Chapter 15 - SOPHIE LOOKED THROUGH THE TELESCOPESophie’s science program offered her a partial scholarship.
Renee covered the rest by selling the gold bracelet Daniel had purchased with my household card.
She told me this without asking for praise.
That mattered.
On the final evening of the program, students invited family members to an observatory.
Sophie asked whether I would attend.
I almost declined.
There were relationships that began in pain and remained trapped there because everyone kept returning to the scene of injury.
I did not want Sophie and me to become permanent witnesses to Daniel’s damage.
But she had written my name beside “guest.”
So I went.
The observatory stood on a hill beyond the city. Children moved between telescopes while instructors pointed toward Jupiter, Saturn, and the pale band of the Milky Way.
Sophie adjusted a lens and waved me over.
“You can see four of Jupiter’s moons.”
I bent to look.
Four small points of light surrounded the planet.
They appeared close together.
The instructor explained that the apparent distance was deceptive. Each moon followed its own orbit, held by the same gravity but never occupying the same path.
I thought of Daniel.
How he had placed women, parents, siblings, and a child around himself, convincing each of us that proximity meant belonging.
Sophie stepped beside me.
“Mom told me you listened to his recordings.”
“Yes.”
“Did he talk about me?”
I could have protected her with a partial truth.
Instead, I chose a careful one.
“He said you wanted to tell people about him.”
Her face changed.
“Was he angry?”
“He was afraid that the different parts of his life would meet.”
“Was he ashamed of me?”
“No.”
I was certain of that much.
“He was ashamed of what telling the truth would cost him.”
Sophie looked through the telescope again.
After a while, she said, “I used to think he died before he could become who he promised.”
I waited.
“Now I think the promises were who he wanted us to see.”
The insight was too heavy for thirteen.
But betrayal does not ask whether someone is old enough before giving them its lessons.
“You are allowed to remember the good moments,” I said.
“Even if he lied?”
“Yes. A lie told around a moment does not mean you imagined the moment.”
She nodded.
May you like
Above us, the moons continued along their separate paths.
For the first time, Daniel was not the center of the story.
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