Page 40 of We Are the Stars

She nudges me playfully. “Probably.” She plucks a blade of grass from the ground and begins peeling it apart. “What happened to them after? Nut and Gelly, I mean.”

“She met the asshole soon after and their friendship fizzled because of it.”

“But she still kept up with them.”

“Yep. That’s how I knew about you. When she heard through the grapevine they were having a little girl… Wow. She went nuts, sent gifts and everything.”

“See, I told you. A great woman,” Elliott says with confidence.

“She was.”

We sit side by side, resting against the grave marker, the harmony candle ablaze between us. It’s kind of cool how I’ve known about Elliott, know a bit of her parents’ past, even when I don’t know her. When you’re a kid and your mom or dad tells you a story, you listen with rapt interest, soak up every detail. I made sure to pay extra attention any time Ma spoke of Gelly and his new family, especially the daughter. I’m not certain if it was the love she voiced that gained my interest or if it was something else; either way, I grew attached to the family the Mathers represented—a family I never had.

“If you know about my dad, how did you not know Bryan?”

“Ma never mentioned a Bryan.”

“What about a Burt?”

“Actually, yeah. Is that the same person?”

She nods. “One and the same. Burt and Ernie is what my dad and Bryan were often referred to as.”

“Why that?”

“I guess the Burt part came from Bryan’s last name, Burton, and Ernie was a given after that.”

“Makes sense.” I shake my head. “Damn. I’ve been working for someone who was close to my mom for nearly two years now and I had no idea.”

“Apparently.”

“That could explain why he hired me so quickly and quietly.”

“Or because Bryan saw a good worker in you.”

I’m too stunned to even doubt her words. I had no idea I’d been working for the Burt my mom sometimes spoke of. She wasn’t as close with him, but wherever Gelly was, Burt was there too.

“Wonder why he never mentioned it,” I muse aloud. Bryan’s always treated me differently, never looked at me with wariness like nearly everyone else does. I think I just discovered the reason why.

“Bryan’s always been a strange one.”

“You’ve never heard of my mom either?”

“Not that I can recall.”

“Huh.”

Several moments of silence pass before she says, “It’s odd how intertwined our lives are, yet we’ve never met before now.”

“Ma would say it’s written in the stars.”

“What is?”

I glance over to find her watching me, her stare heavy and curious. “All of it,” I tell her. “She was a big believer that everything is written out for us in the stars, that whatever happens, happens for a reason—no matter how bad it is. She’d wake me up in the middle of the night sometimes to make me go lie on the grass with her and she’d tell me stories, tracing stars together, saying that’s the path she took. She’d be so happy because it brought me to her.”

Elliott blinks several times, a lone tear drifting down her cheek. She swipes it away as quickly as it falls. “Sorry, it’s just…”

“Sad?”

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