Miriam clasped the chain link fence. The emptiness around her, the emptiness within, cried out to be filled, the way she’d filled the endless ticking seconds of the past year. Mom had been right about that, at least.
Of the days and weeks following her family’s death, she remembered very little. She could rattle off everything they sang at the funeral, every well-meaning but insensitive comment. But the events themselves had vanished from her memory. For weeks, every waking moment had been devoted to the struggle to draw breath, and every sleeping one, to surviving the nightmares. It was like being pinned to a dartboard, never knowing when the next projectile would come squealing out of the mist.
And truthfully, there wasn’t much of substance to remember. For years, her life had involved a planner tightly packed with school presentations and doctor visits, rehearsals and camps. With informational forms paper clipped onto certain weeks and lists tucked into the cover. Baking breads and meals and desserts, deep cleaning the house, learning accompaniments for solos, and drawing up music lists for church while waiting at cello or piano lessons. Bullying the twins—and sometimes Teo—into helping her grow and weed and harvest and can vegetables, the pressure cooker intensifying the heat of oppressive Georgia summers. Because with only one income, they needed to save every cent they could.
Madness—always madness—and then suddenly, nothing. No one to talk to, no one who needed her. Nothing to fill the emptiness, nothing to occupy her mind or her hands. Just never-ending nights, waiting for the sun to rise, and never-ending days, waiting for it to set again. Memories. Memories and self-recrimination.
Getting busy had changed all that. And one morning, when the maple tree outside her window was just beginning to blush, and school-bus brakes were shrieking along the residential streets, Miriam woke to the realization that she’d slept through the night. A few days later, she’d smiled at a video on Facebook. And she’d thought, I might actually survive this.
For the first time, Miriam recognized the magnitude of what she’d done at the funeral yesterday. The congressman’s widow had only just set sail into the maelstrom of that vast, crushing emptiness when Miriam callously exercised her own musical wit at the expense of the deceased—and those who loved him.
When had she become capable of such willful, self-indulgent cruelty?
The breeze settled into stillness. Such a vast, quiet emptiness. She dropped her forehead onto the diamond-hatched fence. Once, she’d been pliable—able to roll with the punches, however inexpertly. Music had helped her connect with the divine, and through it, with others. When even music failed to move her, what hope did she have?
A cow mooed, the sound muted by distance and echoing faintly off the telescope. If she sang out here, amid this great emptiness, would the silence swallow her voice, or would it, too, echo off that vast white dish and reverberate in her own heart?
The cool breeze sighed through the pines, causing her gauzy skirt and the ribbon trailing from her hat to flutter. Like the little thing with feathers, perched on her soul and just now pulling its head from beneath its wing.
Miriam glanced behind her. The road stood empty. She faced the telescope, raised herself into proper singing posture, and let the air vibrate her vocal cords.
For the beauty of the earth, for the glory of the skies,
For the love which from our birth over and around us lies …
It was one of Blaise’s favorite hymns. But in this great, vast emptiness, her voice sounded small. Hesitant. She put a little more muscle behind the sound.
For the joy of human love, Brother, sister, parent, child—
Her voice cracked. Silence swallowed the sound as if it had never been. Miriam wove her fingers into the fence again and bowed her head. “Please,” she whispered. It was the best she could come up with.
Silence. What had she expected? A cosmic event? An angelic visitation? Communing with landmarks couldn’t fix what was wrong with her.
The little bird in her soul dove for cover. Miriam shoved backward and shook her fist at the telescope. “You’re just a stupid inanimate object! What the hell am I doing singing to you, anyway?”
Her words bounced off the dish, like a mischievous sprite poking fun at her temper tantrum, and disappeared into the great emptiness.
And then, with a hum of electricity and the whirring of motors, the white behemoth beyond the fence began to move.
6
MIRIAM TOOK TWO STEPS back before her intellect caught up. The telescope couldn’t hear her; it was just responding to instructions from its command center. The wheels beneath the superstructure rolled slowly counterclockwise, and the massive reflection panel tilted its head back, half a degree at a time. Miriam stared, awestruck by the sheer power required to change the trajectory of such an enormous object.
The sound of a diesel engine crescendoed, replacing the noise of the motors. Miriam turned to see an old white pickup turning in at the gate. The driver killed the engine and got out. “Afternoon, ma’am.”
Miriam forced her hunched shoulders down. “Am I …?”
“You’re just fine, ma’am. I’m coming out to do some maintenance.” He gestured to the camera in her hand. “You want me to take a picture for you?”
“Oh … that’s all right. I don’t really like pictures of myself.”
“Aw, come on. Come on. Surely you want some proof you were here.” He wiggled his fingers.
Miriam shrugged and handed it over. “I don’t know where to develop it. I can’t even get a cell signal to look it up.”
“Walgreen’s.” Then he scowled. “You don’t have a phone out here, do you?”
She tensed again. “I left it in the car, I swear.”
He relaxed. “Sorry, ma’am. Some people think the law don’t apply to them. We’re always having to drive around and figure out where the interference is coming from. The telescope picks it all up, you know. Wi-Fi, microwave … seems like everything puts out radio signals these
