She fell silent and then started again, quieter.
“She cried that night, Mom did. That night my grandmother came and screamed in her face. I heard her. Woke up like I knew she was doing it and laid in the little narrow bed I shared with my sister because Mom couldn’t afford to buy another bed. We were head to feet, the only way we could sleep in it and have room to move. And I listened to her cry. Sob. And I wonder to this day why she was crying. If she missed him. If she was brokenhearted because he’d killed her dream. If she wondered if she’d made the right choice not standing by him. If she thought maybe she should have tried to change him. If she was just angry and that was the way she let it out. Or if she was just tired of it all and she knew we had to pack up and move again the next day and she couldn’t face it, which is what we did.”
“You’ll never know, baby,” he whispered.
“No,” she agreed. “I’ll never know.”
She took in a deep breath and Johnny waited.
Then she gave him more.
“So I hate him. I hate him because of cheap sandals and because he hit my mom in the face with his fist so hard he knocked her down and kicked her after she hit the floor. I hate him because I warmed up soup for my sister and me because Mom couldn’t be there to cook for us and because all we could afford was soup. I hate him that he wasn’t around to bury our dead cat and Mom and me had to do it, tears streaming down our faces. I hate him that he didn’t take pictures of me before my prom, and I hate him that it seems like he doesn’t even care he missed that or my sixteenth birthday or when I won my scholarship or when Addie broke her wrist showing off on that skateboard of her boyfriend’s. I hate him because he broke my mom when she was with him and I hate him because he kept her broke after he was gone.”
He heard her take another deep breath, this one hitched, and Johnny tightened, getting ready for what came next.
“We weren’t happy. It was fake. We faked happy. My mom died after a life that ran her down because she worked so fucking hard, and one of the things she worked hard at was faking happy.”
On the last two words her voice broke, so Johnny let go of her hair and hand and did a crunch to grab her under her arms, pulling her up and twisting her until he could lay her torso on top of his.
He rounded her with his arms, laid back.
Izzy shoved her face in his neck and wept.
Johnny stared at the stars and let her, holding her close with one arm, stroking her hair with another.
He gave it time.
Then he told her what he knew. What he saw in those pictures in her tack room.
“You actually were happy, sp?tzchen. You know that, right?”
She nodded with her face still in his neck.
“I . . . I . . . kn-know,” she pushed out. “I’m just being dramatic.”
“You’re just being honest,” he replied.
“I’m . . . I’m ruining our camping night.”
“No way, Izzy. You ever give that up to anyone?” he asked.
She shook her head this time but didn’t say anything.
“Then you just gave me something beautiful, baby. Precious. I’ll remember it forever. So you’re not ruining anything.”
The stars disappeared when she lifted her head, eyes to his.
“You sure?” she asked.
He slid a hand to the side of her head and rubbed his thumb across her wet cheek.
“Yeah,” he answered.
She studied him in the moonlight, wiped her hand across her other cheek then scooted down a little and dropped her head to rest against his pec.
Johnny slid his hand in her hair again.
They lay together in silence for a while before she broke it.
“Mom said we should never hate anyone. But I can’t help it, Johnny. I hate him.”
“I hate him too and I didn’t live through that, Iz. So give yourself a break, yeah?”
She nodded, her cheek and hair moving on his chest.
“Did you ever . . . I mean, you talk about your dad’s folks but not your mom’s. Did you at least have them?” she asked, turning the subject to him, he suspected to get it off where they were.
He decided she’d had enough so he allowed that.
“When we were older and we asked, Dad told us that Mom told him the home she grew up in was not a good one so she left the minute she could and never went back. Dad never even met them. He asked us if we wanted him to find them for us, and Toby made that decision, saying if we had her for the time we did and they didn’t give a shit enough to find her, and doing that us, then he didn’t think Dad should waste his time. I thought that was sound logic so I agreed and Dad honored that.”
“It does sound like sound logic,” she said.
“Yeah.”
She took a deep breath, turned her head and rubbed her face in his chest in that way of hers that was so sweet, then she settled back in.
“What would you do if she came back?” she asked.
“Hear her out and make my decision,” he answered then turned it on her. “What would you do if he came back?”
“I’d ask if I had any siblings, and if I did I’d ask where to find them and then I’d shut the door in his face,” she answered.
Johnny grinned at the stars, murmuring, “That’s my girl.”
She sounded like she was smiling when she replied, “Yeah.”
They fell into their own thoughts until Iz shifted, putting her chin to his chest. Lifting his head, he took his hand from her hair, put it behind his head and caught her eyes.
“I’m sorry I brought him—” she began.
“Shh,” he shushed.
“With Perry showing and you throwing the plate—”
“Baby, did you not hear me say how much it means you gave me that?”
“You make me happy and I . . . now that I know how it feels when it’s real, I guess I just—”
At that, he angled up taking her up with him and dragging her ass into his lap.
“You done with the stars and the moonlight or you wanna fuck out here under them?” he asked.
Her body jerked in surprise at his question.
He waited impatiently for her to answer it.
“I . . . well . . .” Her eyes darted side to side before coming back to his. “Is there anyone around us?”
“No clue.”
“Well, if there is, do you think they’d take a walk at night?”
“Tent,” he decided, surged up and took her with him when he did that too.
He had her hand in his and he was dragging her to the tent.
Ranger followed.
Ranger would have to wait outside for a while.
“Can we go back and gaze at the stars after?” she asked when Johnny had bent low to get into the tent.
He twisted his neck to look up at her. “After, if you can still move, we’ll do anything you want.”
He could swear he saw her face flush in the moonlight.
Johnny just pulled her into the tent behind him.
She couldn’t move when he was done with her, so it was Johnny who had to move to go deal with the fire and let Ranger in.
Then he zipped his woman and himself in their double sleeping bag, she curled into him deep, Ranger arranged himself on their feet, and Johnny Gamble and his woman slept in a tent under the stars.
That night, Daphne Forrester would have said her daughter’s moon was in the fifth house.