Free In a Moon Smile by Sherri Coner Page A

promised herself that this time she would not walk out of a family gathering feeling emotionally beat up. This time, the agenda belonged to her.
    No, Jack and I will not stroll down the marital aisle. No, I can’t be happy anymore, splitting my time between Chicago and New York. No, I won’t be what you want me to be, at least not any time soon. So what if Charlotte rolls her eyes and Dad looks skeptical. So what if Mom’s neck and face are flushed with irritation. So what.
    Chesney smiled. “I am the sole owner of the badly neglected home on a forgotten hill east of Bean Blossom, Indiana,” she said softly. But no one heard the comment. They were discussing her decision as if she wasn’t present at the table. Unable to bear any more silent shaming from the family, Chesney fantasized instead about how beautifully new curtains would dance at the kitchen windows. In the spring, she would breathe in the scent of honeysuckle growing wild in the fence row near the back porch. 
    Just as Chesney conjured up a parade of potential curtain colors, Charlotte stuck a pacifier in Piper’s rosebud mouth and geared up for another round of sarcasm. “Chesney bought Grace’s place as a knee jerk reaction to the end of her relationship,” Charlotte said to Madelyn as if Chesney’s ears suddenly fell off and she was unable to hear the discussion.
    “Chesney was probably very hurt by the break up,” Madelyn said. “But how can she think that living in Grace’s house will solve her problems with men?”
    “What in the world is she thinking, Mother?” Charlotte challenged. “This is so stupid. None of it makes sense.”
    “Hello,” Chesney waved her arms in her sister’s direction. “I’m not dead, you know. I can hear everything you’re saying, Charlotte. Here’s a novel idea, why don’t you direct those comments and questions toward me?”
    While Charlotte growled under her breath and rolled her eyes in disgust, Madelyn looked at Chesney with pain in her eyes. “You surely didn’t romp off and buy Grace’s house just because Jack broke the engagement,” she said.
    “If that’s what you did, Chezzie, you have to know it won’t solve a thing,” Lyle said as he nervously folded his napkin into a tiny rectangle.
    Hearing his pet name for her squeezed Chesney’s heart. She squirmed in the chair. Involuntarily, she reacted to her mother’s shameful gaze and her father’s “our-oldest-daughter-is-obviously-a-mental-patient” tone. Tears rimmed her eyes as her stomach again knotted into a mess, to match the rest of her life.
    “How about the time you dyed your hair jet black when your prom date dumped you?” Charlotte said.
    “I was humiliated,” Chesney said. “I was considering a gothic look anyway, if you must know.”
    “You cried for two months,” Charlotte said. “And everyone thought you were a devil worshipper, wearing all that black clothing with black hair dye. You got called into the principal’s office, remember? Other kids thought you were a witch.”
    “I was traumatized, Charlotte,” Chesney whispered.
    “How about when that guy Drake dumped you at college?” Charlotte said. “Two weeks after you met him, you told everyone you were getting married. And then he got your roommate pregnant.”
    “Drake was a problem drinker,” Chesney mumbled.
    “Hey, how about that other guy, the foreigner with the long hair. He wanted to marry you so he could stay in America,” Charlotte smiled. With the confidence of a seasoned comedian, Charlotte continued to list her older sister’s disastrous relationships, one punchline at a time. The dining room walls closed in around Chesney as her heart beat moved into her ears. She planted both elbows on the table to provide a hammock for her downtrodden face and stared across the table at her evil sister. How could Charlotte do this? How could she be so purposefully hurtful? Chesney would never flog Charlotte this way for their parents’