On a quiet hill rising above the town, the night sky stretched vast and unbroken, a black canvas pricked with silver. The newly inaugurated Lakewood Fair glimmered below like a cluster of earthly constellations, its lights spinning and flickering with carnival songs, but here, away from the noise, the grass was cool and the stars unchallenged.
Twenty years earlier.
Iris lay on her back, still a teenager but already carrying the air of someone older, her hands folded beneath her head. Her eyes darted across the heavens as if she were weaving her own mythology, giving each constellation a name that only she understood. Her dreams tangled with the stars, threads invisible yet stubborn, like roots seeking soil in the dark.
A shadow moved beside her, the shuffle of grass. Edwards, a year older and carrying the awkward gravity of boyhood just on the edge of manhood, lowered himself onto the ground. He held two bottles of soda, and without a word, offered her one. She took it, their fingers brushing for a brief second, and smiled before returning her gaze to the infinite.
"Do you think," Iris asked softly, "that every star is its own universe?"
Edwards leaned back, squinting at the sky as though measuring it. He let the question turn in his mind like a coin spinning on a table. Finally, he said, "Yes, I believe so. But in all those stars, there's only one universe that's perfect. A place where no one suffers, where everything is whole. And if that universe doesn't exist... well, then you try to make it yourself—from morning to dusk."
Iris tilted her head toward him, a smile curving her lips, though her eyes still clung to the stars.
"And for you," she asked, "what's the meaning of life? My parents give me a different answer every time I ask them. Maybe you've found it already."
Edwards chuckled quietly. "They already gave you the answer."
She frowned, puzzled. "What do you mean?"
"The real meaning of life," he said, his voice steady now, "is to give it one. And after that, to live it."
For a moment, silence lingered, the kind of silence that doesn't demand to be filled. Iris studied his face, and he studied the sky, both of them reflecting on words too large for their youth.
"Do you think," she continued, "that in all those stars, the meaning of life is the same?"
"I don't doubt it," Edwards replied. "Not for a second."
Her fingers traced idle patterns in the grass. "And what happens when I have a child one day? Will the meaning change?"
Edwards shook his head. "It won't change. It'll grow stronger. Because then your life will mean helping your child find their own meaning. And what will that be? Maybe it starts simple." He paused, smiling faintly. "For a child, maybe the meaning of life is just to hold her mother close."
Iris laughed, a quiet ripple, and Edwards laughed with her, though his eyes softened with something unspoken.
The wind stirred through the trees, shifting the branches, and the stars seemed to sway with them, as if the whole sky had bent to listen. Iris breathed in the night, heavy with grass and earth, and whispered, "The stars are beautiful tonight."
And in that simple declaration, the world was suspended, two teenagers caught between childhood and eternity, sipping soda on a hill, believing for a moment that the universe had offered them its secrets.
The car hummed along the river's edge, its engine pressing forward as if to outrun the weight inside it. Edwards gripped the wheel with both hands, still unsteady, still recovering from the silence of the gunshot and the splash that lingered in his ears like a curse. Beside them, hidden by the angle of the road and the mercy of a child's distracted gaze, the river carried its secret—a body drifting slowly downstream, unseen by Sarah.
On the radio, a song broke the tension, light and defiant against the sorrow that clung to Edwards's chest: "Bad Habit" by Steve Lacy. When his favorite part arrived, Edwards, almost without realizing it, hummed along.
"Thought you were too good for me, my dear
Never gave me time of day, my dear
It's okay, things happen for
Reasons that I think are sure, yeah..."
His voice was faint, half-broken, but in the small space of the car it became a fragile thread of life. Sarah's head bobbed with the tune, her innocence building a shelter that neither blood nor grief could breach. For a fleeting moment, joy filled the car—not true joy, not the kind that blooms naturally, but a borrowed echo of it, a fragile imitation carved out of necessity. Outside, the world remained desolate: the sun lowering, the river carrying its dead, and the trees bending under shadows. Yet inside, the afternoon glowed strangely, as if morning had returned one last time.
The road bent, the river veered away, and finally Lakewood rose ahead. The fair, freshly lit with the buzzing colors of dusk, revealed itself like a mirage of escape.
