Moonlight in the Morning (Edilean 6)

“Rebecca is nine years old!” Jecca said.

“And fighting her mother every inch of the way.”

The two women laughed together. Kim poured them more wine while Jecca looked at the other drawings. Not only had Kim accurately guessed that Jecca’s paintings would deal with a child, but she’d also guessed about Tristan. Her last three designs were for some simple necklaces. What made them extraordinary were the colored stones of different sizes.

“Think Tris’s face can sell those?” Kim asked.

“He’s sold me on everything,” Jecca said. When Kim was silent, she looked at her. “All right,” she said, “let’s have it.”

“It’s none of my business,” Kim said. “I’ve loved Tristan since the day I was born. He’s given me a thousand piggyback rides. I’ve covered him in flowers. Wherever in the world I go, I look for weird pickled vegetables to take home to Tristan. He’s a thoroughly great guy.”

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“So what’s the problem?”

“What are you going to do now that these drawings are done?”

Jecca knew where Kim was heading, but she didn’t want to admit it. “I’m going to do what I came to this town for. I will make some paintings that I hope to exhibit in New York and to sell. Like you sell your jewelry.”

“All right,” Kim said, “if you want to ignore what’s going on between you and Tristan, that’s your right.”

Jecca did want to ignore it. She didn’t want to think about how much she enjoyed being with him. The Monday after the fashion show, he’d gone back to work. He and Reede had made a schedule where Tris would take mornings and Reede would handle afternoon appointments. But the agreement hadn’t been reached easily. Reede pointed out that there was no real reason Tris shouldn’t take on the full load—except that he wanted to be with Jecca.

When Tris returned from seeing Reede on Sunday night, it was the first time Jecca had seen him angry. His usual easygoing demeanor was gone, and he was glowering. She wanted him to talk to her, but just as she’d suspected he would, he said everything was fine and refused to discuss the matter.

At first she was quiet, acting as though he was actually all right, but his anger only seemed to deepen. She knew he needed to let it out—but she didn’t know how to trigger the release valve.

After an hour and a half of watching him sink deeper into himself, she decided to take a chance. She took Reede’s side. Oh so casually, Jecca said that Reede was right, that Edilean wasn’t his concern and that Tristan had pulled him off his very important world jobs to write prescriptions for sleeping pills.

Tristan looked at her in shock. “If that’s how you see it,” he said.

“How else could anyone see it?” Jecca asked with as much innocence as she could fake.

Tristan didn’t say anything, just got up and went to the bedroom.

Jecca sighed. It looked like her experiment had failed. Now how did she get Tristan to talk to her?

In the next second he came back to the living room and his glower had been replaced by a face full of anger. “Why are the illnesses of people in other countries more important than Mrs. Norton’s husband’s cancer? They’ve been married for sixty years. How’s she going to function without him? Mrs. Norton is Reede’s great-aunt, and back in 1953, she jumped into a frozen pond and pulled a six-year-old Arnold Aldredge—Reede’s father—out from under the ice. If she hadn’t had the courage to do that, Reede wouldn’t have been borne. What’s wrong with our precious Reede staying in Edilean for the rest of the summer to help some people who love him?” Tristan was glaring at her.

“I agree,” Jecca said softly.

“But you just said . . .” He trailed off. As realization of what she’d done hit him, he sat down on the couch beside her and pulled her to rest her head on his shoulder.

“I hate fights,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “I guessed that. Tell me what happened.”

It took Tristan a few moments to start telling about the argument he’d had with Reede. “The truth is—”

“Let me guess,” Jecca said. “Laura Chawnley is at the base of it all.”

“Right.” Tristan sighed. “Reede won’t admit his fear of seeing her again. He covers it up with talk of saving the world and that I got him here under false pretenses. Whatever he can think of to get out of helping at oIf st the office, he comes up with it. He wants to leave Edilean as soon as he can—before he accidentally runs into Laura on some street.”

Jecca listened, and in the morning she called Kim. “We have to fix Reede,” she said.

Kim immediately knew what she meant. “I couldn’t agree more,” she said, and they hatched a plot.

That afternoon Jecca and Kim invited Reede to lunch at the little sandwich shop where Tris had slipped Jecca a book. The two young women teased and laughed with Reede, flattering him so much that he began to expound on what he had done in his life and what he wanted to do.