Free Goodnight June: A Novel by Sarah Jio

stays? Of course, he worries for his daughter, May, though I must say the child seems to have the same disposition as his wife, surly and temperamental. I suspect it ultimately has to do with money. Victoria’s fortune saved Anthony’s father’s real estate venture, and it also funds the Magnuson family’s charitable efforts. If he left her, it could mean the end of all that.
    I don’t know what will become of us. Our friendship (if you could call it that?) remains uncharted, mapless. All I know is that I have never met a man like him. So I will continue on this strange and wonderful journey, wherever it leads me, even if the ending is destined to be an unhappy one.
    I’m writing to you on a dark night in Seattle. It’s quite late, and I’m sitting on the sofa of my apartment looking out at the moon pushing its way through a cloud. I’ve been thinking that you ought to write a children’s book of verses about the moon. Think of it: No matter the circumstances of our lives, no matter our joys or heartaches, the moon always appears each night to greet us. I find that comforting somehow.
    Oh Brownie, you said yourself that you need to get out of the city. Why don’t you come to Seattle? Come visit! You can stay with me. It will be a hoot! Please come and let’s cheer each other up. I’ll make you laugh, and you can tell me a story, to tell me this life of mine will have a happy ending.
    Write soon, please.
    Your friend,
    Ruby
    I pull the grate over the fireplace and walk up the staircase to the apartment. I sink into the window seat and look out at the big sky, thinking about the words I have just read. They swirl around in my mind like the fizzy bubbles in a champagne glass.
Sisters.
Ruby valued her sister above all else, even her pride. I think about what she said:
I set my pride aside in the name of preserving our sisterhood, because I cannot imagine a world where one can regard her sister as a stranger. And so I wait, and hope.
    As far as I’m aware, Ruby did just that: waited and hoped, only to be greatly disappointed in the end. According to my mom, Ruby was stunned by Lucille’s sudden death. Mom said that they hadn’t spoken in years before she passed. I think of Ruby, hovering over Lucille’s coffin—the coffin of a stranger, for all intents and purposes. A final good-bye. I close my eyes, and I picture Amy in the coffin instead of Lucille. I imagine myself at her funeral, and without my permission, my eyes flood with tears.
    I take a deep breath and come to my senses. No, Ruby and Lucille’s situation was not the same as Amy’s and mine. I can’t compare the two. Instead, I think about another significant revelation in the letters. Did my aunt really encourage Margaret Wise Brown to write a book about the
moon
? Is this what I think it is? The hair on my arms stands on end as I realize what I’ve just found, a literary discovery hidden for years inside the bookstore, inside Ruby’s secretive mind. A treasure Ruby left me to unearth.
    It’s a clear night, and the moon outside dangles overhead like a painting made just for me. I think about what Ruby wrote about the moon, and think of all the times I gazed up at the night sky, dreaming of a different life.
    I look down to the street when I hear the sound of a car engine. I watch as a dark SUV pulls up in front of the bookstore. It slows to a stop and a tinted window rolls down slowly. I see the flash of a camera, and then the vehicle speeds away.

Chapter 6

    M y cell phone is buzzing as I wake the next morning. It must be shortly after sunrise; the sun is low on the horizon and it streams in the window with such intensity, it pierces my eyes and feels wonderful and painful at the same time.
    “Hello?” I say groggily.
    “June?”
    “Mom?”
    “Where are you?” she asks. I hear an airplane taking off in the background and wonder if Mom and her new boyfriend, what’s-his-name, are off on a trip somewhere.
    “Where are
you
?” I ask, a