“So Mom was part of it all along,” she whispered.
“She was the beginning,” Thomas said.
For the first time that day, the pain inside me made room for something warm.
Not joy exactly.
Recognition.
My mother had not died outside the story. She had been written into its first page.
I thought of her hands guiding mine as a child, teaching me how to thread a needle, how to peel apples without wasting too much fruit, how to notice when someone’s smile did not reach their eyes.
She had given me more than love.
She had given me the first map.
Tears slid down my face, but this time they did not feel like defeat.
“Do you have her notebooks?” I asked.
Thomas hesitated.
“Yes.”
Daniel looked sharply at him. “Where?”
My father glanced toward the back of the observatory.
“In the place she trusted most.”
He walked past us into the old building. Dust floated through beams of gray light. The telescope still stood in the center beneath the cracked dome, covered by a canvas tarp. Along the far wall was a cabinet where my father used to keep star charts, batteries, and snacks for our childhood visits.
