The Girl Who Chased the Moon: A Novel - By Sarah Addison Allen Page 0,43
dorm to go to the cafeteria. That’s where she baked her first cake. She became pretty good at it after a while, because it was the only thing that settled the baby. It had an unusual effect on the rest of the school, too. The smell of cake would slowly waft through the hallways while she baked at night, and girls in their dorm rooms, even the girls whose dreams were always dark, would suddenly dream of their kindhearted grandmothers and long-ago birthday parties.
Julia’s therapist started talking to her about adoption options in her fifth month. She adamantly refused to consider it. But every session her therapist would ask, How do you plan to care for this child on your own? And Julia began to get scared. She didn’t know how she was going to do it. Her only choice was her father, but when she brought it up, he immediately said no. Beverly didn’t want a baby in the house.
In the spring, in a flood of pain and fear so great she doubled over in French class, Julia went into labor. It came on so quickly that she actually gave birth in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. She could feel the baby’s frustration, her impatience, as she maneuvered her way to freedom. And Julia couldn’t stop her. As much as she wanted to, there was nothing she could do to keep this child physically bound to her any longer. Her daughter had a mind, and an agenda, all her own. After it was over, the baby proceeded to fuss about how hard her journey had been to anyone who would listen, the way old ladies in tweed coats liked to fuss about long, hot train rides into the city. It made Julia laugh, holding the squawking infant in her arms in the ambulance. She was perfect, with Sawyer’s blond hair and blue eyes.
Julia’s father came to Maryland to see her in the hospital the next day, and she asked him one last time to take her and the baby home.
Standing at the foot of the hospital bed, his ball cap in his hands, looking shy and out of place, he again said no. She gave up on ever having a real relationship with her father after that. Nothing would ever be the same.
It was the hardest decision Julia had ever made, giving up her little girl. Now that the baby was independent of Julia’s body, she knew she couldn’t take care of her alone. She could barely take care of herself. She hated Beverly for not wanting a baby in the house, and she hated her father for being so weak. But most of all, she hated Sawyer. If only he had loved her. If only he had been there to help her. Then she could have kept the baby. He was depriving her of the one person in the world who would ever need her completely, the only person in the world she knew she would love for the rest of her life. No questions. No limits.
She was told that a couple from Washington, D.C., adopted the baby. Julia was given two photos. One was the official hospital photo, the other was of Julia in the hospital bed holding her—warm and soft and smelling pink. Julia put the photos away immediately, because it hurt too much to look at them, only to find them years later in an old textbook when she was packing to move after college.
It took a long, long time to feel fine again. She started cutting herself again not long after she was released from the hospital. Her school therapist worked tirelessly to get her admitted into a summer program sponsored by Collier because Julia wasn’t ready to go home. Julia still felt too vulnerable to go back to Mullaby after the summer, so her father agreed that she should stay at Collier for her senior high school year.
She applied to and was accepted to college the next year. Though she hadn’t baked since she was pregnant, those months of practice made her proficient enough to get a job at a grocery store bakery to help her father pay for her college tuition. By this time, with the help of continued therapy sessions, Julia was able to think of Sawyer without the world turning a furious ember red around her, and she remembered what he’d told her about following the scent of his mother’s cakes home. It became a symbol to