The Moon and More Read Online Free PDF

doubtful look. “I
will
. You have to let me at least try.”
    In the end, she did, sitting silently across from me as I wrote first a draft—always the perfectionist when it came to school—then a final copy of the letter. I slid it into an envelope, then watched as she flipped through her address book until she found the one that had been on the top right corner of all those checks. She read it aloud, I wrote it down, and we took it to the mailbox together.
    It could have ended like that. Nobody, including me, would have been that surprised. But two weeks later, an envelope arrived with my name on it. Inside was a typed letter on thick paper. JOEL PENDLETON , it said at the top. No more Loch Ness. He was real.
Dear Emaline,
    Thank you so much for writing me. I have thought of you so often, wondering how you were doing and what you were like, but never thought it was my right or place to try to find out. I would love to answer the questions for your project and, if you were so inclined, tell you a bit about myself as well. I know I can never expect to be your father. But it is my hope that maybe, someday, we might be friends.
    The letter went on. He gave me everything I needed of his family history—answering each of my questions in order and detail—before moving onto his own. He was working as a freelance journalist and married, he said, five years now, to a wonderful woman named Leah. They had a two-year-old boy: Benji. Maybe, someday, I could meet him. On the last page, just before his scribbled signature, was an e-mail address. He didn’t say to write him, or that he was waiting to hear from me. It was just there, like an offering.
    That was the first time I saw my mom get that particular mix of worry and sadness on her face. Now, I could spot it from across a room. He’d hurt her so much all those years ago. Her greatest fear was that she’d let him get in a place where he’d be able to do the same to me.
    I finished my project and handed it in, receiving an A. Then I filed it away. (I was a kid with files, even back then; once a school-supply nerd, always a school-supply nerd.) Theletter I kept in the drawer of my bedside table, where I’d take it out and look at it every once in a while. The stationery was so thick, his monogram raised. Like even paper was different, somehow, in his world. Finally, a few weeks later, I opened up my e-mail, typed in the address he’d provided, and wrote to him, thanking him for his help and telling him I’d gotten a good grade. Within a few hours, there was a response.
    That is great news,
he wrote.
What else are you studying in school?
    Really, it was in those last seven words that our relationship, whatever it was or would be, began. School was a common ground, something he knew so much about, more than my mom and dad, more than even some of my teachers. Math, history, literature, science—he had experience with them all, and was always ready and eager to provide me with his opinions, links to articles, books I should think about reading. Learning became our common language, and suddenly we were writing regularly.
    A few months and many e-mails later, he wrote saying he and his wife and son would be coming down to North Reddemane. They hoped to meet me, if my parents agreed. When I told my mom, she bit her lip, and I saw that look again.
    Nobody thought she should do it. Her family said he had done nothing for us and deserved the same in return, that it would just confuse and upset me. But my mom had read all the e-mails. Despite her misgivings, she understood that he was somehow filling a void we might have not even known was there. So a couple of months after the letter arrived, a visit was arranged. My father, his wife, and Benji came downto stay with his now-elderly aunt, and we made plans to all meet for dinner at Shrimpboats. In the days preceding this, my mother was so nervous she threw up repeatedly, which I’d never seen her do before—or since, actually. Your