Set the Stars Alight

by Amanda Dykes

  But they did not react. Nobody lost their hat or gave her the immediate boot.

  Dr. Pomeroy leaned forward, hands clasped upon the mahogany table. “If I may be candid, Miss Claremont.”

  “Of course,” Lucy said.

  “This is a gross amount of money for research that may or may not have sufficient evidence. Your theory is compelling. If it proves true, it would be seen as a risk most worth taking. But as you must know, the committee’s funding is limited, and there are a number of scholars vying for the stipend.”

  “I understand.”

  A soft rustling sounded behind her, and she remembered the opening and closing door. Who might it be? Who even knew of her proposal, other than Gerald Bessette? She prayed he had not come. Though he treated her with a fatherly kindness, she cringed at the thought of her failure being so visible to such a successful man.

  She knew this was where she should remove herself with dignity, let the idea die. But in the same way the stars were home to Dash, the sea and the Jubilee were home to Lucy. A wave of homesickness lent her boldness.

  “If I can provide more evidence, more research. If I cross-reference in detail Vincent Ashford, show how this proposed expedition—”

  Dr. Finchley loudly cleared her throat, cutting off Lucy’s desperate plea. “Sadly, Miss Claremont, without empirical evidence at the front end—something more substantial than process of elimination—we cannot in good conscience distribute the funds to this project. As intriguing as the idea is, we have a reputation to uphold and a duty to respect the foundation’s donors, who encourage us to allocate money to low-risk, high-impact endeavors.”

  Silence. The clock’s slow ticking. Her mind scrambling, coming up empty. All of it pointing to one thing: defeat. Heat swept her face, her being.

  “What if there was a co-researcher?”

  The low voice came from the shadows behind her. She turned, straining to see a man stand, his stature tall.

  Whirling, she took in the faces of the panel. They looked as befuddled as she felt.

  Dr. Pomeroy leaned forward. The tall man emerged from the shadows. He wore a baseball cap—navy blue with an orange star and a big H. Khakis and a black fleece pullover made him look very . . . unacademic. Something about the man felt . . . familiar. And yet so unfamiliar.

  He walked down the stairs and stood next to Lucy. “If I may . . . ”

  She stared straight ahead, focused on the committee, debating whether to feel faint hope or absolute indignation. A stranger presuming upon the proposal she’d slaved over for months—years!—during evenings in the cottage and the slow hours at the watch shop, which, sadly, had been plentiful as of late.

  She drew herself up. Waiting. Well aware that the proposal was likely dying on the spot.

  “And who are you?” asked the third committee member, Dr. Muller, his German accent thick. He chaired Oxford’s archaeological arm. “Forgive us, but we are unaccustomed to proposal proceedings being open to public contribution. Most unusual. Most unusual.”

  The man beside her withdrew his hands from his pockets, looked long at Lucy.

  Unable to resist, she finally turned to him. There—beneath the bill of his baseball cap—she saw the brown eyes she knew better than her own reflection. Matured by years passed, but with that same earnest depth and spark of mirth.

  He seemed to be giving her this chance to see him before he spoke his name. Her heart, in response, tumbled about, madly trying to find a place for itself.

  “Dashel Greene,” he said, keeping her gaze, letting apology fill his entire demeanor before turning to face the committee.

  After a silent conversation with his colleagues in which they’d shrugged, raised eyebrows, and nodded respectively, Dr. Pomeroy said, “Well, Dashel Greene. Speak on.”

  Dash strode forward, reaching them in three lanky steps, and pumped their hands in his familiar friendly way. Asking their names, offering his. “Dashel Greene,” he said, reaching the third and final member of the committee.

  “So you have said,” Dr. Muller said. “Several times.”

  Dash bobbed his head. “I did. Forgive me. I’ve come as one who has great interest in Miss Claremont’s impressive proposal,” he said, stepping back to join her.

  Lucy was speechless. She felt her eyes widen, told herself to stop this, to take back her presentation from this boy—man—who had vanished for so long with little more than an email in over a decade.

  That wasn’t entirely true. He had done more than that. And she felt a tug of shame, for hadn’t she been just as remiss in dropping their communication?

