Page 63 of Little Pieces of Light

Epilogue

Emery, Five Years Later

The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself. ?

—Carl Sagan

“We made it,” I thought, smiling to myself. I tugged my silky robe tighter and sipped from my flute of champagne.

Not that I had any doubts, but our five-year plan had run its course, and now we were having a real wedding to replace the sad little ceremony we’d had in Providence. But we’d already been living in a real marriage for the past five years; there was no point in pretending this wasn’t forever.

Harper, my maid of honor, sat beside me in the elegant, sun-filled bridal suite at the Storrier Sterns Japanese Garden in Pasadena, not far from our little apartment. Xander had wanted the venue.

“Because it reminds me of your room in your house in Castle Hill, with the cherry blossom tree you painted with your own hand,” he’d said.

“You made an oasis for yourself out of your artistry. I know the memories there weren’t worth keeping, but I think it’s important to honor that part of you, Emery. The part that never gave up.”

As if it were possible to love him more…

I glanced around the bridal suite and wondered if it were possible to love anyone more than the women in the room, either.

“Are you nervous?” Harper asked, gorgeous in her emerald-green dress.

“About marrying Xander?” I teased. “Been there, done that.”

She laughed. “I meant about returning to the east coast.”

After I graduated UCLA armed with a degree in architectural and urban design and an interior design certificate I started my own business.

I didn’t have a storefront but worked remotely and already business was good.

Xander graduated from Caltech with PhDs in quantum physics and astrophysics.

Before the ink was dry on his diplomas, he was offered a position doing research with the Event Horizon Telescope in Massachusetts, which worked out of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, where he’d be teaching as an adjunct professor.

My business was mobile. I could do it from anywhere, so there was no way I could let him turn it down.

But I knew why Harper was asking. Massachusetts bumped elbows with Rhode Island, but I was no longer the scared girl I had been back in Castle Hill.

I wasn’t about to let old fears or pain stop either one of us from achieving our dreams. We’d both been working so hard, saving money for the move, and setting aside enough to throw a big wedding to celebrate us before a much-needed honeymoon in Costa Rica.

“I’m not nervous about that,” I said, and smiled at my mother as she joined us. “I’ll be closer to Mom now.”

She smiled back, looking regal in her pale green, mother-of-the-bride dress.

Her cheeks had more color, and she had more weight on her bones since divorcing my dad two years ago.

She took him for half of everything he owned…

not that it mattered. His business was booming, but he had no one to share it with.

He sat on top of his mountain of gold alone.

To me, that was a fate worse than financial ruin.

“Em, isn’t it time to put on your dress?” Delilah cooed from the other side of the bridal suite, where my simple but elegant dress was waiting. She stood with Christina and Chloe, my UCLA BFFs, and Alicia Alvarez.

After Ms. Alvarez was fired from Castle Hill Academy, she took another job in Virginia and quickly rose in the ranks to administrator. I don’t think she ever belonged in a place like CHA. Or maybe they needed her more than they knew and had stupidly let her slip away.

She joined us and clinked her champagne flute to mine. “Put on that dress, sweetheart. We’re all dying to see it.”

“I will,” I said. “I just want to take in this moment a little longer.”

The women in my suite were my favorite people…but for my other favorite person across the hall, getting ready with his groomsmen: Orion, Kevin Huang, and his best buddies from Caltech: Quinton and Kieran. I loved all of Xander’s friends as if they were my own brothers.

And Jack, my own brother .

He was one of Xander’s groomsmen too.

I smiled. Today would’ve been perfect but for two missing pieces: Xander’s father had passed away six months after we arrived in California.

They’d been happy ones; he smiled a lot and seemed to enjoy himself when Xander had wheeled him through the Athenaeum, pointing out different Einstein artifacts.

The light in his eyes had never been brighter.

Xander had taken his ashes to the Bend alone and scattered them in the bay.

“It was his favorite place,” Xander had said. “He’ll be close to Dean there.”

Dean, of course, was the other missing piece. But the sun was brilliant on this June day, just as it had been at his funeral.

They’re both still with us—little pieces of light that go on forever…

After more prodding from Delilah, I got up to put on my dress with Alicia’s help.

“I’m so proud of you, Emery,” she said. “And so very happy.”

