All the pieces fell into place, and Erin understood why she and Jade and Marama were friends and why Hank climbed with her—was climbing with her this very instant. How could Erin ever compete with that?
For these hours, she needed only to breathe. She inhaled the scenery until teatime.
FIFTY-FIVE
After tea, Felicity and Pippa pulled out their books. Without a television, Hamish also resorted to reading. Life on holiday looked a lot like life in Christchurch.
Erin pulled out her phone. “Felicity, I’ve been meaning to play something for you. It’s one of my favorite recordings of Jacqueline du Pré.” Erin flicked through her music to find the song she wanted. “I am truly happy not to be playing cello, but I could never live without listening. Here you go. Chopin’s ‘Sonata in A.’”
Felicity closed her eyes when the piano gave way to du Pré’s dulcet timbre. She held her breath through sections of the second movement, and Erin understood that Felicity understood Chopin’s anguish. She heard music the way Erin heard music.
When it ended, Felicity was quiet for several minutes.
“Thank you for sharing that, Erin.”
“Thank you. For letting me quit cello. I really love listening, but I’d become a slave to it. I feel … free, somehow.”
Felicity grasped Erin’s hands briefly. “I’m glad you’re free.”
Getting there, at least.
When the darkening landscape prohibited entertainment, with no candles and no lights and no television and no electronics, the foursome gathered around a fire pit.
Felicity, Hamish, and Pippa shared stories of their previous trips here and elsewhere. Their current plan was to stay at Golden Bay until it got crowded or they got bored.
Pippa asked, “Where is the Southern Cross, Daddy?”
Everyone looked up.
Hamish spun in a circle to get his bearings, lit on the crux, and pointed Pippa toward the Southern Cross. Erin followed Hamish’s right arm toward his fingertips and out into space.
There it was, her night sky.
“Oh!” Erin couldn’t help herself. The sky was replete with stars, more than she’d ever seen. She’d found true darkness. A thin sliver of moon lent no threat to the dark of night, and the stars went on forever.
Erin’s astrophysics professor had lectured at length about light pollution, but Erin could always see constellations just fine. Now she understood: the night sky wasn’t spotted with stars; it was lousy with them. The universe had texture.
Thank you, New Zealand.
The whole messy spring and painful adjustment to life in Christchurch had brought her here, to a night sky full of stars. She could have lived her whole life—captaining the swim team, fifth chair cello, working her ass off day and night—and never, ever experienced this.
Hamish said, “Southern Cross isn’t that miraculous. Smallest constellation there is, actually.”
Erin knew that. “I’ve always loved the night sky. I studied astrophysics last summer, but I’ve never seen the universe like this.”
“From the underside, you mean?
Sort of. “It’s truly dark here. So many stars. It’s hard to wrap my head around them as suns, with planets orbiting, and moons orbiting the planets. It’s … it’s a lot.”
Erin spun in a circle, gazing at the night sky. Finally, she felt grounded. Here was her place in the world, staring outward at everything that was possible.
“Are you okay?” Pippa whispered, and Erin laughed.
“Pippa, I haven’t felt this okay in years. Maybe ever.” Outside. Surrounded by stars. With nothing to do and nowhere to go. “I’m sure we can see Saturn tonight.”
Pippa said, “Or constellations.”
“Maybe. I never studied the ones down under.”
“We could make some of our own. They’re not real, you know.”
Pippa got it. Constellations weren’t real, just as relationships weren’t real. Ben was real, but he and Erin were just a passing fancy. He never actually belonged to her. Maybe the only real Erin was the one without him, the Erin who belonged to herself.
The family lay on a blanket to stargaze. Hamish had some guesses on official constellations, and Pippa tried to make animals by stringing together the brightest stars.
When they ran out of guesses, they drank in the universe in silence. The peace was glorious. Erin spotted Uranus and thought she’d found Neptune, but Saturn was the real prize. Of course, she couldn’t see its rings without a telescope, but she’d seen them before. She trusted herself to remember exactly how they looked.
Later—who knows when?—they opened the caravan windows and turned in for the night. Listening very hard, Erin could hear animal noises.
She felt small in a very nice way. She was snug in her caravan, and right that second, there was almost nowhere else she wanted to be.
She hadn’t felt that way in forever.
Grampa held his new telescope steady as Erin searched the sky for Saturn.
“Got it,” she said.
“You sure?”
“I am twelve.”
Her Grampa let go, and for the first time, she saw Saturn’s rings, clearly separate from the planet itself. “Can you imagine if it were as close as the moon?”
“Nope,” Grampa said. “If it were as close as the moon, we’d be in trouble.”
“The rings?”
“Not quite. But the moons would be a problem.”
“I wish we had multiple moons,” Erin said.
She could stare at Saturn forever. It seemed otherworldly, like something out of science fiction. Though she was seeing it with her own eyes, she could hardly believe it was real.
“Saturn is helium?” Erin asked.
“And hydrogen,” Grampa said.
“It’s getting chilly for me,” Grandma Tea said. “Erin, mind if I try out your cello?”
“Go for it,” Erin said, her eyes firmly affixed on Saturn.
“Can I bring you two anything?”
“Ice cream!” they said in unison.
Tea said, “It’s freezing out here.”
“It’s summer,” Erin and Grampa said before erupting in laughter.
Grampa eyed the moon through his smaller telescope. “Full moon tomorrow night.”
“I know! But the moon will always be there. I’m all about Saturn. This is amazing.”
FIFTY-SIX
Felicity and Hamish took their morning constitutional in light rain, and Pippa headed for the beach, leaving Erin in the caravan alone with Pippa’s guitar.
Please, fingers, don’t fail me.
