The first thing my son’s teacher said after closing the classroom door was, “Your boy asked if I was the girl in your yearbook,” and for one terrible second I forgot how to breathe.
Chapter 1
I laughed, because sometimes a man laughs when the floor shifts under him and he is too proud to reach for the wall. Then Elise Warren placed my old high school yearbook on a child-sized reading table between us, opened it to a page I had not looked at in years, and my laughter died in my throat.
There we were beneath the dome of Roosevelt High School’s old planetarium. I was seventeen, all bad hair and foolish confidence, standing beside the girl who would later become my wife. Mara Nolan was laughing at something outside the frame, one hand lifted toward my shoulder. On her other side stood Elise, quiet and serious, wearing a tiny Saturn pin on her sweater.
The same Saturn pin was fastened to her cardigan now.
I looked up.
Elise folded her arms.
“You knew who I was.”
It was not a question.
My name is Ben Mercer. I was thirty-four then, a museum exhibit technician, a widower, and the father of an eight-year-old boy named Theo who believed privacy was something adults invented to hide Christmas presents and cookies.
That morning I had packed his lunch, signed his spelling test, reminded him twice about his library book, and somehow failed to notice that he had smuggled a twenty-year-old yearbook into his backpack.
“He found it last night,” I said. “We were looking for his rain boots.”
“I figured something like that.”
“I didn’t know he brought it.”
“I believe you.”
That should have made the conversation easier.
It did not.
Elise was not angry. Anger would have given me something solid to push against. Instead, she looked unsettled, as though Theo had opened a door both of us had spent years pretending was a wall.
I had recognized Elise on the first day of school.
Of course I had.
Some people change completely after seventeen years. Elise had not. Her dark-blond hair was shorter, there were faint lines beside her gray eyes, and the nervous teenage girl I remembered had become a calm first-grade teacher who could silence twenty children merely by lowering her voice.
But I had known.
I had simply chosen not to say so.
“Mara was my best friend,” Elise said.
“I know.”
“And you were married to her for eleven years.”
“Yes.”
“And now I teach your son.”
I glanced toward the yearbook.
“Apparently the universe has a sense of humor.”
“The universe had nothing to do with Theo digging through your closet.”
“That part is probably true.”
Her mouth almost curved.
Almost.
A knock came at the door.
Before either of us answered, Theo’s freckled face appeared through the opening.
“Ms. Warren? Mr. Paul said I could get my water bottle.”
“It’s by the sink.”
Theo slipped inside, saw me, and brightened.
“Dad!”
“Hey, buddy.”
He grabbed the bottle, then noticed the yearbook.
“Oh, you showed him.”
Elise gave me a look.
“Thank you for your discretion, Theodore.”
“You said honesty matters.”
“It does.”
“So I was honest loudly.”
“That is one interpretation.”
Theo wandered toward the small telescope near the windows.
“Is this real?”
“Very real,” Elise said.
“Can it see aliens?”
“Only if the aliens file the correct permission forms.”
Theo nodded as if that made perfect sense.
Then he looked back at the yearbook.
“Mom’s in there too.”
The room changed.
Three years had passed since Mara died. Long enough for strangers to stop lowering their voices around me, but not long enough for me to stop expecting her coffee mug beside the sink some mornings.
I crouched beside Theo.
“Yeah, buddy. Mom’s in there.”
He looked at Elise.
“You knew her?”
Elise answered before I could protect anyone from anything.
“Yes. Your mom was my friend.”
“Did she like planets too?”
“She liked teasing people who took planets too seriously.”
Theo grinned.
“Dad does that.”
“I’ve noticed.”
For half a second, something warm passed between Elise and me.
Not grief.
Not exactly memory.
Something more dangerous because it belonged to the present.
Theo was eventually sent back to after-school care with his water bottle and a promise that he could help test the school telescope at Friday night’s stargazing fundraiser.
When the door closed, I reached for the yearbook.
Elise’s eyes followed my hand.
“I should have said something when the school year started,” I told her.
“Yes.”
One word.
It landed harder than an accusation.
“I wasn’t sure you remembered me.”
“I remembered you, Ben.”
Hearing my name in her voice folded the years in half.
She closed the yearbook.
“I waited.”
“For what?”
“To see whether you would acknowledge me.”
“I was trying not to make things complicated.”
“No. You were trying not to name what was already complicated.”
I had no answer.
Elise looked down at the old photograph.
“Mara was always easier for people to see.”
“That isn’t fair.”
Her eyes lifted.
“Isn’t it?”
Something in her face warned me I had stepped near an old wound.
Before I could ask, she handed me the yearbook.
“I’ll see you Friday.”
I tucked it under my arm.
At the door, I turned back.
“Elise.”
“Yes?”
“Why did Theo think it mattered that you were in the photograph?”
For the first time, she looked almost nervous.
“He said you keep that page marked.”
My chest tightened.
I did.
I had forgotten.
Not Mara’s wedding photograph. Not our senior portraits. Not the football championship picture or graduation.
That astronomy club page.
“He asked why,” Elise continued.
“What did you tell him?”
“That he would have to ask you.”
I stood very still.
Then she added quietly, “You might want to ask yourself first.”
I walked out carrying the yearbook like it had suddenly become evidence against me.
By Friday afternoon, I had almost convinced myself the meeting had meant nothing more than old history colliding with the present.
Then Elise smiled at me beside a broken telescope, and I understood I had been lying to myself for seventeen years.
