Chapter 118

[ 808 words ]

Katia’s POV

The message came at eight PM. Desert. Hassan is outside.

No question mark. No explanation. I looked at it for ten seconds, then put my phone in my bag and told Sam I was going out.

“Where?” she said.

“Desert,” I answered.

She looked at me over her laptop. “Again p>

“Yes p>

“Katia p>

“Sam p>

She looked back at her laptop. “Be back by midnight. The race briefing is at seven AM p>

I was already at the door.

Hassan drove us out past the city limits in comfortable silence. The sky changed the moment the city lights fell away — the difference between a sky with stars and a sky full of them was not gradual. It was immediate. Like someone had turned something on.

Julian was looking up before the car had fully stopped.

We sat on a blanket Hassan had laid out on the flat desert floor, far enough from the road that the silence was complete. No traffic. No wind. Just the desert and the sky and the specific cold that crept into desert nights after the heat released.

“Do you know them?” I asked. The stars.

“Some,” he said. “My father taught me the Arabic names. He said the English ones were practical but the Arabic ones were poetry.” He looked up. “Al Jawzah. Orion. The hunter,” he pointed. “Thurayya. The Pleiades. The ones sailors used to navigate p>

I looked where he pointed. Found them.

“Aiden would want the astronomical data,” I said. “Distance in light years. Surface temperature p>

“And you p>

I looked at the sky. “I want to know which ones the Bedouin used to find their way home p>

He was quiet for a moment. Then he pointed again. “Qalb al-Asad. Heart of the Lion. Regulus. When it rose just before dawn, they knew the rainy season was coming.” He paused. “Navigation by pattern. You always know where you are if you know what you’re looking at p>

I looked at the star. Bright. Unwavering.

“Is that what you do?” I said. “Navigate by pattern p>

“It’s what I do with everything,” he said. “Including you p>

I turned to look at him. He was looking at the sky, his profile clean against it.

“What pattern do you see?” I said.

He was quiet long enough that I thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then: “A woman who built something extraordinary from nothing. Who raised a son alone and made it look effortless. Who walks into rooms like she owns them because she does.” He paused. “Who has been carrying something for six years that she has never put down p>

The desert was very quiet.

“That’s not a pattern,” I said. “That’s a biography p>

“Patterns become biographies,” he said. “When you look long enough p>

I looked back at the sky. Somewhere up there Orion was hunting something he would never catch, which was perhaps the point.

“The balloon this morning,” I said.

“Yes p>

“What I said about Aiden p>

“Yes p>

“I shouldn’t have said it p>

“Why not p>

“Because I don’t know what it means. And saying things you don’t understand yet is dangerous p>

He turned to look at me then. “Or necessary p>

I held his gaze. “Julian. If there’s something to know about Aiden, about his father — I need to find it myself. In my own time. I can’t have it handed to me by circumstance or—” I stopped.

“Or by me,” he finished.

“Yes p>

He nodded slowly. He looked back at the sky.

“I understand that,” he said. “More than you know p>

Something in the way he said it made me look at him. His expression was careful – the kind of careful that meant something was being held back not out of dishonesty but out of a recognition that the timing wasn’t right.

“What do you know?” I said quietly.

“Nothing certain,” he said. “Just patterns p>

We looked at each other in the dark.

The desert held us in its specific silence — the silence of a place that had existed before human problems and would exist long after them. It was not comforting exactly. It was honest. Out here nothing was softened.

“I’m scared,” I said. The words arrived before I decided to say them. I let them stand.

Julian turned fully toward me. “Of what p>

“Of what it means if the pattern is what I think it is,” I said, looking at the sky. “Aiden has never had a father. He has me and Gail and Sam, and that has been enough. But if—” I stopped. Started again. “If the person he looks like is someone I know. Someone who is—” I couldn’t finish it.

“Someone who is what?” Julian said gently.

“Someone who is already so much,” I said. “In a way I didn’t plan for p>

The silence stretched between us.

Then Julian reached over and put his hand over mine.

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