Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

BENNETT

As soon as his truck had pulled out of the drive, I raced down the stairs toward the back door, but before I reached it, I skidded to a stop.

The day of The Humiliation , Theo had caught me out because he'd returned with an invoice. Even though his invoice wasn't due until late next week, I forced myself to wait another half hour before casually sauntering out to the patio to retrieve the paper from under the rock.

It was a small scrap of paper, a bit smaller than a playing card, and on it was an amazing black ink illustration of a man watching the stars through a telescope. Theo had shaded the night sky, leaving unmarked white paper as the stars. The negative space even indicated a falling star.

In tiny print threaded through the man's light hair, it read Stargazer .

I sucked in a breath.

My grandfather had been a stargazer. So much so that he'd built a house with an attached observatory, named his daughter after the constellation Cassiopeia, and named his son—my dad—after the astronomer Copernicus. He used to say we should all be stargazers because the universe was full of wonders waiting to be discovered. New stars were being born all the time whose light hadn't reached us yet, he'd say, and sometimes what felt unexpected had actually been billions of years in the making.

My dad had been too pragmatic to do much stargazing, let alone carry on the naming trend, and I'd inherited that pragmatism… mostly. But I couldn't deny that when my sister named Vega for a constellation, it had felt… important. Right. Maybe even fated, if you believed in that sort of thing.

It felt similarly important that Theo had made this drawing for me.

And Christ, the man was talented.

I wondered if he'd ever considered pursuing a career with his art. Town gossip had informed me that he'd done a summer program down south somewhere last summer, but when he'd moved home, he'd gone right back to working for his brother at Ross Landscaping and taking shifts at O'Leary Hardware.

Did I know anyone in the city who might be a good connection for him? Architecture wasn't exactly similar to the kind of art Theo created, but maybe some of my contacts in marketing would work?

The following Friday, I eagerly anticipated his visit. This time, I set out an entire pitcher of lemonade before he came, in case he was thirsty when he arrived, and I placed my latest logic puzzle, inspired by his drawing, under the rock.

I still hadn't come up with the balls to confront him and apologize for my actions during The Humiliation , even though I recognized I still owed him that.

Instead of loitering where he might see me, I forced myself upstairs into the observatory and spent the following hour and a half cleaning and adjusting the telescope in preparation for trying to spot noctilucent clouds this weekend. My grandfather would have been ninety on Saturday, and it felt right to remember him by spending time in the observatory, looking for one of his favorite birthday phenomena.

I'd spent more time in the observatory in the past year than I had in a decade. With Vega here, there'd been a reason to clean off the instrument and take advantage of the dark winter nights. She'd taken to it like a magnet to metal, with the same utter absorption and delight my grandfather had shown, and we'd spent many late nights gasping in excitement when we spotted something unexpected.

By the time I returned to my office, I was tired and grimy. A dip in the pool would be the perfect way to rinse away the stuffy heat from the observatory. Theo's truck was gone, so I changed into swim trunks and made my way out to the patio. There was still a wet trail of water from where someone had recently climbed out of the side of the pool and walked to the patio table. The wet trail faded as it went from the table toward the side of the house leading to the driveway.

I was glad he'd taken a dip, glad he'd felt like he could without offending me, and happy he wasn't too upset by our previous encounter to leave the minute his work was finished.

My greedy hands snatched at the paper under the rock. The illustrated scene was incredible, like something I could have framed to display on the wall of my house.

It was a cocktail party on my very own pool deck, complete with his friends and family, over-the-top cocktails in hand, and exaggerated exotic pets in arms, on shoulders, and underfoot.

I held the paper to my chest as I tried to hold back a laugh. And then I studied it again. This time, I noticed a few details I hadn't seen at first glance.

Theo was holding a glass of lemonade in the scene, and he was looking right at the viewer instead of at his friends and family. The very edge of a telescope could be seen in the corner of the illustration, poking out of the open observatory dome. Written on the optical tube, as if it was a brand name, were the tiny words Invite Me Up .

I sucked in a breath.

There was no way I could invite him up. No way I could open the door to a physical encounter…

Could I?