“None of this would’ve happened if you hadn’t helped me, Ms. A. You gave me the courage.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t do anything. You walked through the door on your own.”

“But you held it open for me.” I put my arms around her. “Thank you.”

She held me tight as a knock came at the door. Delilah answered.

“Xander! You can’t see the bride before the wedding!”

I laughed while the ladies formed a barrier at the door.

“I know,” Xander said. “I’m sorry to break tradition, but this is vitally important.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m not in my dress yet, and that’s the bad-luck part, I think.”

“Yes, that’s the exception to the rule.” Xander sounded mischievous. “Five minutes, that’s all I need.”

The ladies filed out and I tightened my robe around me. Xander was beautifully handsome in his tux, a yellow daffodil in his lapel that matched those in my bouquet.

“What are you up to?” I asked. “This is highly unorthodox.”

“I know but we’re doing this right today, aren’t we? Making up for that terrible ceremony in Providence?”

“It wasn’t all bad,” I said with a smile. “Is now a good time to confess I’ve been calling you my husband in my mind and heart for the past five years?”

His grin softened. “What a coincidence. Because I’ve been calling you my wife since the day I sent that text offering to marry you.”

“Oh, Xander…”

“But back to the matter at hand. That day in Providence, we had nothing. No dress. No real vows. And no ring.”

“Well, it was kind of an emergency—” I gasped as Xander went down on one knee and pulled a small black velvet box from his pocket. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t want to skip any steps or leave anything undone,” he said, his blue and brown eyes so intent on mine, so full of love.

“I want to give you everything you deserve, Emery. And that’s the entire damn world.

Because that’s what you’ve given me. You’ve shown me that life is so much more than the facts and the science I built it on.

I think I somehow always knew that and that’s why I kept looking to the stars. And then I found you.”

“Xander…” I inhaled a shaky breath.

He opened the box to reveal a round-cut diamond solitaire with five little diamonds surrounding it. A star, glittering in the sunlight.

“Emery, will you marry me…within the next ten to fifteen minutes?”

A joyful laugh burst out of me. “Yes. Yes, Xander, I will marry you. Again. A million times.”

He slipped the ring on my finger, and I kissed him with my entire heart and soul, this man who I’ve loved in a hundred lifetimes.

“You know what I think?” I said. “We meet in all universes, and we get married in every single one.”

Xander smiled, brushing hair from my face. “I think you’re right.”

Xander, Three Years Later

I stood before the whiteboard in one of the many lecture halls at Harvard. One half was covered in equations, the other in my crude rendition of a black hole—a black orb with a ring of light around it, like one of Saturn’s rings—emitting little particles of radiation.

I should’ve hired Emery to draw this for me.

I smiled to myself as three hundred pairs of eyes—my Introduction to Astrophysics class—listened attentively. My “day job” that paid most of the bills while working at my dream job: researching black holes with the Event Horizon Telescope team.

But being surrounded by students who were as eager as me to unravel the mysteries of the cosmos was more rewarding than I thought possible.

“In 1974, Stephen Hawking offered his groundbreaking theory that reshaped our understanding of black holes. His ‘Hawking radiation’ suggests that black holes are not entirely black; instead, they emit faint radiation near the event horizon, which means black holes are actually decaying or breaking down over time. Lots of time. This leads to an information paradox. Can anyone tell me why?”

Hands went up. I picked a young woman in the front row.

“Because quantum mechanics says that information can’t be destroyed. So if the black hole is breaking down, what happened to everything it sucked in?” she asked. “Where did all that light go?”

“Exactly,” I said. “Where did all the light go?”

I paused, my thoughts going inexplicably to Dean Yearwood. I smiled and was suddenly back in a shell with sunlight glinting off the water, an oar in my hands and my friend sitting in front of me, wearing that grin of his…

I cleared my throat and came back to the lecture hall.

“Hawking’s theory suggests that even in a black hole, light can never be destroyed. No matter how dark things get, it’s still with us. Always.”

“Wow, Dr. Ford,” one student said with a grin. “Almost sounds like you’re not talking about science anymore.”

I caught sight of Emery standing at the top of the lecture hall, leaning in the door.

“A wise woman once told me too much science and not enough imagination isn’t good for the soul,” I said, earning some laughs. I checked my watch. “Time’s up. I’ll see you all next week.”