“On that note,” Gary said. “Shall we go watch rocks fall from the sky?”
We arrived back on deck just as the sunset’s hues brightened into a spectacular lightshow. We watched the sun sink into the waters and the meteor shower begin as the streaks of white grew in vibrancy. We lay on the deck, a scattering of humans on a fewplanks of wood in the middle of the open sea, surrounded by shooting stars. For a dizzying moment, I imagined them falling into the water, sizzling as burning rock hit the icy waves.
Everyone stayed out for hours, but Ethan and I stayed out later than most. It was like we’d been waiting for a chance to be alone together, and now here we finally were, lying on a picnic blanket in silence as the deck emptied out around us.
“Are you ready to have your mind blown?” I asked.
“In a good way or a bad way?”
“A good way! Andrea Darrel and Frederick Gibsondidknow each other. He took her astronomy course, she writes about it in her diary. And…” I waggled my brows.
“And what?”
“They were in love.”
Ethan leveled up, propping himself up on one elbow. He looked delighted. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. They hung out during the first summer, and over the next few, and then he came to see her in Cambridge. I thought…I don’t know, I want it to work out for them. Do you know if he married, who he married?”
He shook his head. “I think he married a New York socialite.”
“Ugh.” The hope drained out of me. “Well. He didn’t seem sure he wanted a wife with a career.”
Ethan winced. “Wow.”
“The nineteen-tens, man.” I leaned my head back to take in thepinpricks in the sky above us. “She must have been so jealous.”
“Of his wife?” Ethan asked.
I laughed. “No—of hisdiscovery. She was the astronomer,right? She wrote about sweeping the skies at night—that’s what you do, when you’re looking for oddities, like a comet. It’s how she calmed herself down when she was stressed; it’s how Maria Mitchell discovered her comet. But it wasGibsonwho discovered a comet. That would have sucked.”
“Maybe she was happy for him.”
I scoffed. “She’d have to be a bigger person than I am. What are the odds, right, that the professional astronomer doesn’t discover the comet but her amateur boyfriend does?”
“I guess he got lucky.”
“Guess so. When did he discover it?”
“Nineteen eleven.”
In 1911, they might have still been together; they’d been sharing their thoughts on marriage at the end of 1910. I remembered the beginning of the summer, watching Ethan get all my father’s attention. I’d felt like I’d been stabbed. Andrea Darrel, watching Frederick Gibson make the discovery she’d always wanted? She must have been ablaze with envy.
Maybe thatwaswhat had broken them apart. Love conquers all, they said, but did passion for a person exceed passion for your own goals?
I glanced at Ethan, realizing I wasn’t as resentful as I’d been a few months ago. It turned out all I had needed was for Dad to make space for me, to tell me he wanted me to come on this boat, to carve out time for me throughout the week. I still wanted him to be proud of my work, but I didn’t mind him being proud of Ethan, too. Partly becauseIwas proud of Ethan, weirdly. I wanted everyone to be proud of him, including mydad, including his parents. “Your talk is in a week, right? Are you excited?”
He looked away. “Not really.”
“Why not?” I asked, surprised. “Are you nervous?”
He shrugged.
Hewasnervous. “When was the last time you did a talk in public?”
“Uh—my Torah portion in my bar mitzvah?”
“Seriously? What about school? Didn’t you have to give presentations?”
