Chapter Two

Moon

I loved Friday nights at my art shop. Mostly women showed up who wanted a different kind of night out. Tonight my own circle of friends gathered along with a bachelorette party and some regulars. The Rainbow Canvas sold art supplies as well as finished art in almost every medium imaginable. Local and even regional artists brought their creations to my little shop and gallery because they knew what I knew: art was subjective. Art that made one observer cry might make another wince, or recoil in disgust.

When everyone had gathered around me I said, “Okay ladies, tonight we have something a little different. Since you were a little too rambunctious for Mario last week, we have…well, let me just show you.” I pulled back the sheet to show off the sketch I’d worked on all week.

“You have outdone yourself tonight, Moon.” Jana smiled at the scene laid out for them. I did the outlines and the women filled it in.

“Thank you, Jana. Choose any portion you’d like to paint or take a crack at the entire thing. Ladies’ choice tonight.”

I went to the front room to turn on some low music—Creedence Clearwater Revival—and lock the door. The shop wasn’t technically open this late and all the events were by reservation only. It was nice to be in a room filled with people having fun, doing normal things. I didn’t have a lot of that in my life, not as the single parent of a child with severe asthma. But these nights, I did.

Rocky waved me over. “Hey Moon, come on over and chat with us!” A big sparkling grin on her face, red hair tumbling half way down her back because she hadn’t cut it in months. Who had time with a four-month-old child at home?

“Hey Jana, Rocky. How’s it going?”

“Good,” Rocky began. “Now that I’m back to work, business has been better than ever, and Lasso promised to build a shed to keep my inventory in, and to keep baby Dallas out of said inventory.” Her laugh was beautiful and melodic, bouncing off the walls and mingling with the beginning strains of Bad Moon Rising.

“How is little Dallas?” I hadn’t seen him since he left the hospital, but I remember red curls covering pale, milky white skin and big blue eyes exactly like his cowboy daddy.

“Not so little. I swear he’ll be bigger than me by the time he’s six years old.” She laughed affectionately, happiness written all over her face.

“And Jana, how is pregnancy number two treating you?” She smiled and some days I envied her, having a partner to help her through her pregnancies.

Her skin glowed beautifully. “I’ll be happier than I can tell you when this one is out of me. Max has been overprotective as hell. Some days I’d like to kill him if it wouldn’t leave me on my own with two children.” She gave us a small chuckle that actually spoke volumes about her love for her guy.

“You know Lasso and I would help,” Rocky offered up with a cheeky grin.

“Yeah thanks, Rocky.” Jana rolled her eyes but I saw the barest hint of a smile she tried to hide. “What about you, Moon, are you seeing someone?”

“Not at all. Between the shop and Beau, my life is booked solid every single day.” That was the truth, if not the whole truth. “Of the ones I have found, none of them have been worth rearranging my schedule for.”

“Bullshit,” Rocky said in her usually sharp way. “There’s always time for love. Hell, I managed to find it while running for my life from a psycho, so I know of what I speak. You should listen to me.”

“The difference, my crazy little friend, is that you came here for that man. Your paths were aligned to cross, which puts everything in an entirely different light.”

“I’m calling bullshit again, but this time I’ll say it with homemade peach soda. I made enough for three, Moon, even though you can still drink the hard stuff.”

I didn’t bother telling her I didn’t drink often, mostly because people reacted strange to that bit of information. “I don’t usually drink soda, so this is fantastic. Thank you, Rocky.”

“Wait, hold the phone,” Rocky said in her usually flamboyant way. “You don’t drink soda? Like, at all?”

I shook my head with a smile. My aversion to sugar was another one that drew strange looks. “No. In fact—”

“How did I not know this? It makes a weird kind of sense, though so never mind. I’m no longer surprised.”

Jana rolled her eyes before returning her gaze to the table in the center of the room. “Well I’d like to hear Moon’s answer.”

“Sugar increases inflammation, which can make Beau’s asthma worse. I’ve never really been a fan and not having it in the house makes it easier all around. I don’t want to run the risk of him getting into it by accident.”

Jana’s green eyes widened and then filled with apology. “Does that mean I shouldn’t have brought the extra white chocolate lemon cake balls I made?”

My smile grew wide at her words. Both her concern and the gesture reminded me of what it was like before I avoided all connections with the world away from my son and my shop. Having girlfriends who gave out hugs for no particular reason, drinking and eating cake because being together was enough of a celebration. Those days were distant in my mind and hanging out with these women helped me remember.

“You definitely should have brought it. Lemon cake is my absolute favorite and your deserts have made me up my exercise game considerably.”

Rocky laughed and squeezed my bare arms. “You do have pretty amazing guns. What do you do?”

“Yoga, Pilates, running. If Beau is up to it, we go bicycling.” Despite his asthma, I wanted my son to have an appreciation for the outdoors. So far, it was a love affair.

“Does that mean I’m slacking?” Jana asked. “Because we go to the park. The end.”

I lifted my bottle of peach soda in the air. “To good friends and doing the best you can.”

“And to good soda,” Rocky added with a wide smile and a wink.

“And to good times,” Jana added, her giggle lighting up her whole face, which was on full display thanks to one of Rocky’s homemade headbands she’d bought at a recent crafts night.

“To all that. And to art,” I said seriously. “And the crazy creative fools who love it.”

