Truth.
A house no longer built on secrets.
A family learning to speak honestly.
A future that had not yet been spent.
Victoria smiled.
“Yes.”
She wiped her cheeks.
“I think I finally am.”
Lucy hugged her again.
Above them, the first stars appeared.
Later, after the guests left and the caterers packed away the final dishes, Victoria and Lucy remained in the garden.
The string lights still glowed overhead.
Lucy lay on the grass looking at the sky.
Victoria sat beside her, barefoot now, her champagne shoes abandoned beneath a chair.
“Which one is it?” Victoria asked.
Lucy pointed upward.
“That’s Venus.”
“I thought Venus was a planet.”
“It is.”
“Then why does it look like a star?”
Lucy sighed dramatically.
“You really need me.”
Victoria laughed.
“Yes.”
“I knew it.”
They sat quietly.
A warm breeze moved through the live oaks.
Lucy touched the moon necklace.
“Do you think Mom can see us?”
Victoria considered the question.
“I don’t know.”
Lucy nodded.
“Mom used to say it was okay to say you don’t know.”
“She was smarter than me.”
Lucy smiled.
“Probably.”
Victoria nudged her gently.
“Careful.”
Lucy laughed.
Then she became quiet again.
“Aunt Victoria?”
“Yes?”
“Why did you keep your half all those years?”
Victoria looked down.
She had asked herself the same question.
She could have thrown it away.
Locked it in a drawer.
Buried it beside the river memorial.
Instead, she wore it beneath her clothes almost every day.
“I think some part of me never believed she was completely gone.”
Lucy looked at the necklace.
“So the necklace worked.”
Victoria smiled.
“Twenty-eight years late.”
“But it worked.”
“Yes.”
Lucy rested her head against Victoria’s shoulder.
Across the dark lawn, the windows of Hale House glowed.
For most of Victoria’s life, the house had represented obligation.
Legacy.
Reputation.
A name she had been taught to protect at all costs.
Now it meant something different.
There was a child’s backpack near the staircase.
Homework on the kitchen counter.
A bicycle leaning badly against a porch column.
Chocolate ice cream in the freezer even though Victoria preferred vanilla.
Life.
Imperfect, noisy life.
Victoria looked toward the garden entrance where Lucy had appeared six months earlier.
She could still picture the little girl standing there in a faded dress with mud on her shoes.
Victoria had thought she was an intrusion.
A disruption.
A stranger who did not belong.
She had been wrong.
Lucy had not come to destroy Victoria’s life.
She had come carrying the missing half of it.
Victoria kissed the top of her niece’s head.
“I’m glad you touched my dress.”
Lucy laughed softly.
“You were really mad.”
“I was.”
“I almost ran away.”
Victoria’s smile disappeared.
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Lucy thought for a moment.
“Mom told me you might be scared.”
“Scared?”
“She said sometimes people look angry when they’re scared.”
Victoria swallowed.
Anna had understood her even after all those years.
Lucy continued.
“So when you yelled at me, I thought maybe she was right.”
Victoria tightened her arm around her.
“She was.”
The moon hung above Charleston, incomplete to the eye because clouds covered one edge.
Lucy pointed at it.
“Look.”
Victoria followed her finger.
“Half a moon.”
“For now,” Lucy said.
Victoria looked at her.
Lucy smiled.
“It always comes back.”
Victoria felt tears rise again, but this time she let them.
Together they sat beneath the garden lights until the clouds moved.
And slowly, almost imperceptibly, the whole moon appeared.