period. Get rid of her."

  "No, Matt." Laura said calmly. "No, I won't. Georgia and I have an agreement—"

  "Laura, I don't want her there. Tell her she has to leave."

  "No. We needed a tenant, one we could trust…"

  "I don't trust her."

  "You don't know her, so your opinion doesn't count."

  "Well, I don't see where you could know her very well, either. How long have you known her, a couple of months?" he growled, then added, "You had no business leasing our farm without my consent."

  "I don't need your consent, Matthew. That farm belongs to Mother, and I have sole power of attorney over all of her affairs. My advice to you is to steer clear of Pumpkin Hill for however long Georgia stays, or get used to the idea of her being there, because she's not leaving."

  Ignoring her, he said, "I want you to call her and—"

  "Apologize for you being a horse's ass?" Laura shot. "I already have."

  "You what?"

  "I said, I already apologized to her for your behavior. Thankfully, she is more gracious than you are."

  "I don't need anyone to make apologies for me. I'm perfectly capable of making my own when—"

  "Then I suggest you do exactly that."

  "—when I feel it's warranted. Which in this case, it is not."

  "Matthew, you are acting like an obnoxious child. If I didn't know you better, I'd think you were jealous."

  "Jealous? Of what?"

  "That I have found my birth family."

  "Laura, let's get one thing straight. I know where I came from, okay? I don't want to go back—hell, I don't even want to look back there."

  "Matt, you can't compare the two situations…"

  "No, you can't. And while I'm sure that the woman who gave birth to you is nothing like the woman who gave birth to me, the fact remains that you don't really know her, Laura."

  "If you had your way, I never would."

  "I just think you're moving way too fast where these people are concerned."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "I mean that out of the blue, this woman turns up. Tells you she's your birth mother. Trots out the half siblings. Everybody's happy-happy."

  "So what's wrong with that?"

  "What's wrong is that they can leave, as quickly as they came."

  "That is such an awful thing to say. If you knew them, Matt, you'd never say that."

  "I don't have to know them to think that you're way too trusting. Sometimes people have to earn trust, Laura. I don't think that a woman who abandoned you thirty-five years ago is worthy of your trust just because she shows up one day and pays off your mortgage."

  "That was a cheap shot. Delia did that because—"

  "I don't need to know why she did it. It's between you and her. The point is that she—and the rest of her family—are essentially strangers to you. I'd hate to see you have your heart broken because you gave it blindly like you…"

  "Go ahead, Matt. Finish it."

  "Laura…"

  "This is nothing like that, Matt. How can you even compare my mother, my family, to him? How could you compare anyone to him? How dare you—" Laura's voice rose sharply.

  "I dare because I love you, Laurie. The last time you needed someone to look out for you, I let you down. This time—"

  "Is that what this is about, Matt? Your guilt? You think that somehow you could have stopped me from marrying Gary? Or that somehow you could have figured out what he was doing?" Laura sighed deeply. "Matt, trust me when I tell you that there was nothing you could have done. I never saw that side of him. I swear it. I never knew, up until the day he was arrested. How could you, in college a hundred miles away, have known what he was really like, when I lived with him, day in and day out, and I never knew?"

  "Maybe if someone had warned you to take things slowly, things would have turned out differently."

  "I doubt it, Matt. It's just my nature to jump in with both feet. I can't help it. I appreciate your concern. I love you for it. But I know what I'm doing. You don't have to worry. The Enrights will be around for a long, long time, so you're just going to have to get used to the idea. Just like you're going to have to get used to the fact that Georgia is living at Pumpkin Hill."

  "That's different, Laura. It's our family home." His voice softened, and in it she could hear the unspoken plea.

  Ah, so that was it

  "Oh, Matt…" Laura shook her head. How could she help him to understand that embracing her new family did not mean that she was turning her back on her old one?

  "Look, I have to go," he said abruptly. "I promised Doc Espey I'd stop in and see him tonight. I'll be talking to you."

  He hung up the phone as soon as he realized that he was sweating. He was afraid, pure and simple, for her, and for himself.

  Didn't she understand that the closer she allowed these people—this new family—the more it would hurt later, if and when the time came that they all drifted back to their own lives and decided not to take her with them?

  And lately, the thought had crossed his mind that if he lost Laura to them—if she was an Enright, would she cease to be a Bishop?—he would lose his last connection to the family they had made with Tom and Charity, and then who would he be? Would he not become, once again, the boy who had no one?

