The Girl Who Chased the Moon: A Novel - By Sarah Addison Allen Page 0,73
every step he took, he got older, the cherubic cheeks giving way to sharper cheekbones, his skin growing more golden, his hair a darker blond. By the time he reached her, he was the Sawyer of today, of this morning … of last night.
Without a word, he sat beside her.
“How did you know I would be here?” she asked, because even she didn’t know she’d be here until she’d walked by and saw the school.
“Just a hunch.”
“Go ahead,” she said. “Ask.”
“I don’t have to ask the big question. I know why you didn’t tell me.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
“Do you know where she is now? What she’s doing?” He looked at the photos. “Her name?”
“No.” She tugged on the cuffs of her sleeves. “The papers are sealed. I can’t find her unless she wants to find me. You said you followed the scent home when your mother baked, so I have it in my head—in my heart—that if I just keep baking, she’ll find me. That this will bring her home.” Julia looked down, then across the field. Anywhere but him. “I think she has your sweet sense. I couldn’t eat enough cake to satisfy her when I was pregnant.”
“That’s what my mother said when she was pregnant with me.”
“I wanted to keep her so badly,” she said. “For a long time, I was angry at everyone for not helping me make that happen. It took a while to realize that it was just misplaced guilt, because I wasn’t well enough to care for her on my own.”
He was the one to look away this time. “Saying I’m sorry doesn’t feel like enough. I feel like I owe you so much more. I owe you for her.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe I have a daughter.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” she said. “She was a gift.”
“Your hair is still pink in this photo.” He lifted the one of her holding the baby in the hospital. “When did you stop dyeing it?”
“When I went up to school. I cut it all off shortly after that photo was taken.”
“When did you start with the pink streak?” Julia nervously tucked it behind her ear. “In college. My friends in Baltimore think I do it to be edgy. But I do it because it reminds me of what I can get through … of what I have gotten through. It reminds me not to give up.”
There was a long silence. A maintenance man on a riding lawn mower drove onto the football field and started taking wide loops around it. Julia and Sawyer watched him. “Are you going to stay?” Sawyer finally asked.
How did she answer that? He was being very calm. She had no idea how he really felt. “I spent so much time telling myself that this wasn’t home that I started to believe it,” she said carefully. “Belonging has always been tough for me.”
“I can be your home,” he said quietly. “Belong to me.” She stared at him, stunned by his whispered grand gesture, until he turned to her. When he saw the tears in her eyes, he reached for her. She held on to him and cried, cried for so long her throat ached, cried until the football field was all mown and the air smelled of cut grass, and bugs swarmed the track.
To think, after all this time, after all the searching and all the waiting, after all the regret and the time she’d spent away, she came back to find that happiness was right where she’d left it.
On a football field in Mullaby, North Carolina.
Waiting for her.
Chapter 15
Emily stuffed her hands in her shorts pockets as she walked down the sidewalk that night. There were no cars out, but she kept listening for them, stepping into the darkness in between each streetlight and pausing, waiting for some indication that Win had invited the whole town to this, like her mother had done.
Since coming to Mullaby, Emily had discovered that her disbelief could be suspended further than she ever thought it could, and there was a small part of her that wondered, what if it was true? If giants exist, if wallpaper can change on its own … why couldn’t Win do … what he said he could do? If it was real, that meant this wasn’t about revenge. This wasn’t about what her mother had done. The closer she got the more she wanted it to be true.
When she reached Main Street, she stopped on the sidewalk by