“Cheers!” Jana and Rocky shouted loudly, slamming the sturdy bottles together with a loud clang.

“Cheers again!” Several of the women from the bachelor party held up their own plastic wine glasses, narrowly missing expensive shoes and barely touched canvasses.

All the women were laughing and smiling, having a good time after putting in their forty hours or more at an office. It was a good feeling. Camaraderie. Belonging.

The sound of gunfire and breaking glass tore through the air and the room fell into caos. “Gun! Everyone down!”

My gaze darted around the room, searching the front of the shop where the larger windows allowed for a perfect view inside. A bright yellow car that looked a lot like Beau’s favorite Transformer idled right in front of the broken glass and I stared at it for a long, terrifying moment.

More bullets flew, and I held my breath against the hard wood floor of the shop, easels and stools overturned. Several bottles of wine spilled over the table, staining the tablecloth, chairs and the floor below. An automatic sent a torrent of bullets raining down on us. It felt like they would never stop. The sounds of women screaming was all around me. I took several deep breaths, willing my body to remain calm. “Stay down!”

There it was. A brief reprieve. Silence, along with the distant metal-on-metal sound of a gun being reloaded, a sound I’d grown familiar with during my time in Panama. Then I heard it, another sound.

Gurgling.

My eyes darted around, first to the left where the bachelorettes seemed shaken but physically safe. With a sickening feeling I looked to my right and found Rocky curled into a ball and breathing too fast.

“Rocky,” I whispered. “Breath slowly or you’ll pass out. In with me and out like me,” I told her until her breathing matched my own. Panic attack but otherwise okay.

I ignored the cries and whimpers behind me as bullets continued to fly and my gaze landed on Jana. Her long golden blonde hair was spread out on the floor but the rise and fall of her chest was off.

“Jana!” I crawled as quickly as I could without rising more than a few inches from the floor while the bullets continued to spray the shop, ruining everything in sight. “Jana, say something!”

“I…” that was it other than more gurgling sounds and my chest squeezed so tight I had to take a minute. Thankfully the bullets stopped and tires peeled away.

There was a long moment of silence before someone yelled. “Oh my God! What the fuck?” I didn’t know who said that, only that her thoughts echoed pretty much everyone inside the Rainbow Canvas.

Jana coughed and that’s when I saw it. The blood spurt out of her neck. It wasn’t a good sign and in that moment I’d never been so grateful to my overbearing parents who insisted I go pre-med at Columbia, or for the time I spent working as an EMT in Panama and then in New York. It all came back to me as I watched Jana bleeding out at my knees. “Okay Jana save your energy. When I ask you a question, squeeze my hand. Once for yes and twice for no. Okay?”

One squeeze. Two.

“Perfect. Vision blurry?”

Two squeezes. No.

“Nausea?”

Another no.

“Pain?” She squeezed my hand as hard as she could and I had to blink back tears and move into action.

“Rocky, I need you to call 911.” I issued orders while I removed my white tank top and applied pressure to Jana’s neck while my other hand took her pulse at the wrist. “Tell them a pregnant woman, approximately twenty five weeks with a nicked artery. Shooter is off-site,” I told her, suddenly back in New York stitching up wounds from knife fights and pimps with heavy fists, abused children and women. The worst of the worst and it had been my job to stitch them up just enough so they could go back out there and wreak more havoc.

I kept pressure on Jana’s neck. “Just breath slowly, we need you calm so the baby is calm, okay? She will follow your lead Jana. She will.” Her green eyes were still lucid, staring up at me afraid and trusting.

“Holy shit, Moon, who the hell are you?” Rocky looked up with wide, terrified eyes.

“Breathe, Rocky. I’m just me, good in an emergency.” I’d had plenty of training and I knew I was capable, despite what people saw when they looked at me in my colorful flowing fabrics, bangles and fascination with all things non-traditional. “Someone open the door for the emergency workers.”

“Got it,” Rocky said, walking hesitantly to the door, gaze darting out the big broken window every other second until she was surrounded by police, fire and paramedics.

They swarmed my small shop but I couldn’t focus on them and I couldn’t answer their questions. Not now. Not with Jana rapidly losing blood. “Ma’am, please.”

I looked at the two paramedics hunkering down next to me, their combined age younger than me. “I can’t,” I told them and impatiently explained the dilemma. “So get her on the damn gurney while I keep her alive.”

“Yes ma’am,” the blond one said and quickly they maneuvered around me and we practically ran out of the shop and to the ambulance. I stayed beside Jana the entire time, hand fused to her neck thanks to the white fabric between us, sticky with her blood.

The ride to the hospital was eternal, as in eternal hell because I knew what all the beeps meant, what the shouted stats meant and they all spelled out trouble. For Jana and her baby.

Rocky must have been busy on the phone because when we arrived at the hospital, crashing through the doors with me kneeling over Jana’s nearly unconscious body, I saw several members of the Reckless Bastards motorcycle club staring at me with stunned expressions on their faces.

Max’s in particular stayed with me, the anguish and worry on his rugged features was heartbreaking. But I couldn’t focus on them, I had to keep my hand where it was and focus on Jana.

She was a kind, brave soul. I knew the forces of the universe wouldn’t let such a woman leave this world too soon. Jana and her baby would be safe.

They had to be.