I looked back up at the stars above me, then again at the telescope for a moment. “Can you show me?” I asked, suddenly wanting to name what I’d been looking at for the last few months.
“Of course,” my grandfather said, sounding a little surprised. “Step right up.”
I lowered my eye to the eyepiece and suddenly, right there and brilliantly clear, was what had been right there above me, shining down on me, all summer long.
It was August. The days turned hot and muggy, and my father started to get worse, much faster than I’d somehow been expecting. I found myself grateful for the four nurses who passed through, changing shifts every eight hours, simply because we were now out of our depth in terms of helping my dad. He needed help getting out of the bed, help walking, help going to the bathroom. We started using the wheelchair to get him around the house, but didn’t use it much, as he was spending most of the time sleeping. He was getting medications and pain management administered by syringes, and we now had a bright-red medical waste container in the kitchen that the nurses took away, that didn’t go into the bearbox with the rest of the trash.
I’d stopped going into work. I’d talked to Fred, and he told me he understood—he’d apparently learned about the situation when he came to the Fourth of July barbecue. Elliot would send me goofy, joking text messages, and Lucy stopped by every day after work, with a fountain Diet Coke for me, ready to listen if I wanted to talk and happy to chatter on and gossip if I wanted to be distracted.
Our kitchen—and fridge—was soon filled up with casseroles and baked goods. Fred kept bringing over coolerfuls of whatever fish he’d caught that day, and whenever Davy came to walk the dog, he always had something with him in a green Borrowed Thyme bakery box—muffins, cookies, pies. The nurses had come to really love it whenever Davy appeared. Even the Gardners, who didn’t cook at all, brought by a pizza every few days.
I was still thinking about Henry much more than I wanted to, and I still wasn’t sleeping. But my grandfather also wasn’t sleeping, and so at night, we continued our star lessons. He’d whittle and tell me where to point the telescope, asking me to describe what I saw and then, later, to identify them myself. I learned how to find the constellations, so that I could see them even without the telescope. I was amazed to learn that there were things that could be seen with the naked eye, like other planets. And they’d been there all along, I just hadn’t known what was I was seeing.
All of us were staying pretty close to home, running errands or going into town only if we absolutely needed to. My dad still had a few good hours every day when he wasn’t sleeping, and none of us wanted to miss them. Which was why when Lucy came over as usual one Tuesday, I was surprised when she suggested taking a walk and my mother agreed, practically insisting that I go with her.
“It’s okay,” I said, frowning at my mother, who’d suddenly joined us on the porch. My dad had gone to sleep about four hours ago; I knew he’d be up soon and I wanted to be around for it.
“No, you should come,” Lucy said. “I need to talk to you about something private.”
I was on the verge of telling Lucy that we could just talk on the dock, or in my room, but she looked so anxious that I shrugged. “Fine,” I said. “Just a short walk.”
“Good,” my mother said quickly and I just looked at her for a moment, wondering why she was so eager to get me out of the house. But maybe she was just worried that I’d been here too much. Warren still saw Wendy, and they’d go out sometimes, and Gelsey still went next door to see Nora. Maybe since Lucy always came to me, my mom was just worried I wasn’t leaving the house enough.
“Let’s go,” I said, standing up. Lucy scrambled to her feet as well, then glanced back at my mother for a second before hurrying on ahead so that I had to rush to catch up with her.
When we reached the road, Lucy paused, shaking her head for a moment. “I can’t believe you guys still don’t have a sign,” she said, as she turned left, and I followed, shrugging.
“We’ve never found anything that fits,” I said. “I think if we were going to have found the right thing, it would have happened already.” I turned to face her. Lucy still seemed intent on walking briskly up my street, even though we were heading away from downtown, just toward other houses. “What did you want to talk to me about? Trouble with Pittsburgh?”
“What?” Lucy asked, looking startled. “Oh. Him. Um… no. It’s…”
She looked so uncomfortable for a moment, that I suddenly realized what this might be about. “Is it Elliot?” I asked. If he’d finally declared his crush, and now it was just the two of them at work, I could see how that might get awkward.
“Elliot?” Lucy repeated, sounding surprised. “No. What about him?”
I knew it was none of my business, but I decided to jump in anyway. “He has a crush on you,” I said. “He has all summer.”