Celeste
Axel found me on the porch that evening, something in his expression carrying news before he'd said a single word.
I'd been sitting there since supper, wrapped in a quilt, watching the light drain out of the sky in long bands of amber and plum. The fireflies had started up again over the field. Somewhere behind the house a screen door banged, and a burst of laughter rolled out from the kitchen and faded. I'd been trying to read the same page of the same paperback for an hour, and I looked up from it the moment his boots hit the bottom step.
He took the stairs slowly, the way he did when he was choosing his words, and settled into the chair beside me. The wicker creaked. He smelled of rain and woodsmoke and, faintly, of some city coffee shop.
"I found Justine," he said. "Talked