  But he was here now. Despite it all.

  Dr. Pomeroy looked to the other committee members, and asked, “And you are . . . ?”

  “Doctor of Forensic Astronomy,” he said.

  “Ah,” said Dr. Pomeroy.

  “Forensic astronomy,” said Dr. Finchley, as if he’d just said he ate beetles for breakfast. “Are the stars committing crimes, now, that we need celestial detectives?”

  Dash let out a hearty laugh and pointed at Dr. Finchley. “Good one. I like it.”

  Dr. Finchley was not amused. She waited, and Dash cleared his throat and pulled into a professional mode Lucy had never seen from him.

  “Forensic astronomy is sleuthing using the sky. We use what we know from science, history, observation of the night skies, to help bring answers to unanswered questions. Sometimes it’s art.” He gestured. “When was Van Gogh’s Evening Landscape with a Rising Moon painted? Sometimes it’s crime. What time was a crime committed? Abraham Lincoln, when he was a lawyer, even used the position of the moon on the night of a crime to prove his case. And sometimes it’s history. How is it possible that in the midst of the Civil War, Stonewall Jackson was shot by his own troops? I’ll tell you. Or rather, forensic astronomy will. A full moon caused him to be unrecognizable in silhouette.

  “Forensic astronomy uses calculations, logbooks, sky charts . . . and so much more.” He was looking, in his impassioned explanation, more like his boyhood self. She half expected him to turn and ask her if she’d seen any supernovas lately.

  But what did all this have to do with her? She was relieved when Dr. Finchley asked the question that plagued her.

  Dash smiled at Lucy before beginning. “I have a shared interest with Miss Claremont in the Jubilee.” Shared interest. That was putting it mildly. A vision flashed of the two of them crouched on the reading room floor following one of Father’s tales of the Jubilee, the oversized atlas open to the English Channel, and each of them using shells from the bowl of peanuts they were munching on to mimic the Jubilee, to play out theories. “We’ll figure it out one of these days, Matchstick Girl.”

  “You remembered the Jubilee?” she whispered.

  He beheld her with solemnity. “I’d never forget.”

  “Forgive us,” Dr. Pomeroy said. “But in the interest of time, could you tell us of the merits of your research? Your credentials? What your background and experience might lend to this research endeavor?”

  Dash appeared at a loss. And suddenly Lucy felt a wash of compassion for him. Perhaps he had not achieved his dreams, after all this time. So much promise—and so much pressure he had put upon himself to live up to those labels given him. Genius. Brilliant. Prodigy.

  “H-Harvard,” she spat out, eager to take the pressure off of him.

  “Pardon?” Dr. Pomeroy, friendly as he was, seemed to be growing impatient.

  “He went to Harvard,” she said. “Isn’t that right, Dash—Mr. Greene?”

  “Yes.” His answer came slowly, as if he were weighing what to add. “Well, here.” He thrust a hand into his pocket and removed a folded rectangle of paper.

  Unfolding it into its full size, he slid it across the desk to Dr. Pomeroy. “My résumé.”

  Lucy couldn’t see much, but she saw enough to know it had been handwritten in his trademark permanent marker, stick-straight, just like Dash had always written. What had he done, writt
en it on the train ride here? Wherever he’d come from?

  The man placed his wire-rimmed spectacles on his nose and looked dubiously at the makeshift résumé. But his eyebrows raised halfway through reading it, and he opened his mouth to speak.

  Dash beat him to it. “In addition to what you see there.” He seemed flustered. “I’m currently the astronomer-in-residence at Stone’s Throw Farm near Weldensea, East Sussex.”

  Dr. Pomeroy narrowed his eyes, looking confused. “A farm. Indeed,” he said. With a twinkle in his kindly eyes, he added, “Does that account for the handwritten résumé?”

  “Most unusual,” Dr. Muller added. “Most unusual.”

  “Ah, I apologize for that,” Dash said. “I don’t travel with a printed résumé but thought it might help. I can email a typed one, along with my curriculum vitae, if it helps.”

