what?”
“Relax.” She took a leisurely breath. “And look up.”
He cushioned his neck with his fist and dragged his gaze toward the sky. The lens of his vision adjusted, intensifying the spray of white specks. Clear as salt crystals on an endless black table. Were the stars tonight brighter than usual? Or had it simply been that long since he’d paid notice?
Within seconds, everything else faded away. He was suspended in space, floating among those specks like he’d dreamed of as a kid. He was an adventurer visiting other galaxies, a fearless explorer. There were no responsibilities anchoring him in place. And for the first time since he could remember, TJ felt free.
“This is what I wanted to show you.” Jo’s voice, like gravity, yanked him back to earth. Again, he lay in the old ballpark. “My pop,” she went on, “he knew everything about the stars. Was a big hobby for him. He’s the one who taught me about constellations making up pictures and whatnot.”
“Yeah?” TJ said. “Like what?”
She gave him a skeptical side-glance. Seeming satisfied by his sincerity, she raised her arm and pointed. “You see those three running up and down in a row?” She waited for him to respond.
“I see ’em.”
“Well, they’re the belt hanging on Orion, the hunter. And next to it, right there, are three more dots that make the line of his sword.” She picked up speed while motioning from one area to the next. “Above him is Taurus, that’s the bull he’s fighting, and on the left are his guard dogs. The lower one is Canis Major, and the star at the top of it is Sirius. That’s the brightest star in the night sky. Believe it or not, it’s almost twice as bright as the next brightest star ….” Not until she trailed off and cut to his gaze did he realize he was staring at her. “Swell.” She looked away. “Now you think I’m a nut job.”
“Actually, I was thinking …” He was thinking that he’d never noticed what a pretty face she had. Had a naturalness about her. She wasn’t one for wearing makeup, and he sort of liked that—though he wasn’t about to say it. “I was wondering how you remember so much about all of them. The constellations, I mean.”
“Oh. Well. I don’t remember them all. Those are just some of my favorites.”
“What’s so special about them? Compared to the others?”
She lifted a shoulder, signs of embarrassment having fallen away. “I like that they have a whole story. Plus, you can see them from anywhere in the world. It’s kinda nice, don’t you think? Some stranger in a faraway country’s gotta be looking at those very shapes right now.”
Jo turned back to the sky, and after a beat, she quietly added, “Mostly, though, I guess they remind me of my dad. I like to think of him as Sirius, the brightest one. Way up there, watching over me and my brothers.”
Normally TJ would bolt from a moment like this, averse to poking and prodding, yet he felt compelled to hear more. “What exactly happened to your parents?”
“Depends. Which version you lookin’ for?”
He understood the dry response. The local rumor mill had churned out plenty of whoppers about his own family, so he didn’t give much credence to anything he’d heard about Jo’s. When she and her brothers moved into town, to live with their granddad, stories had spread like wildfire. Some claimed her mother ran off with another guy, supposedly a traveling missionary from Canada; others said friendly fire took out her father during the Great War. TJ could have asked Maddie for the real dope, after the girls met in junior high, but he hadn’t considered it any of his business.
Probably still wasn’t.
He decided to nix his question, but then Jo up and answered.
“Plain truth is, my ma died while giving birth to my brother Sidney. I was only two, so I don’t remember much about her, outside her photo. As for Pop … on the dock where he was working, some wire on a crane broke loose. A load of metal pipes dropped. Folks said he pushed another fella outta the way and that’s why he bought it. Wanna know the screwy thing? It wasn’t even his shift. He was filling in for another guy who’d come down with the flu.” A sad smile crossed her lips. But then she heaved a sigh, and the moisture coating her eyes seemed to evaporate at will. “Just goes to show you. Of the things we’re able to control, death sure ain’t one of them.”
“Pffft, right.” The remark slipped out.
Jo angled her face toward his. She hesitated before asking, “You wanna talk about it? About your parents?” The glow of the moon highlighted a softness in her features. She looked at him with such profound understanding that he genuinely felt the relief of someone sharing his burden.
The cost of the moment, however, was remembering.
Suddenly that horrific night, usually flashing in pieces, stacked like a solid wall of bricks. He closed his eyes and the emergency room flew up around him. His father lay in a hospital bed, forehead and shoulder bandaged, gauze spotted with blood. Bourbon oozing from his pores.
Once he’s conscious, we’ll need him for questioning, the policeman said. There was an accusation in his voice. When TJ’s mind stopped spinning, he found himself in the passenger seat of the officer’s car. Rain hammered the roof as they drove through the streets, shrouded in darkness. With every passing headlight, he saw his father’s sedan winding down the canyon road, colliding with the oncoming truck. He imagined the spontaneous sculpture of bloodied bodies and twisted metal, saw the New Year’s Eve party the couple had left only minutes before the accident.
Cars honked in ignorant celebration as TJ mounted the steps to the morgue. Round and round “Auld Lang Syne” played in his head as the coroner pulled back the sheet—Should old acquaintance be forgot—and TJ nodded once in confirmation. If not for her gray pallor, the absence of breath, his mother could have been sleeping. A doctor arrived to identify the other driver, a widower lacking a family member to do the honors. We’ll drink a cup of kindness yet … TJ drifted out the doors. He thought of Maddie, and the task of telling her the news when she returned full of laughter and tales from her group holiday concert in San Francisco.
It had been at that moment, outside the morgue with drizzle burning cold down his face, that TJ swore two things: He would protect his sister at all costs; and he would never, for anything in the world, forgive his father for what he did.
“Maybe it would help,” Jo said, “if you talked about it.” The tender encouragement opened TJ’s eyes. “I know it helped me an awful lot when I finally did that with Gramps.”
A sense of comfort washed over TJ, and he couldn’t deny wanting to purge the memories. But how could he put those images into words? And how could Jo truly relate? Her dad was a hero; his own, a murderer. Sure, an inconclusive investigation had prevented any charges—whether it was the truck driver or his father who’d crossed the median, whether booze or the slick road was to blame.
Yet to TJ, the key evidence lay in his father’s reclusion and, more than that, his inability to look his children in the eye.
Jo kept watching, in wait of an answer.
“Another time,” he said, almost believing it himself.
She twisted her lips and nodded thoughtfully.
Rising to his feet, he extended a hand to help her up. She dusted off the back of her overalls, her peacoat. “Home?” she asked.
“Home,” he replied, the word sounding distant and hollow.
The morning crept by, chained at the ankles. Lane stole another glimpse at his watch. Don’t worry, he told himself. She’ll be here. She’ll be here.
For