Sarah gasped, bouncing in her seat with wide-eyed wonder. "Look! A walking pencil!"
Edwards didn't smile—his face was locked, sculpted in concentration. His hands clenched the wheel tighter as he pulled into a space between a car and a white van. He exhaled deeply, reached for the crumpled tissue lying beside the gearshift, damp with the salt of earlier tears, and wiped his face.
Only then did he turn toward Sarah. His voice was gentler now, softened by her presence.
"Do you want a picture with that pencil?"
"Yes!" she squealed, already tugging at her seatbelt.
She darted out of the car, her little legs carrying her across the lot toward the costume. The oversized pencil bent down with exaggerated cheer.
"Hello, little one!"
"Hi! I want... a picture with you!"
"Of course, of course! Will your dad take it?"
"That's right!"
Edwards stepped forward, phone in hand, and for the first time that day, a shadow of a smile pulled at his lips. He raised the camera, framed the shot, and pressed the shutter—freezing a moment Sarah would remember as simple joy, while he would forever remember what it cost.
"Thank you, walking pencil with legs!" Sarah chirped as she skipped back to him.
"Uh... y-you're welcome?" the pencil stammered, tilting its foam head in confusion.
Edwards and Sarah walked toward the gates of the fair, hand in hand, her excitement pulling him forward as though she were the anchor to his unraveling world. Behind them, the pencil turned to two boys eating hot dogs near a food stand.
"I can't tell... was that a compliment or an insult?" the man inside the costume muttered.
One of the boys laughed, ketchup smeared at the corner of his mouth. "What do you expect? You're a giant fucking pencil!"
"Yeah," the pencil sighed, wobbling a little. "Fair enough."
And the fair swallowed them all—the grieving man, the wide-eyed child, and the walking pencil, into its kaleidoscope of lights, where sorrow disguised itself as laughter and dusk pretended to be dawn.
And so, time slipped by as the fair unfolded like a bright tapestry around them. Sarah wandered through every corner with wide-eyed wonder, her laughter rising above the hum of the crowd, above the squeals of the rides, above the music drifting from the carousel. She ate sweets until her hands were sticky with sugar, begged for rides that rattled the air with screams, and spent Edwards's money with the carefree abundance of a child who still believes coins and bills are nothing more than paper gates to joy.
And Edwards let her. He let her take everything. Every coin was worth it, every ticket worth more than gold, because her happiness filled the hollowness inside him with something almost whole. Watching her dart from one stall to the next, his chest felt less like a locked vault and more like a garden being watered after a long drought.
Yet he could not bring himself to look toward the fair's eastern exit. Beyond those lights and fences lay an open plain, the very place where he and Iris, as children, had once run together when the fair was new. He knew that memory too well, the taste of cheap sodas on their tongues, the grass cool beneath their backs as they named stars with voices too young to know what forever meant. The sight of it now was unbearable—a ghost of a promise that life had broken.
"Dad, look!" Sarah's voice lifted him from his thoughts. She came running toward him, her small hands holding out a pistachio ice cream, pride shining in her eyes. "Pistachio! Do you want to try—?"
But before she could finish, the world tilted.
Another child, running too fast, collided with her. The ice cream toppled from her hand, falling in slow motion before shattering on the dusty ground. Sarah stumbled, dazed for a second, then froze, staring at the pale green scoop melting away.
The boy who had crashed into her stood up quickly. He didn't apologize. He didn't explain. He just looked at her—steady, unblinking.
Edwards stiffened, concern flashing in his chest. His first instinct was to step forward, to shield Sarah from embarrassment or hurt. But then he saw her gaze shift—not to the ruined ice cream, not to the ground, but to the boy.
And in that moment, Edwards understood.
The boy's name was Brian. Sarah's frown, on the edge of tears, softened as she met his eyes. And Edwards, seeing her sadness dissolve into something else—something lighter, something blooming—felt a rare, unexpected smile crease his own face. He saw her childhood folding into his own, as though time were not a straight line but a circle, and in her eyes he glimpsed Iris's laughter beneath the same carnival lights.
"You're the one from..." Brian began.
