Stranger in the Moonlight Read online

  “Nice kid,” Uncle Ben said, and Kim turned back to him. “Don’t tell your mom but I went over to your house and did a little cleaning. Any of this look familiar?” He pulled a box toward the back of the car and tipped it down so Kim could see inside. Five of her favorite books were in there, her second-best doll, an unopened kit for making jewelry, and in the bottom was her jump rope.

  “Sorry, no pogo stick, but I got one of Rams’s old bats and some balls.”

  “Oh thank you, Uncle Ben!” she said, and followed Travis’s example and hugged him.

  “If I’d known I was going to get this, I would have bought you a pony.”

  Kim’s eyes widened into saucers.

  “Don’t tell your mom I said that or she’ll skin me.”

  Travis had left his mother and was looking at his new bike in silence.

  “Think you can ride it?” Uncle Ben asked. “Or can you only handle a little girl’s bike?”

  “Benjamin!” Kim’s mother said as she came out to see what was going on. Mr. Bertrand was still inside. As far as anyone knew he never left the house. “Too lazy to turn a doorknob,” Kim’s father once said.

  Travis gave Kim’s uncle a very serious look, then took the bike from him and set off at a breakneck speed around the house. When they heard the unmistakable sound of a crash, Uncle Ben put his hand on Mrs. Merritt’s arm to keep her from running to the boy.

  They heard what sounded like another crash on the other side of the house, and at last Travis came back to them. He was dirtier, his shirt was torn more, and there was a streak of blood across his upper lip.

  “Any problems?” Uncle Ben asked.

  “None whatever,” Travis said, looking the man straight in the eyes.

  “That’s my boy!” he said as he slapped Travis hard on the shoulder. He closed the lid of the SUV. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

  “What work do you do?” Travis asked in an adult-sounding voice.

  “I’m a lawyer.”

  “Is it a good trade?”

  Uncle Ben’s eyes danced with merriment but he didn’t laugh. “It pays the bills, and it has some good points and bad. You thinking of trying the legal profession?”

  “I rather admire Thomas Jefferson.”

  “You’ve come to the right place for him,” Uncle Ben said, grinning as he opened the car door. “Tell you what, Travis ol’ man, you get out of law school, come see me.”

  “I will, sir, and thank you,” Travis said. He sounded very adult, but the dirt on him, the twigs, and the bruises, made what he was saying funny.

  But Uncle Ben still didn’t laugh. He looked at Mrs. Merritt. “Good kid. Congratulations.”

  Mrs. Merritt put her arm around her son’s shoulders, but he twisted away from her. He didn’t seem to want Uncle Ben to see him so attached to a woman.

  They all watched Uncle Ben leave, then Kim’s mom said, “You kids go play. We’ll call you in time for dinner and afterward you can catch fireflies.”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Merritt said. “Go play.” She looked as though she’d been waiting for years to say that to her son. “Mr. Bertrand is going to teach me how to sew.”

  “Lucy,” Kim’s mom said, “I think I should tell you that Bertrand is using you for free labor. He wants his curtains repaired and—”

  “I know,” Lucy Merritt said, “but it’s all right. I want to learn to do something creative, and sewing is as good as anything else. You don’t think he’d sell me his machine, do you?”

  “I think he’d sell you his feet, since he rarely uses them.”

  Lucy laughed.

  “Come on,” Kim’s mom said, “and I’ll show you how to thread the machine.”

  For two weeks, Kim lived in her idea of heaven. She and Travis were together from early until late.

  He took to having fun as though he’d been born to it—which Kim’s mom said he should have been.

  While they played outside, inside the two women and Mr. Bertrand talked and sewed. Lucy Merritt used the old Bernina sewing machine to repair every curtain in the house.

  “So he can get a better price when he sells them,” Kim’s mom muttered.

  Lucy bought fabric and made new curtains for the bathrooms and the kitchen.

  “You’re paying him rent,” Kim’s mother said. “You shouldn’t be paying for them too.”

  “It’s all right. It’s not as though I can save the money. Randall will take whatever I don’t spend.”

  Mrs. Aldredge knew that Randall was Lucy’s husband, but she didn’t know any more than that. “I want to know what that means,” she said, but Lucy said she’d told too much already.

  At night the children reluctantly went inside their separate apartments. Their mothers got them washed and fed and into bed. The next morning they were outside again. No matter how early Kim got up, Travis was always waiting for her at the back of the house.

  One night Travis said, “I’ll come back.”

  Kim didn’t know what he meant.

  “After I leave, I’ll return.”

  She didn’t want to reply to that because she didn’t want to imagine him being gone. They climbed trees together, dug in the mud, rode their bikes; she tossed the ball, and Travis hit it across the garden. When Kim brought her second-best doll out, she was nervous. Boys didn’t like dolls. But Travis said he’d build a house for it and he did. It was made of leaves and sticks and inside was a bed that Kim covered with moss. While Travis made a roof to the house, she used her jewelry kit to make two necklaces with plastic beads. Travis smiled when she slipped one over his head, and he was wearing it the next morning.

  When it got too hot to move, they stretched out on the cool ground in the shade and took turns reading Alice and the other books aloud to each other. Kim wasn’t nearly as good a reader as he was, but he never complained. When she was stumped by a word, he helped her. He’d told her he was a good listener, and he was.

  She knew that at twelve he was a lot older than she was, but he didn’t seem to be. When it came to schooling, he seemed like an adult. He told her the entire life cycle for a tadpole and all about cocoons. He explained why the moon was different shapes and what caused winter and summer.

  But for all his great knowledge, he’d never skimmed a rock across a pond. Never climbed a tree before he came to Edilean. He’d never even skinned his elbow.

  So, in the end, they taught each other. Even though he was twelve, and she only eight, there were times when she was his teacher—and she liked that.

  Everything ended exactly two weeks after it began. As always, as soon as it was light outside, sleepy-eyed Kim ran out the back door, past the back of the big old house, to the wing where Travis and his mom were staying.

  But that morning, when Travis wasn’t already outside and waiting for her, she knew something was wrong. She started pounding on the door and yelling his name; she didn’t care if she woke the whole house.

  Her mother, in robe and slippers, came running out. “Kimberly! What are you shouting about?”

  “Where is Travis?” she demanded as she fought back tears.

  “Will you calm down? They probably just overslept.”

  “No! Something is wrong.”

  Her mother hesitated, then tried the knob. The door opened. There was no one inside, and no sign that anyone had been there.

  “Stay here,” her mother said. “I’ll find out what’s going on.”

  She hurried to the front of the house, but Mrs. Merritt’s car wasn’t there. It was too early to disturb Bertrand, but she was too concerned about Lucy and her son to let that stop her from going inside.

  Bertrand was asleep on the sofa—proving what everyone suspected, that he didn’t climb the stairs to go to bed. He came awake instantly, always glad for a good gossip. “Honey,” he said, “they tore out of here at two this morning. I was sound asleep and Lucy woke me. She wanted to know if she could buy that old sewing machine.”

  “I hope you gave it to her.”