And All the Phases of the Moon Read online

  Also by Judy Reene Singer

  In the Shadow of Alabama

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  And All the Phases of the Moon

  JUDY REENE SINGER

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2018 by Judy Reene Singer

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4967-0948-6

  eISBN-10: 1-4967-0948-9

  First Kensington Electronic Edition: June 2018

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-0947-9

  ISBN-10: 1-4967-0947-0

  To all those creatures that inhabit the seas. May you forever be protected from harm, from nets, and boat propellers and sonic testing and poisonous waste and blocked migratory routes and all the other evils perpetuated by my ignorant species. May the more enlightened among us grant you safety and aid.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many heartfelt thanks to the folks at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, Massachusetts, for the heroic work they do in rescuing the many whales, seals, and other marine life that are caught up in nets and the many discarded items that litter our waterways. They have a dangerous job and have saved numerous marine animals as well as have provided crucial educational programs. I urge everyone to support their important and necessary work.

  Thank you to my favorite attorney, Steve Gottlieb, for his advice on the court stuff. I hope I got it right.

  Thank you to the Dolphin Fleet of Provincetown for the many, many, many hours I have spent in the Atlantic Ocean with them, observing the marvelous humpbacks and other marine life at close range. I also appreciated the Dramamine and oyster crackers.

  Thank you to my dear friends Richie and Jackie Chiger, devout animal rights people who brought me on my first whale watch so many years ago.

  Chapter 1

  I have walked this beach a million times.

  It’s just a long, thin spit of land that nestles inside the curl of Provincetown and points off into Cape Cod Bay like a finger, as though warning the bay not to forget us. And not to forget the ones it took.

  I grew up here, in this quiet village called Fleetbourne, which neighbors the beach. I know everyone here. They are all like family to me, every one.

  I feel the same about the water.

  Felt the same.

  I spent my life on the bay; it has been part of my family since the beginning of time. We took our sustenance from it. My grandfather fished here; my crazy grandmother danced in its waters long before I was born. My father always swore that our brains were wrapped in seaweed. When I left for college, he made me promise not to forget where I came from. Small towns are easily forgotten.

  * * *

  I come here every night when I am finished with work and stand on the old wooden pier to stare across the bay. I used to come here every night when I was a child, too. I stood right here, on these same old boards, and watched over the bay. I knew the water so well. Even when it changed—one minute dark silver, mirroring the looming clouds, the next a thoughtful blue that pulled the sky down into its depths. I carried its every iteration in my heart: the white foam that lightly rides the swelling surf onto the pale gold sand, the waves thrashing under a driving rain, the bay sitting serenely under a full moon when the tide is high and so proud that it swallowed the beach in one gulp. I knew all of it. Still do.

  * * *

  Every night I pick my way over the broken shells to get to the pier. They are everywhere. Once they held tiny creatures that gathered together in life and ate and drowsed peacefully in the ocean beds. Now only their shells remain. This is a beach of broken shells.

  I used to walk alone. I am especially suited for walking alone. I was very shy when I was a child, and awkward, and was happiest when I was left to myself, to comb the beach for shells and sea glass and the skeletons of sea horses and star fish and try to imagine where they came from. There is as much life below the sea as above and I wanted to know about it all. It was a great and solitary preoccupation. But now, every evening, no matter the weather, I am accompanied by a pit bull. He has made a career of following me.

  * * *

  My name is Aila Cordeiro and I own and run the Galley. It’s a little general store that I inherited from my father two years ago, and it sits right in the middle of town, just off the main street. We handle the mail and sell a little bit of everything, including the traditional sweet golden Portuguese muffins, which were brought to Cape Cod by the original Portuguese settlers and are very popular. Everybody eats them. In the morning, I serve almost the whole town as they come, sometimes one by one, sometimes in a group, following one another like lemmings, into the store for milk and fresh muffins, eggs, and, for those who keep a post office box here, their mail. The first breakfast I ever remember my grandmother feeding me was a toasted Portuguese muffin dripping with butter and beach-plum jam, accompanied by coffee served in my favorite blue enamel mug and so diluted by milk, it was the palest beige. My breakfast is still a toasted muffin and the lightest coffee that can still be called coffee, out of the very same mug.

  I work every day. I haven’t missed a day since my father died. Not even Christmas. I keep the Galley open for Christmas.