"Yes," Sarah interrupted quickly, almost too eagerly. "It's me. The ice cream just..."
"No problem," Brian said, his tone gentle. "I've got one already. Take it."
He extended his own cone toward her.
Sarah's lips trembled as she tried to refuse, but emotion tangled her words. At last, she simply took the ice cream and whispered, "Thank you."
"If you'd like," Brian continued, shifting awkwardly but with a spark of courage, "I'm here alone tonight... maybe we could take a walk? Just for a while?"
Sarah blinked, caught between hesitation and the thrill of something new. "Uh... yes. That would be nice. Let me just ask Mr. Edwards."
And she darted back to him, her hair fluttering behind her like a banner of youth.
"Papa," she asked, breathless, "can I walk with him? Just a little while?"
Edwards looked at her, at the innocence trembling on the edge of change. His heart wavered, torn between protectiveness and the knowledge that life's first steps into love are sacred, untouchable even by a father's fear. At last, he spoke softly:
"Yes... but only if, when you're finished, you both go to that plain over there—the one where the river fades into the horizon and the sky opens wide. Promise me that."
"I promise," Sarah said, already smiling.
She turned, ice cream in hand, and walked back toward Brian. "Let's go," she said, her voice carrying both nerves and delight.
"See you, dad!" she called as they disappeared into the weave of lights and laughter.
Edwards stood still, his smile lingering as he watched her go. And suddenly, he did not know what to do with himself. The fair around him was alive, the air thick with joy, but for the first time in years, he felt like a man suspended in time—watching his daughter step forward into her own story, while his own hands remained empty.
The hours passed as quietly and irreversibly as dismantled clocks, their hands scattered across the floor of time. Childhood came and went in fleeting waves, vanishing as soon as it appeared, like the shadow of a bird gliding across a meadow.
Sarah and Brian wandered through the fair together, their steps weaving between the lights, the rides, the scent of caramel and fried dough that clung to the air. She laughed with him, spoke freely, and then—carried by the tremor of her young heart—she confessed the secret she had carried within her imagination: the way she had pictured him, dreamed of him, almost built a world around him in her mind.
Brian froze. His boyish face shifted from surprise to unease, and then to something colder: fear. Without explanation, without even a farewell, he turned and walked away, his steps quick, retreating like a tide abandoning the shore.
"Wait! Where are you going? Did I say something wrong?" Sarah's voice cracked, fragile, a plea that fractured in the night air.
But Brian did not turn back. Her words were swallowed by the noise of the fair, leaving only silence in their wake.
And for the first time in her life, the little girl's heart broke—not by the cruelty of others, but by her own hands, by the naked honesty of her confession. Tears welled up, and she wandered aimlessly until her feet carried her to the hill Edwards had told her about—the place where the river dissolved into the horizon and the sky opened into eternity. There she sank onto the grass, the world spinning slowly into dusk, her face wet with tears that caught the last light of the day like dew.
From a short distance, Edwards saw her. He had been standing with his phone, scrolling through the bright, meaningless glow of the modern world, but now—more at peace than before—he put it away and walked toward her. He sat beside her, the grass bending under his weight, silence hanging between them like a curtain.
Sarah wiped her face with her small hand and whispered, broken, "Why does love have to hurt this much?"
Edwards exhaled, his voice low, thoughtful. "Because you don't control it. Maybe that's the reason."
She sniffled, shaking her head. "Maybe... but I don't understand. We're human, aren't we? We're supposed to have second chances, to try again. Why don't I feel like that? Why does it all feel so... bad?"
Edwards turned his eyes toward the horizon, thinking. His voice, when it came, carried the weight of memory. "The reason I asked you to come here with him wasn't just for the view. Your mother and I used to spend nights on this hill. We would lie here, looking up at the stars. This is where I learned about life—what it meant, how fragile it was, how beautiful. And she learned with me. This hill... it kept our secrets."
Sarah listened, her tears slowing.
He glanced at her again. "But Brian isn't here. So instead, let's make it a moment for the two of us—a father and his daughter. What do you say?"
Sarah nodded softly. "Yes... I'd like that."
"Lie down," Edwards said gently, "and look at the stars."