  The thought of it brought back memories drenched in shadow, shadows that had held uncertainty and fear of the places where he'd been deserted for hours—sometimes days—on end. The child who had lived in those shadows had never forgotten, had never gotten over the fear that someday, someone might realize that perhaps that was where he really belonged, and would send him back, alone, and those same shadows would claim him again.

  Matt fought back the shadows and dropped the phone onto its base, his palms sweating, wishing he could have found the words to tell Laura, but his voice had frozen, refusing to let the words out. After all, if he spoke his fears aloud, might they then have life? Might they have power?

  Matt cleared his throat and whistled for Artie. In spite of his still throbbing ankle, he would walk to Doc Espey's. The afternoon had clouded up and a
brisk wind had started to blow from the east, bringing with it the promise of a hard-driving, cleansing rain. With any luck, it would help clear his head.

  Georgia locked the back door to the farmhouse and turned on the back porch light. She walked through the rest of the downstairs, turning on the lights in the front hall and the one over the front door, then one in the little sitting room. It was just starting to get dark, and she was feeling uneasy, wondering if the vandals would be returning again tonight. She shook the fear off, telling herself that there was not much left in the garden to destroy.

  It had been nice having the dog there, though. A big, ferocious dog who could be mean if he wanted to.

  Much like his owner, she thought dryly as she turned back to the stove, where she was heating up some vegetable soup she'd found in the freezer.

  Matthew Bishop was a real piece of work, all right.

  If he hadn't been quite so obnoxious, she mused as she stirred the soup, I might have liked him.

  She unwrapped the foil where she'd stored the leftover biscuits and took out two, noting there were still several left. Mrs. Colson must have made more than one batch.

  All right, I did like him. At least, I did at first.

  She next searched the cupboard for a suitably sized soup bowl, faying to ignore the thought that she had more than liked Matthew Bishop.

  Okay, fine, I was starting to like him a lot.

  Seeing his smiling face in the photographs lining the windowsill didn't make it any easier.

  "Okay, so you're a hunk of the first order. Maybe the sexiest, handsomest, hunkiest man ever to cross my path. That doesn't make you any less of a jerk," she said aloud to the photo as she slid into the chair he had sat on earlier. ''The only nice thing about you is your dog, mister. And your sister. It's hard to believe that you and Laura are sister and brother…"

  It was then that Georgia recalled that only by having been adopted by the same parents had Laura and Matt become siblings. She buttered a biscuit, trying to call up the details of Matt's adoption as Laura had once mentioned. Something about his having been abandoned by his mother and being brought into the Bishop home as a four-year-old who had not yet learned to speak…"

  Well, he sure had had plenty to say that afternoon.

  Georgia's eyes fell upon the photo of Matt with a laughing Ally on his back, and she felt an unsolicited stab of envy.

  The truth was that she'd been really attracted to him. That he'd activated all those bells and whistles she'd always read about but had never believed in. It had started the minute she had looked up to see him coming across the farmyard—and ended with the dark look that had crossed his face as soon as she had introduced herself to him.

  No, it didn't end there, a tiny voice inside her protested. If it had, you wouldn't be sitting here right now thinking about him.

  Well, it hardly matters, she reminded herself, since he's a crazy man.

  A crazy man who wishes my entire family and I would disappear and never come back.

  With any luck, he'll stay away and I won't have to deal with him.

  Georgia turned his picture facedown on the sill and, determined to not waste another thought on Matthew Bishop, resumed eating her dinner.

  ten

  There was never any question but that Georgia would totally ignore Matt's demand that she pack up and leave.

  She ignored him early the next morning, when she awoke to her second day at Pumpkin Hill, determined to finish cleaning up the mess in the garden, and she ignored him as she sat that night in his favorite chair and read his aunt's books on fortune-telling.

  She ignored him again on Tuesday when she sat on the back step, Aunt Hope's book on fortune-telling in one hand and her teacup in the other, trying to decipher the little blobs of tea leaves left behind in the bottom of her cup. And she ignored him later that day when she pushed aside the furniture in the living room in the hopes of carving out a space big enough for dancing and was disappointed that there was only sufficient room for some very limited exercise.

  She was still ignoring him on Wednesday when, determined to find a place large enough in which she could really dance, she dragged first the broom, then the vacuum cleaner up to the second floor of the barn to clear away the cobwebs and the many years of ancient dust from the floor. It had taken her all morning, but by one o'clock in the afternoon, the old hardwood floor had been thoroughly cleaned as it had never been cleaned before. She had even brought up a wet mop, making countless trips back to the first floor for clean water. When she had finished and the floor had dried, she walked the length and width of it, searching for splinters and other such hazards. Mentally noting those spots best avoided, she lugged the bucket back down the steps for the last time, and went off in search of her portable tape player and her box of music tapes.