  * * *

  Here’s how I got a pit bull. One morning, about a month ago, I arrived to open the store and found him sitting in front of the door. He had practically no fur; his skin was covered with lesions. And his broad chest, thick neck and legs, and square chiseled head reminded me of a wrestler, except he was skeletal thin. His eyes had intelligence but spoke of pain and he scooted away if you came too close.

&nb
sp; “Who is this?” Shay had asked. Shay Williams is my dearest friend and very beautiful. Growing up, we used to pretend we were twin sisters, even though I am as pale as an oyster shell, with red hair and gray eyes, and she had glowing mocha skin and thick black curls loose as a garden of wildflowers. She cared about everyone, was the first to offer help. I always thought she had the perfect heart. Growing up, I was prone to bouts of shyness; she always had a wide, friendly grin that drew people to her as though she were magnetized and guaranteed her a parade of never-ending dates during our teen years. I counseled her through a variety of broken hearts, and she always answered my panic calls in the middle of the night when my mother grew very ill. I can never repay her for that. We split up for college but promised that we would always be part of each other’s lives, returning to Cape Cod to spend every summer together.

  She even introduced me to Dan, my husband.

  Excuse me.

  Late husband.

  Dan and Shay and Terrell—Shay’s boyfriend, now husband— played music together in a little group they called the Bayton-ics. Corny. Dan played the guitar; Shay, the piano; and Terrell, the fiddle. They all sang. Folk tunes, spirituals, easy pop. Sometimes, at Shay’s insistence, I sang with them, holding harmonies against her sweet, clear voice.

  * * *

  “Whose dog is that?” Shay asked when she saw the pit bull. She was wearing cutoffs and a tee, practically the village uniform, and was carrying her usual bouquet of cut flowers from her garden. She had squatted down to pet the dog, but he quickly dodged away, only to sit again, out of reach. “Where did he come from?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered, pulling the store keys from my pocket and opening the door, quickly shutting it behind us after Shay and I ducked inside. My habit is to feed anyone or anything that needs a meal and I immediately grabbed a bag of dog food from one of the shelves. The dog crept up to the front door and watched through the glass as I cut the bag open and poured some food into a mixing bowl. I couldn’t take the chance of letting him in. When you own a store, you can’t take chances on stray dogs. Especially his breed.

  Shay laughed. “You just made the biggest mistake of your life,” she said, watching me fill the bowl to the top. “But a good mistake!”

  “He’s so thin,” I explained, bringing food and water outside. He darted backward and sat down, looking at the food and then at me, but not quite meeting my eyes, as though it embarrassed him to be caught begging.

  “Go get it,” I said, then returned into the store. He walked to the food, his nose extended, sniffed, then gulped it all down, drank some water, and sat by the door, staring in at us. I was struck by his dignity. “I hope somebody is looking for him,” I murmured more to myself than Shay.

  * * *

  There were things to be done. Shay and Terrell are music teachers and come back to the Cape every summer from New Jersey. Her mother is a dentist and her dad a math professor, which meant neither had a summer job opportunity for Shay, so she and I helped my father by working together at the Galley through the busy tourist season. Even after we both got married and had started good careers, we would return every summer. Shay and Terrell, me and Dan. It was a reunion in the best way, reliving old times and laughing through new ones, all summer, every summer, until she returned to what she called her winter life. I had a winter life once, too, returning to Boston with Dan at the end of the season. I was head of the science department in a private school.

  Summer life, winter life. That’s all changed.

  After my father died, I inherited the store and soon made Shay my “summer partner,” splitting the profits with her from June until the end of August because she worked so hard, side by side, with me. I work here every day now. I think, once in a while, about how Dan and I used to live in Boston and how I used to love the change of seasons and our location.

  Now my life is the same, summer, winter, summer again; it never changes.

  * * *

  I stared out at the dog for a few minutes, then started mine and Shay’s daily choreography. We both know exactly what we had to do while staying out of each other’s way, working as smoothly as dance partners in an old routine. First thing, we put on our aprons, snow-white, with The Galley embroidered over the left side in little blue letters. Then she filled a big mayonnaise jar with water for her flowers, placing it on the counter next to the register. Daffodils, pink and yellow, and tiny purple grape hyacinth, quiet flowers, almost no scent, but they were rich in color.

