Page 123 of The Sun and Her Star

“Yeah, you might be right. Well, besides going to read in the middle of that lake every single day for two years while I waited for my angel to show up.” I drop a kiss on her mouth before I lay her down in the wide, white hammock. “Slide over,” I tell her and then I jump in. I fold my hands behind my head, and Apollo lays her head on my chest and flings her leg over my hip.

“Look at that moon; it’s beautiful, right?” Her voice is full of the kind of contentment that can only come from twenty-four hours of uninterrupted relaxation, lovemaking, and reading.

“I gaze up at the crescent moon that’s waning over us. It’s a soft powdery white that glows so brightly that it’s all the light we need out here tonight. “So beautiful,” I drawl. My body and mind wrapped in the same soft cloud of happiness as hers.

“Artemis was named after the goddess of the moon. I begged for that telescope because I thought it would help me feel close to her. I miss her. But I’ve never felt like she wasreallygone, you know? And every time I look up at the moon, I feel like she’s looking down at me. Is it weird that I still feel like a twin? Like I still have a sister?” I feel her head tilt upward and I look down at her face.

Her eyes are calm—as dark and luminous as pots of black ink.

“Not weird at all. I’m still Ellie’s brother.” I sigh a deep, heavy sigh and think about my mother. We talked to her yesterday morning. She and Becca are in Sardinia gorging themselves on cheese and having the time of their lives. I miss her, and I’m a little sad that we’re spending what will be her final year apart. But the moon comforts me too. She’s underneath the same moon. She’s still here. But I give voice to a fear I’ve never let myself indulge in before. “Once Mama’s gone, that’s it. My father’s dead. My sister’s dead. And there’s just me, and I don’t know what that will mean.”

Apollo presses a kiss to the center of my chest and covers it with her hand. “Death is weird,” she says as if she’s talking to herself. “One moment, they’re here, and the very next, they’re not. And they never will be again.”

She wraps her arm even tighter around my waist. “There’s this sort of reckoning that happens when someone your very existence was dependent on dies. You don’t stop being, but you’re different. I’ve spent so much time clinging to the things I’ll never experience again—their smile, their smell, their touch. And sometimes, I can’t remember which one of Arti’s teeth was still growing in. Or I can’t remember how Papa sounded when he sneezed …”

I drape my arm around her and rest my hand on the silky skin of her hip and toy with the tassel that hangs from the side of her bright yellow bikini bottoms.

“Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, ‘Truth outlives pain, as the soul does life.’It’s why I can laugh when I think about my sister. I’ll never stop missing her, but the pain is less acute. The truth of her life was joy. She existed, and that means she’ll never really be gone,” she muses.

“Truth outlives pain.” I throw the words around in my head. Yes, I suppose. But what about a lie? What do they do? Mine still cast a long shadow.

“Are we going to sleep out here again?” Apollo asks, stretching languidly and running her toes up the front of my leg.

“No, not tonight. Come on.” I slide out, reach for her hand, and we walk to our bedroom.

* * *

Apollo

“I want to show you something,” he says once we’re in the room.

“Sit down on the bed, please.” His voice is still gentle, but I can hear a thread of anxiety in it, and I don’t argue before doing as he asked.

As soon as I sit down, he starts to pull down his swim trunks.

“Uh, what are you doing? I thought you wanted to show me something.” I ask, my eyes wide and my pulse racing.

He doesn’t look away from his button fly and mutters, “I do. Relax, I’m not trying to seduce you Apollo.”

“Oh ...” I say and hear the twinge of disappointment in my voice.

He must hear it, too. His fingers stop on the second to last button, and he looks at me with a mischievous glint in his eyes, and he grins. “Unless of course, you’d like me to.”

“I always want you to, Graham,” I say honestly.

“Your wish is my command,” he says and starts toward me. I hold my hand up and scoot back from the edge of the bed.

“Don’t come any closer, Graham. You were going to show me something, and I want to see it. And the minute you touch me I forget my own name.”

He grins like a cat who got the cream and keeps walking until he’s standing at the edge of the bed.

“My stepfather punished me severely when he discovered I’d been reading by the lake.”

I wasn’t expecting that. My throat constricts, and tears prick the back of my eyes. We’ve never talked about this. I couldn’t find a way to bring it up, and he never did.

“I know you came that day. I don’t know what you saw before my mother hauled you off, but I know it was before he did his worst.” He purses his lips and takes a deep breath. “In that town, when someone was caught sinning, or at least sinning according to his law, they were branded.”

I cover my mouth in horror and stare up at him. “Did he do that to you?” He nods, and then, he turns around and pulls down his pants.

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