Read The Owl & Moon Cafe: A Novel (No Series) for Free Online Page B

fall.
    “What’s wrong?” Lindsay said.
    Her mother shook her head.
    “Mom, it can’t be any worse than I imagined.”
    Her mother swiped at her cheek. “Yes, it can. I lost my job.”
    “Is that all? Mom! You can get another job. I thought it was much worse than that.”
    “Like what?” her mother said.
    A prickly relief flooded Lindsay’s skin. She held her arms out wide, gesturing. “End of the world stuff. Like maybe Allegra was dying, or there was going to be a tsunami, or we were going to have to move or something.”
    “You really are a genius,” her mother said sadly. “You got two out of three right.”

3
Allegra
    A LLEGRA BEGAN HER MORNING in the usual way, pureeing wheatgrass in the blender and chugging it down in a single gulp. She ate a handful of almonds, and then an apple, and then drank a glass of water to swallow her vitamin supplements. Could a person eat any healthier? This fainting thing was probably something as simple as anemia. She’d given up beef years ago, doing her small part to save the rain forest. Then she’d given up chicken, too, because factory farming was evil and baby chicks were so adorable. Fish was full of mercury, so that left only tofu and veggies. Plenty of women lived with anemia. Menopause might be the culprit. She couldn’t believe she was nearly fifty and in the dreaded “change of life” already. Cronedom. The Red Hat Society. What did that pipsqueak E.R. doctor know about women, anyway? Western medicine was jackrabbit-quick to jump to dire conclusions. Lots of people went their whole lives without seeing a doctor and did just fine.
    Just to be safe, she telephoned Krishna Dahvid, her acupuncturist, and got his machine.
    “You have reached Abalone Healing Arts and the home of Krishna Dahvid. Please leave a message after the tone, and your call will be returned. Namaste.”
    Her acupuncturist didn’t pick up when he was in session. “I need a tune-up ASAP,” she said. “If you can fit me in this week I promise to bring you cookies.” That did the trick. No matter how holy or faithful or devoted a person was, Allegra knew a recipe that would break their will. Krishna Dahvid’s was Chocolate Bombs, a cocoa-meringue-powdered-sugar confection that melted on the tongue and had a sugar content high enough to shoot preschoolers to Jupiter.
    She unbraided her waist-length hair and brushed it until it crackled. “Rapunzel ain’t got nothing on me,” she said, tossing it over her shoulders, then rebraiding it and pinning it up into the heavy bun she wore at work. A few gray hairs were beginning to show up at her temples, but mostly it remained the blue black that Gammy swore came from her late husband, Myron Moon, the father Allegra couldn’t remember. The Moon family had been in lumber then. Bess’s father was a church deacon. Her mother took in ironing. The way Gammy told the story sounded so romantic. Myron had been so taken with Bess that they’d eloped, and the Moon family, moneyed and high class, had not been pleased, but he loved her so much he defied their wishes.
    Before Allegra’s fourth birthday, the union abruptly ended. All it took was one tree falling the wrong way. Bess became a widow, and Allegra grew up fatherless. All that time was a fuzzy blur. She thought about doing rebirthing therapy to see if she could remember more, but it was so expensive only rich people could afford it. Just look at this hair, she thought. This is Moon hair. A person with leukemia would not have such healthy hair.
    There. She’d let the L-word seep into her conscious thoughts. The E.R. doctor mentioned the possibility when he examined her and found the bruises on her abdomen. How did she get them? Allegra could think of lots of ways—bumping into the kitchen equipment, dancing at the bars, even during sex, which she considered a contact sport, she’d said. Or illness, he’d countered. Serious illness often begins subtly. Then he’d ordered more tests. Allegra