  They all sat a little straighter at the familiar and academic Latin phrase, and Dr. Pomeroy slid the résumé down the line.

  Each professor took in its contents, and each had that same eyebrow-raising moment.

  “And you plan to lend your expertise to this project . . . how, precisely?” Dr. Finchley asked, ever the skeptic.

  Lucy couldn’t blame her. She wanted to ask Dash a few questions of her own. And yet with his unexpected arrival, a tiny flicker of hope had entered the room.

  “I can provide empirical evidence in the form of historical and contemporary star charts, the tracking of tides as dictated by the lunar pull and cycles.”

  The woman nodded. Lucy bit her tongue, waiting.

  “I propose a brief recess,” Dr. Pomeroy said. “Shall we say . . . ten minutes? We’ll have an answer for you both then.”

  An answer. Lucy had not expected this. She had thought—hoped, really—they’d take more time to consider, to be pulled in by the magic of the legend. But what she spoke was, “Perfect.”

  Numbly leading the way from the room and back out into the gallery, she stared at the wall of large white bricks across the way, heard the door latch heavily behind her. And felt the weight of Dash’s presence beside her.

  eleven

  She could not look at him. Did not know whether to slug him or give in to the tears pulling hot at her eyes. Dared she ask him Where were you? Or should she just do what she wanted most—hug him? She wanted to pull her old friend in tight and never let him out of her sight again.

  But she did not know him anymore. She was certainly not the same person she’d been at fifteen, the last time she’d seen him, and she couldn’t expect him to be, either.

  In the end, simplicity won out. She turned to face him, to offer the most basic courtesy she would offer a stranger—which was what he was.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He searched her, then stuffed his hands in his back khaki pockets and bowed his head until his baseball cap bill hid his face.

  “It was a great presentation,” he said, “and I didn’t intend to interrupt. It’s just”—he looked at her again—“you deserve this, Lucy.”

  His voice speaking her name felt so foreign. She did not know this voice, deepened and full. And even if she had, he had rarely called her Lucy. It had been Matchstick Girl or, occasionally, Lu. But more often than those he’d greeted her with the illustrious “Hey”—which he had somehow infused with all the warmth in the world.

  A thousand questions rolled through her like an unseen avalanche. They tangled and fought and twisted into something so complex, the only one she could retrieve was meager. “How are you here?”

  He looked over his shoulder, as if expecting the big oak door might hold the answer. “I . . . follow your work,” he said.

  “You do?”

  “Of course I do.”

  That smote her. She could not say the same of him. The thought had arisen, many times over the years, that she should find him. To see what he was up to. A couple of times she’d given in and done Internet searches. Found him at one observatory, and then another, doing research stints. But without fail, those times left her feeling heavy and alone. Forgotten. So she had stopped torturing herself.

  “I saw online that you were presenting a research grant proposal tonight. So I came.”

  She shook her head. Like it was as simple as hopping on a train. Which, come to think of it, perhaps it had been.

  “You said you were at a farm?”

  “Yeah. You’d love it, Lucy. It’s a sheep farm over near the Channel. But with the farm side of things slowing down, they’ve diversified. Now they run it as a tourist-type thing. People come and help with the sheep and pay the farm to get to do it. Ha! Ironic, right? But it’s the novelty. People would give anything nowadays to get away from the craziness of their everyday lives. Even pay to go be farmhands for a week. Agritourism. They do campfires at night. Tea in the afternoon in this gazebo in the middle of a meadow. They lead walks along the Seven Sisters—those famous white cliffs down there—and they poke around the ruins of an old estate. They even arrange for the visitors to work on a fishing boat for an afternoon.” He grinned. “You’d love it. Your parents would have loved it.”

  Her smile vanished.

  Would have loved . . .

  He knew her father was gone. Of course he had known. . . . There had been that email afterwards. And the document he’d sent. His version of a sympathy card, she’d guessed. It had meant more than all the sympathy cards in the world. But hearing him say he’d known and hadn’t come scooped out a hollowness in her.

  She changed the subject. “So . . . they have a resident astronomer at this sheep farm bed-and-breakfast?”