So she did. She stretched across the cool grass, watching as the day's last breath gave way to the first shimmer of night. The sun lowered its head behind the horizon, and the stars appeared timidly, as though peeking from behind a curtain of darkness. One by one, the constellations emerged, weaving their eternal stories across the sky.
Edwards's voice broke the silence. "Look closely at the stars. That one is a constellation, One of them is your grandmother. And the one right next to it is your mother..."
"I can't see it-"
"You can't see it now? Well that's because your mother is awake now."
Sarah sat up suddenly, her breath catching in her throat. Her heart pounded with hope, louder than the fair's distant music. "What? What do you mean?"
She threw her arms around Edwards, holding him tightly. "She's awake? My mother, she's awake? What do you mean?"
Her voice trembled with both disbelief and a fragile, desperate joy, as though the night sky itself had whispered a secret too miraculous to be true.
Edwards ran out of the fair with Sarah clinging to his back, her small arm stretched forward, finger pointing ahead like the hand of destiny itself.
"Faster, Papa, we have to get there!"
Her voice rang with urgency, the kind of command only a child can give, pure and absolute, untouched by fear. Edwards's body, however, betrayed him. His limp worsened with every hurried step; old wounds ached in his back, pain radiated through his legs like iron chains. Still, he pressed forward, driven not by strength but by the fire in Sarah's voice.
When they reached the car, he did something he had never done before: he placed Sarah in the passenger seat. She was too small to see beyond the frame of the window, her head barely reaching the edge, but her presence there, next to him, made the world shift. She wasn't a child in that moment—she was his compass, his anchor, the reason the night had meaning.
The engine roared, and the car sped down the lonely road. Beside them, the river shimmered with a strange light, as though the water had been waiting for this moment to reveal its secret brilliance. With every mile, the sun sank lower, surrendering its throne to the dark. Shadows deepened, the landscape blurred, and then—suddenly—the Milky Way unveiled itself above them, its river of stars flowing silently across the heavens.
Sarah could not see it through the windows, but she felt it. Her small hands clenched in excitement, her chest rising with the intuition of something immense, something about to change. Tonight, she would discover the meaning of her life—not from books, not from words, but from the pulse of love itself.
They arrived at the hospital in haste, tires screeching against the asphalt. Edwards pulled the car into place with trembling hands, and together they ran through the sterile corridors, the fluorescent lights humming overhead like nervous guardians. Sarah's steps slowed as they approached the room; her heart thudded like a drum, loud enough for her father to hear. She edged closer, her tiny body trembling, until at last she reached the doorway.
And then she saw it.
Iris stirred, turning her head ever so slightly toward the sound of her daughter's footsteps. Her eyes opened, soft and alive, and upon her lips bloomed a smile—fragile, but real, radiant like a star breaking through storm clouds.
Sarah broke.
Tears fell freely, but they were no longer born of grief. They were the tears of a soul released, of a child who had carried too much sorrow and at last was given back her light. She ran forward, flinging her arms around her mother with all the strength her small body could muster.
"Mama! You're awake! I missed you, I missed you so much..."
Her sobs filled the room, not with sadness but with the raw beauty of love reborn.
In the hallway, Edwards pressed himself against the wall, listening, one ear against the cold plaster. His heart pounded as Sarah's voice reached him, and for the first time in what felt like centuries, his lips curved into a quiet, tired smile.
And then, from the opposite end of the corridor, Martha appeared. She walked with deliberate steps, her face carved with the kind of seriousness that cut deeper than words. When she reached him, she stopped. Her eyes met his, unblinking, sharp, almost accusatory—as though she could see through him, into the marrow of his guilt, his failures, his truth. She said nothing. After a lingering pause, she continued down the hall, leaving behind only the echo of her presence.
Edwards exhaled deeply, closing his eyes. The worst day of his life had finally ended. His body still bore the bruises of the road, his heart the scars of endless nights, but none of it mattered now. Sarah's joy, Sarah's laughter, was a victory. Perhaps the only one he would ever hold onto, but a victory nonetheless.
And as he leaned against the silent walls of the hospital, he knew: dusk started, but for Sarah, the morning had just begun.
TO BE CONTINUED...