No White Knight

“Um,” I say. “How the hell are we gonna prove anything? That shooting happened decades ago.”

“Follow the clues,” he says, shrugging like it’s just that easy. “Your dad said something about finding the guy’s gun and a rock. Right?”

“Right.” I frown. “But I mean…I didn’t see a gun in the town,” I say. “And I don’t have a clue what ‘rock’ he was talking about.”

“Did your dad leave behind any stuff you haven’t sorted through yet?”

“Boxes of it.” I smile faintly. “He’s kept every academic paper he’s ever written since high school. Tons of stargazing stuff, old telescopes and lunar globes. I think he’s even got a little chunk of moon rock. Probably illegal.” My frown deepens. “You don’t think that’s it, do you?”

“Probably not. eBay sells illicit moon rocks these days.” Holt snorts, then tosses his head toward the house. “C’mon. Let’s have a look and see what we can find. Maybe there’s something in his stuff.”

I arch a brow. “Are you actually volunteering to help me clear out the attic? It’s a big fat mess.”

“A little hard labor never hurt a man.” He grins. “Besides. I’m supposed to inspect another finished job on a building owned by a lady I slept with almost twenty years ago, and I think she’s still sore at me. I’d rather be here and leave that shit to my man, Alaska.”

I go flat. My eyes narrow.

“I’m gonna make you regret saying that.”

Of course I mean for the boredom and hard work of cleaning out the attic.

Of course.

I’m not one bit piqued at the reminder that every woman over thirty in Heart’s Edge had a piece of him back in the day.

Why would I care?

It doesn’t matter.

I tell myself that a few more times as I get up and knock the screen door open, leading him inside.

But I swear it’s like he’s stalking me, amusement radiating off him with every step, his shadow falling over me as he trails behind.

It’s like he knows.

And I kinda want to whack him for it—the usual reaction around him.

I can never figure out if I want to belt him or kiss him, so I just hold myself in check and don’t do either, because both would be a bad idea.

Though they’d both feel pretty good, too, if I’m honest.

Right.

Focus on figuring out Dad’s stuff.

The attic is more of an open loft, a kind of half-floor accessible by a ladder and filled with light from the bay windows. There’s only standing room at the very center where the roof peaks, while you have to crouch down lower toward the sloping edges by the walls.

Holt’s cramped, tall man that he is, walking half bent over. I show him the stack of boxes against one wall, all labeled DAD’S STUFF.

It’s perched next to older boxes against the corner wall. They’re marked too.

MOM.

Big black Sharpie strokes.

Angry adolescent lettering.

Ink blurred by tears.

It’s old, but it’s there. Not as many boxes, but…

I have to look away.

I freaking hate this.

Hate that it’s like their lives are packed up in these sad boxes and put away.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Letting out a shaky breath, I pull down the first of the DAD’S STUFF boxes from the top of the stack and thump it down on the floor, then shove it at Holt.

“Start digging,” I say. “I hope you’re just as interested as he was in the hydrogen reactions of neutron stars.”

“I…” Holt says cheerfully, “I have no fucking idea what you just said, but I guess I’ll have fun learning something today.”

I just roll my eyes and haul down another box. Together, we pull the tape from our boxes and start rummaging.

There’s a lot in here.

A lot of things I hadn’t really known about. Dad packed some of the boxes himself long before I hauled them upstairs.

Old journals with nightly observations on the stars he watched from this very attic window, his telescope still set up and trained toward the Hercules Globular Cluster, which he’d been documenting before he got sick.

But there’s a whole lifetime’s worth of star notations, near-Earth objects, comets, and so on.

You can feel the love in every page, every tiny scribble with degrees, trajectories, times.

I feel like I’m holding his hand again when I smooth my fingers over the pages.

And the way Holt handles the journals in his box, flipping through the pages gently, slowly, reverently…even if he doesn’t know what it all means?

It’s like he knows he’s holding a man’s whole life in his hands.

He’s treating it respectfully.

That means something.

It brings a warmth that makes the hurt a little easier to bear.

There’s more—snow globes full of glitter that makes them look like galaxies, silly little keychains with baubles in the shape of constellations. Dad was like a kid sometimes. If it had to do with stars and NASA, he’d want it, even if it was souvenir shop stuff.