  “That part’s my fault. I needed a dark-sky place near the Channel to do some research, so we struck a deal. They let me plant myself there and do my thing, and in return, I do a star party for their guests once a week. And . . .” He leaned forward, as if about to impart some great treasure. “There’s scones.”

  She laughed and had to keep herself from punching him on the shoulder, a gesture so familiar it had become a part of their shared language. A laugh with a sock. “Scones, you say.”

  He grinned, his old dimples appearing. She had never thought of Dash as handsome, never had occasion to weigh whether he was or not. He was always and ever just Dash. Her Dash. So close and so much a part of her that to consider whether he was handsome or not would be as laughable as considering whether one’s own arm had any particular amount of worldly beauty.

  But looking at him now, as a stranger appearing from the literal shadows, she felt an odd sort of pang in realizing the boy next door really did hold that boy-next-door charisma. Familiar and handsome, friendly and kind.

  And bold. Taking over her proposal like that. It smarted, when she thought of it that way.

  “Listen.” He lowered his voice, nearing her. “If they say yes to all of this, there’s a place for you there, Lucy. You can stay there, and we’ll do our research and we’ll find the Jubilee. I have some theories, and I’d love to get your take on them.”

  “I can’t, Dash. I have Dad’s shop. I have to find a place to move, and I just . . . I can’t just pick up and leave.” Hadn’t that been her life? Anchored, always. Steadfast. Minding the shop. Staying close to the nucleus of her world, where she belonged. The outer edges of that world called her, but such things weren’t for her.

  “You don’t have to leave forever. The watch shop . . . Is there any way you can close it for a week? Maybe two? We can hang a sign on the door. You’ll have to close it up if you get your funding. Your dad used to close it up once in a while, right?”

  He had. There had been a time when he’d closed the shop for a week or more to take a holiday, but that had ended when . . .

  It still hurt to think of their last trip to the beach. But for a time before he’d died, he’d hung a sign on the watch shop that read “Time waits for no man, but neither does tea.” Then he’d stuck on his old tweed cap and walked down the street all the way to the Charing Cross Café. She’d gotten used to his weekly declar
ation. “Off to a café for a date with an apple and a friend.” It had done her heart good—and challenged her to seek ways to chase hope and community, too. She hadn’t succeeded, but it had inspired her nonetheless.

  “He would understand,” Dash said. “What was it that plaque on his wall said? Tempus Truth—time is truth—something like that?”

  “Tempus custodit veritatem,” Lucy said. The motto of the Worshipful Company of Clocksmiths, a society so old it nearly predated London itself. Dad had been proud to be a member of something so full of tradition. She’d grown up watching Mother knot the black-and-silver diagonal-striped membership tie. Loved the picture of him with the other members, arms looped about one another in their fine suits. Loved hearing him tell of the three ways to become a part of the company—patrimony, servitude, or redemption. That is, to be born into it, earn your way into it, or—most remarkable of all—sponsorship by a member who is also a member of the royal court. “Remarkable, Lucy. It’s an echo of the true redemption—who they are covering over who you are, making a way in. Tempus custodit veritatem.”

  “Time is truth’s keeper,” she said.

  “Right! Exactly. He would want you to hunt down the truth. Time was made for truth.”

  She remembered this. His exuberance. The way an idea would fill him, spill over, and pull everyone around him in, too.

  “You won’t have to pay for board. I’ll get you in under my deal with the farm siblings. Two sisters and a brother. Did I mention there’s scones?”

  “It’s England. Scones are everywhere.”

  “Not like these. Come on! You can sleep and eat and study and find the Jubilee and get back to the shop and do whatever you need to do. Badda-bing, badda-boom.”

  She laughed through her nose. She couldn’t help it. He was his old incorrigible self, his enthusiasm contagious.

  “I—” Her breath hitched. It was crazy. She couldn’t do this.

  The door creaked open, and Dr. Finchley presented her pinched face in cold invitation. “The committee is ready for you.”

  Lucy looked at Dash. Dash looked at Lucy. The two of them looked at Dr. Finchley, her expression unreadable.