The Stars We Share by Rafe Posey

Author:Rafe Posey [Posey, Rafe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-05-18T00:00:00+00:00

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There are swans at the pond, a cob and pen drifting with a clutch of cygnets trailing after them. Ursa eyes them, and Alec taps her softly on the forehead with his knuckle. She looks up at him, tongue lolling free, then back at the swans. He knows she won’t chase them; an encounter with a farm goose before they left Fenbourne has left her permanently wary of large birds.

Watching the swans sets currents moving in his chest, reminders that although he is happier in Edinburgh with June than he’s been perhaps ever, there are still those gaps. Perhaps it’s the cygnets, the family the swans have made. Too, there is an energy in June that he doesn’t understand. He’s seen her sit as still as the ice that rimed the fens sometimes in the dark of winter when she’s working her equations or solving a puzzle, and he’s admired the grand long stride she has when they go for their walks. But this new hum feels like both at once, and he doesn’t know how to name it or what it means. Sometimes he finds her looking out the window at something too abstract to see, rather as if there is something hailing her, a clarion call that only she can hear. He feels in his bones that June’s longing for something more is not less than it was when they were children. In those moments, he can almost see a shadow surrounding her, the pent-up vibrations of a girl who has not yet found what she’s looking for.

And that shadow worries him—it makes him wonder about her work, about the delays, no matter how reasonable, in growing their family. Love is meant to be all eggs in one basket, isn’t it? He knows he wants her forever, and she wants him, too. He believes this despite the lingering guilt, the idea that he has somehow trapped her, despite the ways the war changed them both. That feeling he had the first time he met her, of being with someone who could see who he really was, or was meant to be, has left him feeling as if his life is both more real and more perilous. He has so much more to lose now.

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