The Girl Who Chased the Moon: A Novel - By Sarah Addison Allen Page 0,37
taken their money with them, Mullaby would have been ruined. That was the last straw. No one wanted anything to do with Dulcie after that, after what she had cost the Coffey family, after what she had almost cost the town. She finally did something no one would forgive her for, something I couldn’t buy her way out of.”
Emily was several feet away before she realized she was backing away from him.
“I haven’t spoken of it in twenty years,” Vance said. “And I was going to keep it from you, because you were better off not knowing. The Coffeys obviously thought differently. I’m sorry.”
Emily continued to back away. Vance simply watched her go, as if leaving him was what he expected, what he was used to. Without another word, Emily turned and walked back into the house.
When she reached her room, she just stood there, not knowing what to do. Coming here had been a mistake. A huge mistake. She should have known her mother had a good reason for keeping this place from Emily. This place wasn’t right. There was something distinctly off about it. She’d felt it all along. People here committed suicide just for breaking tradition. For coming out at night. And this person everyone remembered as Dulcie Shelby wasn’t her mother at all.
As she stood there, she began to hear a slight fluttering sound, like something was in the room with her.
She quickly looked up and around, and couldn’t believe what she saw. She turned in a full circle, staggering slightly.
The wallpaper didn’t have lilacs on it anymore.
It had changed to tiny butterflies of every imaginable color.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could have sworn she saw a few of them fluttering. There wasn’t a pattern, they were simply everywhere. There was a static frenzy to them, like they desperately wanted out. Out of this room. Out of this town.
She walked over to the wall by the bed and put her hand to the paper.
Setting aside her incredulity for a moment, she knew exactly what they felt like.
She lowered her hand and slowly backed out of the room, then she ran back down the stairs. Vance was just now making his way into the kitchen from the yard.
“The wallpaper in my room,” she said breathlessly. “When did you change it?”
He smiled. “The first time is always the hardest. You’ll get used to it.”
“The wallpaper looks old. How did you get it to look like that? How did you get it up so fast? How do you get it to … move?”
“I didn’t do it. It just happens.” He waved his arms like a magician. “It started with my sister. No one knows why. It’s the only room in the house that does that, so you can move to any other bedroom, if you want.”
She shook her head. This was too much craziness for one day. “I’m not a child, Grandpa Vance. Wallpaper doesn’t change on its own.”
Instead of arguing, he asked, “What did it change to?”
As if he didn’t know. “Butterflies. Crazy butterflies!”
“Just think of that room as a universal truth,” Grandpa Vance said. “How we see the world changes all the time. It all depends on our mood.”
She took a deep breath and tried to be tactful. “I appreciate that you want it to be something magical, and I’m sure it took a lot of effort, but I don’t care for that pattern. Can I paint over it?”
“Won’t work,” he told her, shrugging. “Your mother tried. Paint doesn’t stick to that wallpaper. Won’t tear off, either.”
She paused. No one in this town would give an inch. Not with her mother. Not with this … wallpaper situation. “So what you’re saying is, I’m stuck with the mood room.”
“Unless you want to move.”
Emily leaned back against the red refrigerator, because standing on her own suddenly seemed too much of a task. Grandpa Vance watched her silently. She didn’t realize until that moment that he listed to one side, as if his left hip hurt him. “I’m still waiting for someone to tell me this is all just a trick being played on me,” she finally said.
“I know that feeling well,” he said quietly.
She met his eyes. “Does it get better?”
“Eventually.”
Not the answer she wanted. But she was going to have to live with it.
What choice did she have? She had nowhere else to go.
OVER SEVENTY years ago, during the full moon in February—people called it the Snow Moon—when Piney Woods Lake froze solid and the