by Rafe Posey
He can taste the fruit and hear the bees, and his father talking with Roger on the verandah. Perhaps his father had thought him too far away, or perhaps there had been enough gin poured that the men had stopped quieting themselves. He remembers talk of trenches, of the maimed soldiers sent back to England, men he would see for himself later, in London, selling matches or fruit to eke out a living, masks hung carefully over missing jaws, long sticks standing in for legs, empty sleeves tucked out of the way. And he has his own war too, with its own sights and sounds. Christ Jesus, when the Americans had come, and they’d all been able to see what Germany had been doing all that time . . . Christ. It can’t have been easy for June, either, in the Pacific, although she will never say so. Who knows what other scars and memories she has to which he will never be privy.
Alec looks up at the sky, wondering if June can navigate by the stars, as he used to himself during the war. Or even earlier. He has navigated by June for most of his life. She is his light and his lodestar, and she has been all this time, despite everything that has come between them. He stands and stretches, then turns to go inside and join her.
As he comes around the corner of the verandah, just before their bedroom’s doorway, his eye is caught by something glinting in the light of the rising moon. The quick flash of reflection comes again, and he kneels. And there, tucked against the base of a giant pot of pink and yellow roses, he finds a careful arrangement of stones—volcanic black glass, a sheared oval of purple crystal, knobs of gypsum and limestone and basalt. Alec sits back on his heels, his heart larruping in a way it hasn’t for a long time. He was there when she collected most of them, picking them like berries off the floor of the Rift Valley, the silver-shadowed foothills of Mount Kenya, the shores of geyser-warmed lakes. But when had she built the cairn?
Alec places the stones gently into the curl of his hand, letting the stars lend them new shapes and shadows, then closes his fingers as well as he can around them. The corners of the stones grip at him sharply even while their small flat expanses are smooth against the scars on his palm. So many scars, he thinks. Too many. The scars, the stones, the awareness that soon the three of them will sail from Mombasa to Leith, building new memories of a new ship . . . Everything has a weight to it that he cannot quite fathom, but perhaps he’s never been meant to. Perhaps his task is to steward his family as well as he can, trusting that impossible serpents will not sink the ship, that the stars will continue to light his way, and that all the hurts they’ve done each other will eventually heal. Perhaps that is the best anyone can do.
A lone breath of cloud gossamers the moon above the foothills. Alec steps inside, closing the door softly behind him, and pauses, watching the moonlight settle on June’s hair as she sleeps. Brightmere is quiet then, the night as safe as houses.
Acknowledgments
Every book has a whole world of people behind it, and The Stars We Share is no different. And I am extremely fortunate to have had such a stellar bunch along for this ride.
First, I cannot say enough great things about my agent, Danielle Bukowski—your patience, generosity, and big-picture thinking contributed hugely to The Stars We Share before it was even fully formed, and I am enormously grateful for your commitment to and advocacy for the novel.
Thank you to my wonderful and dedicated team at Pamela Dorman Books and Viking, especially Pamela Dorman and my editor, Jeramie Orton, whose faith in this book has been greatly appreciated. I would be remiss if I didn’t express my deep gratitude to Brian Tart, Andrea Schulz, Kate Stark, Lindsay Prevette, Kate Hudkins, Sara Delozier, Roseanne Serra, Claire Vaccaro, Cassie Garruzzo, Carlynn Chironna, Fabi Van Arsdell, and everyone else who contributed to this project. Your enthusiasm, encouragement, and assistance have been invaluable. I’d also like to shout out my copy editor, Andrea Monagle, and her curiosity, wit, and extraordinary eye for detail.
My thanks also to my MFA faculty and classmates at the University of Baltimore, as well as my colleagues, past and present, in the UWP and the Second Chance Program at UB. I would additionally like to express my gratitude to the writers and book people who have helped me over the years; you are legion. Thank you to my family, particularly my much-missed dad, who loved airplanes and adventures, and told me an alarmingly long time ago that I too could write a book with secrets and spies in it.
Finally, I could not have written this book without the unflagging support and collie-ing of Paula Garner. Without you, this book and I would be a mess. Thank you for believing I could write a book like this, and for reading every draft of every chapter uncountable times and always finding ways to make the book better. Thank you for the billions of hours you spent listening to me go on about Alec and June and all their things, and for what you said that sparked it all in the first place. Thank you for understanding when I wanted to go write more dogs and bears instead of people, and for knowing what I was trying to do even when I sometimes didn’t. Thank you for not ever letting me get away with coasting, and for not ever blowing smoke. Thank you for cookies. Thank you very much indeed for all the everything—so many things and places and fish would not have happened without you, and I am more grateful than I know how to say.
About the Author
Rafe Posey earned his MFA from the University of Baltimore and currently teaches writing, English, and humanities courses at a maximum security prison in Maryland. His short-story collection, The Book of Broken Hymns, was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. The Stars We Share is his debut novel.
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