Page 35 of Salvation

She tilted her head at him. Was the man a mind reader, or were they both wired the same way?

She motioned to the space beside him. “Mind if I join you?”

“Sure.” His voice didn’t sound as relaxed as his posture.

She sat beside him, suddenly self-conscious, and slipped her sandals off to test the lawn with her toes.

Todd studied her. “What do you think?”

She glanced at his bare feet. The two of them really were wired the same way.

“Well…” She wiggled her toes. “It’s better than it was. Way better.”

He chuckled a little but went quiet the second she stretched out beside him. Not too close, but not too far. Still, every nerve ending in her body tingled.

“Did you make a wish?” she asked after a quiet minute ticked by. Did big, quiet mountain men even make wishes?

He nodded but didn’t say a thing, and she wondered what his wish had been.

She pushed her shoulders back and looked up. “God, look at the Big Dipper.” She could practically see it scoop stardust out of the desert sky.

“The Great Bear,” he corrected.

She angled her head this way and that. “I could never really see the bear in it. All the constellations are like that. Have you seen Taurus? It looks nothing like a bull.”

“Sure it does,” he said, pointing to the right.

She found it easily, but not the bull part. “It just looks like a sideways V.”

He opened his hand, fingers together, thumb pointing down, and traced the shape with his other hand. The one that was all scarred up. “He’s looking sideways. There’s his nose, his horns.” He pointed at his hand, then at the sky. “The bright one is his eye.”

His.Funny how he described that constellation the way he might describe an old friend.

“Oh! I see it!” She pointed. “Hey, it really does look like a bull.”

“Yep.”

All the astronomy books she’d ever read drew stiff, color-by-numbers kind of lines between stars — that, or they drew impossibly swirly, intricate sketches of what the constellations were supposed to be. What they really needed were pictures of Todd’s hands.

He balled them into fists and dropped them quickly out of sight, but she reached over and put them right back. So what if they were scarred? So what if the fingers of the right hand couldn’t straighten all the way? Tonight, those hands were artists. Astronomers. Magicians.

“Show me another one,” she asked.

His hands wavered for a second before he pointed again. “Cassiopeia.”

She groaned. “That one’s impossible.”

“Picture a woman leaning back.”

She snorted. “I see a W. Did she trip over a rock or something?”

His laugh was music to her ears. “I don’t think so. But with Greek myths, you never know.”

“I don’t see anything like a woman.”

“She’s there. Look, like you.” He rolled on his side and motioned toward her body. “Bend your knees a little bit.”

She drew them up, squinting at the stars.

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