Full Moon Fiancé

Theories

She was up bright and early, pacing the room as she waited for her fiancé, or ex-fiancé, or whatever Joshua was, to arrive. She had demanded that Chief Bernard go get him at nearly dawn, but the older man had stayed at the door until almost ten in the morning, when she nearly shouted at him and he finally agreed to go see if Joshua was awake.

She’d been somewhat surprised to see Chief Bernard up and about, acting as if the sedative had not had any effect on him at all. When she’d opened the door in a flurry of dramatic activity so early, she had half expected to find him sprawled on the ground, his glasses askew and his book, perhaps, fallen from his hands and skittered across the floor.

Instead, she’d been greeted by the sight of the relatively cheery, awake looking man, hair perfectly in place and eyes perfectly open.

For some reason, it had annoyed her greatly.

“You summoned me?” Joshua’s voice rang out in time with the sound of the door opening. He sounded unperturbed, almost amused. When she turned to look at him, he was closing the door.

His light, sandy brown hair was styled, and he was dressed for the day already in khakis and a green sweater. It made his brown-green eyes, already wide and sparkling, even prettier in the early morning light. She knew her face could not hide that it made her mad. She saw his smirk grow wider as their eyes met, and that made her angry too. His smirk wasn’t angry, and it wasn’t inviting discord, but it was making her angry nonetheless, because he knew something and she did not. Because he was alive, and because no matter how sorry he was, it would never be enough for her. She was angry because she still loved him, and because the sparkle in his eye was the same one that he had always looked at her with, and if she tried, she could forget that everything had changed between them. But she shouldn’t. Everything had changed, and no amount of endeared smirking would change that.

“Are you going to tell me what is going on yet?” she demanded. She practically threw herself down onto the nearby loveseat.

“No,” he replied, coolly. But in his eyes she still saw the Joshua that she loved. The Joshua that loved her. And she saw something else, too, a certain calm curiosity. He knew her too well to think that she had called him back to the room to rehash the same points she had made before. He knew, she realized, that she had something new to say.

So she made no preamble. “Are you in a cult?”

For a second, she thought she was right, because Joshua stared at her with his mouth slightly slack. But then he laughed.

“A cult?” he shook his head. “Diana, no, surely you know my family better than that?” He came closer to her and sat on the other end of the loveseat. They were separated by little more than three inches of plush fabric and whatever secrets still lay like an ocean between them. If she had wanted to, she could have reached out to grab his hand. She had done so on that very couch so many times she’d never be able to count, but those days were different. Her hand remained at her side.

“Well, I thought I did,” she fired back. But her stomach sank. His reaction told her all she needed to know, yet she felt strangely defensive of her guess, as if she could talk him into it being true. Perhaps she just wanted to believe that it was true, because then at least she would know. “But now? You pretended to be dead, your family barely spoke to me, they acted weird. You have the police chief showing up at your house at odd hours to watch me, which is weird, I mean, objectively, that’s not normal behavior, you’ve basically kidnapped me and the guy who should be arresting you is sitting outside my door with a book. So he could be in the cult too! And–” she stopped, because Joshua was laughing again.

“It isn’t a bad guess, I suppose, with the information you have,” he chuckled.

“You’re infuriating,” she told him.

“I guess I am,” he said. “A cult,” he laughed again.

“It makes sense!” she protested. “I mean, getting all vague about what is going on, and the weird language…” she realized she had said too much. She covered her mouth with her hand, but of course, Joshua heard her anyway.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“You said weird language, what did you mean?” his face was suddenly serious, no trace of the grin left behind.

“I didn’t… I just meant… you know cults– always having their own… languages." She finished lamely. It was not a good excuse. Internally, she cursed herself for not thinking of a better cover.

“Diana,” Joshua strode over to her suddenly, his eyes suddenly concerned. “What did you mean?” He brought his face perilously close to hers. She inhaled his scent, the same as always, woody and strong, like home. It made it hard to think clearly.

“I… may have… seen a book…” she finally said. She stared resolutely at the floor.

“Where?”

She shrugged.

“Diana!” His voice was sharp and it made her look up into his eyes. To her shock, they seemed urgently worried. “Where?”

“The library,” she said. She held her breath as she waited for him to get angry. He’d never been angry with her before, not really, being the most even tempered person she had ever known, but for some reason she was sure it was coming now.

Instead, he sighed deeply.

“How?”

“I said I wanted some tea…”

Joshua placed his fingers on the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes and breathing like he had a pain somewhere. “And then?”

“I… uh…” she didn’t want to admit to drugging the police chief.

“Diana, please, it’s important.” Joshua reached out one hand to her. “Maybe more than you could know. Just tell me.”

With his hand on her own, she couldn’t lie.

“I made a cup for Chief Bernard and I, maybe, uh, might have dropped some stuff out of the tea cabinet and… you know… it’s possible that some medication fell into the cup?”

“My mother’s anxiety pills?” Joshua looked horrified.

“Maybe,” Diana said. Her voice was quiet.

“You couldn’t just wait another day or two for me to explain?”

“No!” she said, finding her voice strong again. “No, and it’s crazy that you even have to ask that!”

Joshua stood up forcefully. “I have to go,” he announced. “Please, Diana, please. Stay here. In this room. It isn’t safe… you don’t understand.”

“What isn’t safe? What don’t I understand? If you would just tell me–”

“I can’t!” He raised his voice for the first time. “I wish I could. But I can’t. It isn’t a cult, it isn’t some strange… oddity, it isn’t whatever you’re thinking, okay? And I will explain in time. But today, right now, I have to go. I have to take care of the mess you created.”

“There was no mess! I left everything exactly the way I found it.”

The look that Joshua gave her was almost pitying. “I’m sure you did.”

“So no one will know.”

“They’ll know,” he said curtly. “They’ll know.”

Before she could protest further, he rose, and practically sprinted from the room. She could hear murmuring between him and Chief Bernard outside, but her body felt numb and despite the curiosity that still burned inside her, she couldn’t bring herself to get closer to the door to try to eavesdrop.

She just stared at the space where he had been, skin-tinglingly close to her, and felt her eyes swim with tears she would not permit to fall.