“Present,” Star answers, tears shining on her smile because the night is permitted to be sentimental when it pleases. “Always present.”
I feel the ghosts without letting them in; this is a trick I learned too late and plan to keep. All the men I have been stand on the path behind me and decide to be quiet for once. The young officer who thought orders were synonyms for truth, the furious fighter who thought killing enough enemies would eventually feel like winning, the bodyguard who thought love could be starved until it forgot to ask—none of them get the last word. The one who kneels in a garden to give a woman a ring made of ugliness hammered into a vow does. The one holding a child up to the sky does.
“Tell me the story,” our daughter says, putting her palm over my mouth because she learned from the best and knows this is how you saystop being quiet.
Star answers before I can try to make poetry out of a corridor full of blood and a kiss that changed physics. “Once upon a night,” she says, swinging her gently with her words, “a very brave, very grumpy Vakutan decided he wasn’t going to lose anymore. He found a red-headed mess and her troublemaking best friend and brought them home, and then he decided he didn’t know the meaning of the wordpermissionwhen it came to love.”
“Grumpy,” the little one repeats, delighted.
“Very,” I agree, nuzzling the soft curve under her jaw until she squeals. “Then the red-headed mess learned whataskmeans.”
“Ask?” she says, suspicious of any word that might be used against her at bedtime.
“It means you tell the truth so loud even adults can hear it,” Star says, kissing her hair. “And then the brave grump and the stubborn mess built a window where there wasn’t one, and they looked out together and said, ‘That way.’”
“That way,” our daughter echoes, pointing at nothing and everything. Then she points at a star decisively. “Mine.”
“Yours,” I say, throat thick enough to count as weather. “All of them, if you want.”
“That’s too many,” Star murmurs, laying her cheek against my arm and looking out into the dark that isn’t empty. “Start with one. Save some for tomorrow.”
We stand. We breathe. The house behind us inhales supper smells and exudes decency. Someone in the kitchen drops a pan and swears in three languages; Sneed says “language” in a tone that means he is pleased to be alive. Mama laughs at something Daddy says that can’t possibly be as funny as she decides;CynJyn sings a snatch of a song that surely shouldn’t be allowed near a nursery; Kaspian answers with a recitation of a poem about winds and then ruins it by winking at someone, implying he has finally learned how to be shameless.
The night deepens in the honest way nights do when they aren’t trying to be anything else. The river glows along one edge and sulks along another. The rings throw a pale scarf across the bowl of the sky and dare us to pretend we don’t live under a miracle every day. Our daughter’s weight rests heavy and right on my arm; Star’s warmth sits steady against my side; my heart, traitor, blesses them both and asks for more like a thief finally allowed to make a purchase.
“Do you want to go back in?” Star asks, voice low, chin tucked into my shoulder.
“In a minute,” I say. “I’m teaching astronomy.”
“Advanced class,” she says. “Lesson one: home.”
Our daughter leans back, looks me dead in the eye like she is about to promote me or fire me. “Forever?” she asks, as if she remembers having been a small, fierce god before she agreed to show up as bones and laughter.
“Forever,” I tell her. The word used to scare me because it sounded like a prison. Tonight it’s a porch light and an open door. “We are sticky,” I add, because bravery comes in different dialects for toddlers.
“Sticky,” she agrees, satisfied. Her head tips against my shoulder; the sudden heaviness is sleep arriving to take what it’s owed. She sighs, a little white flag. Star reaches up and smooths a curl back that immediately springs forward again to make a counterargument.
“Carry her in?” she asks.
“Always,” I say. My arm has done rough work. This is why I have it. I shift our daughter so she can drool on my collar in comfort.
We turn as one toward the house. The stones take our steps into themselves and pretend they were always this kind of weight. In the glass of the long windows, we are three shadows and one light and the night treats all four with respect.
At the threshold, Star pauses and tugs me to a stop. She tips up on her toes and kisses me, slow and certain, a punctuation that doesn’t end anything. “Thank you,” she whispers into the corner of my mouth.
“For what,” I ask, and the question feels foolish even as I ask it.
“For keeping your promises,” she says. “For making new ones. For saying yes.”
“Thank you for asking,” I tell her. “For choosing. For making me into a person who looks at the sky and sees a map instead of a wound.”
She searches my face for a breath, finds what she’s looking for, nods like a general who just took a city without breaking it, and pats my chest over the place she keeps her hand whenever she can. “Come on, grump,” she says, smiling against my skin. “Bath. Bed. Bells on the door so CynJyn doesn’t ‘accidentally’ kidnap the baby for singing lessons.”
“She would,” I say.
“She will,” Star says. “We will survive.”
We go inside. The door closes on the night like a sigh that isn’t unhappy. In the atrium, Sneed pretends not to see us and then hands me a blanket without looking, because he was born for this life too even if he won’t admit it. Mama insists we kiss the top of her head with the reverence due an empress. Daddy tries to teach our sleeping daughter how to snore. Rayek of a year ago would have thought this scene an ambush. The man walking through it now knows it’s a coronation you only get by telling the truth with your feet.
Later, when the house is quiet and our daughter is a warm, anchored weight in her cot and Star’s toes are wedged under my calf like a treaty no minister could draft, I get up and take one last look through the window. The sky answers with exactly the right amount of arrogance. I point, not because anyone needs to see, but because pointing is what you do when you lay claim to a thing you plan to spend the rest of your life loving.
“That one is where I found your mother,” I tell the glass. “This one is where she saved me.” I touch the pane; it’s cool as reason. “And this,” I add, turning back to the room where my whole heart sleeps in two pieces, “this is where we keep choosing.”
Forever is not a bluff. It’s a discipline. It’s a garden and a window and a ring that refuses to be pretty when true will do. It’s a lemon tree that insists on having opinions. It’s a small hand that learns your ear like a handle. It’s a voice in the dark saying your name like a spell it promises to only use for good. Tonight, under a sky that doesn’t owe me anything, I feel it settle onto my shoulders like a cloak and decide I can bear the weight with joy.
We’ve claimed it. We’ll guard it. We’ll teach it to our daughter one star at a time.