  Later, dressed in pale pink tights and leotard, dark green leg warmers, and pink leather ballet shoes, her equipment tucked into Mrs. Colson's picnic basket for easy toting and her pointe shoes slung over one shoulder, she had marched defiantly across the farmyard to the barn.

  Just let him try to run me off.

  In her head the music she had selected was already playing as she all but ran up the steps to the second floor. She went to the outlet she'd located earlier and plugged in the tape deck, but did not turn it on. There was one more thing to be tended to.

  She stood in the middle of the floor, contemplating the fact that there was no barre. Well, then, she'd use a chair. Off she went to the house where she grabbed one from the kitchen and carried it over her head up to the second floor of the barn. After setting the chair on the floor near the window, where the light was best, she turned on the tape, straightened her shoulders, and, holding on to the back of the chair, began her warm-up exercises at the makeshift barre. Starting with pliés—leg bends—to stretch all of the leg muscles, she ran through what had been for years her normal routine. First demi-pliés—the knees bent halfway; then grand pliés—the knees completely bent; through each of the five classic ballet positions, first on one side, then turning the other side to her "barre" to repeat all of the exercises. Then on to the second set of exercises, those intended to limber the hip joints, improve turn-out, and stretch the calf muscles. Finally, on to the last of the barre exercises, ending with a grand écart—a split so complete that the entire length of both legs touched the floor.

  Pausing only long enough to change the tape, Georgia brushed the beads of perspiration from her brow and moved to the center of the room, where she began the progression of floor exercises—from port de bras en fondu through saut de chats and pirouettes— pausing only long enough to change the tape. When the floor exercises were completed, she sat on the chair and peeled off the flat pink leather shoes and replaced them with worn satin pointe shoes, which she tied around her ankles with satin ribbons that had begun to fray.

  Returning to the chair, she worked without music, then turned back to the room to complete her round of exercises, the stiffness of the toes of the shoes welcomed against the calluses she had long ago formed. She worked her way across the floor in a series of movements intended to move a dancer across a stage. When she had gone as far as the outside wall, she turned around and went back across the floor again, repeating the movements over and over. When her calf muscles had begun to plead no more, she grinned and granted herself a ten minute break. She lifted the lid of the picnic basket and brought out a bottle of water, from which she drank slowly.

  It felt so good to work. Even if no one ever saw her dance again, it felt so good to go through the steps, to work her body the way it had been trained to work. She straddled the chair and sipped at the water, her muscles, unused as of late, springing back to life to complain loudly. She would ache tomorrow, she knew, but she shrugged it off. It was her own fault for not having kept up with her exercises. Well, she would get back into shape and she would stay in shape.

  Every day, she promised herself. I will do this every day.

  As if t
o test her resolve, she pulled the chair to one side of the room and set the bottle on it. Turning to the basket, she rummaged for the tape she wanted, then slipped it into the player and turned up the volume.

  If she was going to dance, she would dance only to her favorite music. She would dance all of those roles she would never get to dance on stage, and it would not matter that no one but she would know that she had mastered every step. She would dance to please herself, for the sheer joy of it, and there would be no one to say that she was not good enough; no one to judge her. She could be Giselle, she could be Columbine, she could be Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty. She knew all of the classic ballets by heart, though she had never had an opportunity to dance the leads. Now she would.

  Today, however, called for impromptu dance. She would dance from her heart. The tape she had selected was a mixed collection of Chopin's works that she had recorded herself from several longer tapes. Georgia had always felt the composer's piano pieces—much of it written during his affair with a popular romance novelist of the day, George Sand— reflected both the romance and the heartbreak of his life, the perfect thing for impromptu dance. The lively strains of the Mazurka in B Major was a good warm-up number, and she followed it with the Waltz in C Sharp Minor, swirling and leaping and gliding across the old pine floor of the barn. She had just finished a labored routine to her favorite Ballade in G Minor, when unexpected applause from the top of the steps startled her.

  "Wonderful! Oh, Georgia, that was so wonderful!" Laura cried. "I knew you were a professional dancer, but I had no idea of how… well, incredibly talented a dancer you are!"

  "Aunt Georgia, you are a real ballerina!" An awestruck Ally pointed to Georgia's feet, which were still poised on their toes. "Can you teach me to do that?" Ally spun around awkwardly, demonstrating a jump. "I want to dance like that, too!"

  "I had no idea I had an audience." Georgia blushed, disturbed to find that she had not been alone after all.