The Law of Moses (The Law of Moses, #1)

by Amy Harmon

I can’t tell you how it felt. How it still feels. I can’t. Words feel cheap and ring hollow and turn everything I say, everything I feel, into a tawdry romance novel full of flowery phrases designed to illicit sympathetic tears and an immediate response. A response that has nothing to do with reality and everything to do with easy emotion that you can set aside when you close the cover. Emotion that has you wiping your eyes and chirping a happy hiccup, appreciating the fact that it was all just a story. And best of all, not your story. But this isn’t like that. Because it is my story. And I wasn’t prepared.

My parents had forbidden me to swim there because it was so cold and deep and murky—dangerous even. But drowning was preferable to never swimming at all, and I’d managed not to drown so far.

I was so thirsty for something else. Maybe that was it. Maybe that was the reason I waded in too far, the reason I got in way over my head. Whatever it was, when Moses came to Levan, he was like water—cold, deep, unpredictable, and, like the pond up the canyon, dangerous, because you could never see what was beneath the surface. And just like I’d done all my life, I jumped in head first, even though I’d been forbidden. But this time, I drowned.

“The perfect ordinariness . . .” Georgia breathed, and she lifted her hand and followed the wet path my finger made, as if she, too, could paint. Then she looked at me solemnly. “I’m a very ordinary girl, Moses. I know that I am. And I always will be. I can’t paint. I don’t know who Vermeer is, or Manet for that matter. But if you think ordinary can be beautiful, that gives me hope. And maybe sometime you’ll think about me when you need an escape from the hurt in your head.”

“And Lucky is just like you!” I said. Moses just stared at me blandly, but I could tell he was enjoying himself. “Because he’s black?” “No, stupid. Because he’s in love with me, and he tries to pretend every day like he doesn’t want to have anything to do with me,” I shot back. Moses choked, and I punched him hard in the stomach, making him gasp and grab for my hands.

“It’s a terrible mural.” It was terrible. And funny. And very Georgia. “Well, we can’t all be Leonardo DiCaprio. You painted on my walls, I’m painting on yours. And you don’t even have to pay me. I’m just trying to bond with you over art.” “Leonardo da Vinci, you mean?” “Him too.”

She stroked my head and I breathed against her skin. “Are we bonding over art?” she whispered in my ear. “No. Let’s bond over something you’re actually good at,” I murmured back, and felt her chest vibrate with her laughter.