  Next, I turned on the big flattop behind the front counter, to heat it up for breakfast orders. Shay opened the side door and brought in the day’s delivery of Portuguese muffins and fresh doughnuts and crumb cakes on huge foil-wrapped trays. I took the bowl of eggs from the cooler and set them by the flattop, then piled the par-cooked bacon on a platter next to them. The bacon would be “finished”—fried as needed—for orders. I filled the coffee grind, set it to “fine,” filled the pot with water, stacked cups and napkins, my hands and body performing it all automatically. The last thing I do is write the Marine Conditions, which I get from NOAH, with a felt-tip marker on a whiteboard up front. My great-grandfather always did it, then my grandfather, then my father, and I still do, and even though I know it’s an anachronism, it comforts me.

  * * *

  I find great consolation in my work. It promises me that though I have suffered my loss, had my life ripped apart when I lost Dan, I still have a place to be, an anchor, working as I have always worked. The sun rises, the sun sets, month after month the moon returns full and round and glowing, and I can ignore it, until its life passes and it shrinks down to nothing and disappears and can do no more harm. And still I work here. I survive. I will come back tomorrow and open the Galley, and the next day and the next. There will be no more changes for me.

  It’s all okay. I like the work and the rhythm of the work, the repetition, the comforting, blessed, deadening sameness.

  Chapter 2

  The rich smell of fresh-ground coffee fills the air. I have coffee every day. Almost exactly at the same time every day. I need it to wake me up. I don’t sleep well and my mornings start off a bit fuddled.

  I grab one white porcelain cup for Shay and the old blue enamel mug for me. I pour a hefty dollop of light cream in mine. “Shay?” I called out. “You want coffee?”

  “Just have to get the newspapers!” she called back from behind the rows of shelves. Like the breads, the papers, too, had been delivered to the side door to be sold throughout the day. She carried them to the front and stacked them on a low shelf by the register. I sorted the morning mail, which had been left in a locked pouch clipped to the front door, quickly sliding envelopes and magazines into the mailboxes that lined the back wall. We finally finished.

  “You need me to do anything else?” Shay asked.

  “Everything’s done,” I replied. “Help yourself to breakfast.”

  She scrambled some eggs for herself; I toasted two muffins, poured coffee, and sat down on the stool next to hers to eat. We always have our breakfast together.

  “I swear, you are drinking a cup of cream,” she said, laughing. I looked into my cup. “I love it this way.” It felt like my grandmother was still taking care of me, which she did, more or less, in her own idiosyncratic way.

  “So, how are things going for you?” Shay asks me that every morning.

  “Sailing against the wind.” My usual response. “You?”

  “Perfect.” Her answer, as always, was accompanied by a contented grin.

  “Have you given any more thought about adding a café onto the store?” It’s the first time she has asked me that in a long time and it hurt. Dan was an architect and was going to design a little café for my father, since there was really no place in town to sit down with a cup of coffee and a snack and read a newspaper. I admired my father, but he didn’t do everything that I approved of. For instance, he was thrifty, which is a polite way of saying cheap. I still have a ton of white tees,
all of them misshapen because my father got a discount on them—he thought that as long as they had a neckhole and two armholes somewhere on them, they were good enough to wear. Even when they have Fleetboom written across the front.

  “Even if I built a café, who would help me run it?” I returned her question with another. “You’re gone in the winter and help is hard to find around here.”

  “There’s plenty of people—okay, kids—that you can hire,” she said. “You do the cooking and they can run the deli and wait tables. You’re a great cook.”

  “I’m not ready,” I murmured. “And kids aren’t the most reliable.”

  She started to offer her usual rebuttal, but the bell hanging by the front door tinkled, signaling that our day had officially begun. Our first customer was always Mrs. Skipper. She was the mayor’s wife, and since it was town custom to address him as The Skipper, it seemed logical to call his wife Mrs. Skipper. Actually, I don’t even remember if The Skipper was actually an elected official; he had always been in charge, since I was a child. He and Mrs. Skipper were quite elderly now, maybe in their nineties, but he always carried himself erect and with a certain authority. Mrs. Skipper was tiny and thin, with wispy silver hair in a librarian bun, while her customary dark blue wool sweater covered her bony shoulders, no matter the temperature. She had always been brusque with me, and I had always chalked it up to some personality glitch. She gave Shay her daily order—two cherry Danishes, one for herself and one for The Skipper. “Make sure they’re fresh,” she always warned, as though the soft, glistening crust and moist cherries swirled with streusel crumbs weren’t proof enough. Mrs. Skipper watched intently as Shay grabbed a small square of wax paper, picked out two Danishes, and put them in a bag.

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Skipper said, taking out her tiny gold beaded change purse and paying. She left, clutching the bag and her purse tightly to her chest in her two thin blue-veined hands.