XVII

Jed sprang to his feet at the sound of the front door, and then flushed with embarrassment at his own obvious eagerness. Daniel smirked, and might have made a playfully cutting remark if he hadn't suddenly heard his wife's worried "Abigail?"

He heard his daughter mutter something indistinct and rush through and out into the back yard. He and Jed spilled worriedly out into the hall.

Mary met his eyes, looking dismayed but not particularly shocked. "Abbey broke up with Ron," she revealed.

"Ah."

Daniel caught Jed making a little move like a flinch out of the corner of his eye, but by the time he turned, the younger man was still.

His face, however, was an open book of concerned sympathy and agitation. Daniel tilted his head towards the back door pointedly. "Why don't you go out and talk to her, son?"

"Me?" He seemed honestly startled.

Mary smiled gently at him. "She probably needs a friend right now, Jed."

"Yeah." His voice was heavy with a kind of resignation, and Daniel watched him as he headed out to join their daughter. He looked across at Mary.

"What happens now?"

She shrugged, and raised her eyebrows at him. "You're not worried about sending that obviously love-struck young man out to your only daughter in her hour of vulnerability?"

He considered that for a moment. "No."

"Why not?"

"Because he's not that kind of boy," he answered without hesitation. "And because I think... he's the right man, at the right time."

Mary nodded slowly, and smiled. "I think so too."

He slipped an arm around her, and smiled back. "I think our little girl's in safe hands."

She was sitting on the back step, arms wrapped defensively around her knees. Jed sat down beside her and mimicked the posture. They both stared out into the night.

"I knew it was coming," Abbey said after a long silence. Her voice was thick from where she'd obviously been tearful.

"Still hurts, though."

She barked a painful laugh. "Does it ever."

He briefly rubbed her back in sympathy, and she meant too much to him for it to ache that the gesture was purely platonic.

"Did you guys fight?" he asked softly.

She laughed again, a quiet, self-directed chuckle, and shook her head. "No, we just... We just..." She shrugged, and sighed.

"Sometimes people just don't work out," he reminded her gently. Not minimising her pain, just trying to blunt the force of the guilt that came with it. "Sometimes it's nobody's fault."

"I still feel like it's mine," she admitted. He was silent, and she turned towards him curiously. "Aren't you supposed to leap to tell me that it's not?" she asked, half-smiling despite the tear-streaks on her face.

Jed brushed back a strand of hair that was threatening to stick there. "You know it's not," he said, with a quiet smile.

"Yeah." She sighed again, and tilted her head back to rest it against the door behind them. "There's a lot of stars up there," she observed, after a moment.

He looked up. It was a clear night, and the sky was well-sprinkled with gently flickering lights. "They're always up there," he pointed out.

"You know what I mean," she said, giving his shoulder a gentle shove.

"Yeah."

They stargazed for a while, and his eyes were gradually drawn to the crescent moon.

"They're gonna put a man on the moon one day, you know," he told her.

Though his gaze remained skywards, he was conscious of her turning to look at him. "You really think they'll do it?" she asked quietly.

His mouth curled upwards into a confident smile. "Yeah. And when they've done that, they're gonna go to Mars. And once they've been to Mars, they'll go to all the other planets. And then they're gonna take us to the stars. And then, when we get to the stars, we're gonna look around, and we're gonna say... 'What's next?' Because that's what we do. We just keep on going, no matter what. We keep on saying 'What's next?'."

She laid her head against his shoulder, and he could picture her warm smile. "Let me guess; you wanted to be an astronaut when you were younger?"

"I wanted to be everything when I was younger," he admitted. "I still do."

"You're a dreamer," she accused him lightly.

He shrugged, causing her to pull away from his shoulder. "Somebody's got to do it."

"Yeah." She ran her hands back through her air, and massaged her neck as if it ached. "Sometimes I think it would be easier if I wasn't a dreamer, though," she reflected quietly. "If I could just... if I could just look at things the way they are, and be content. Maybe we'd all be happier if we were that way."

"Maybe," Jed admitted. He turned to look at her in the darkness. "But how would we ever get to the stars?"

She smiled, and wrapped her arms around him. He held her for a moment, a little oasis of warmth and contentment in the middle of the darkness.

"You feel better?" he asked her gently as she pulled away.

"A little." She went back to hugging her knees.

"It's never easy, letting things go," he told her quietly. Thinking of the priesthood, and of searching for his father's affection, and of all the things he'd ever thought or hoped he'd be along the way. All the dreams he'd left behind... but there were always new dreams.

"No," she agreed. "Still, you know, I guess... I guess it had to end sometime."

"Yeah."

"And..." Her voice changed tone, subtly, although he wasn't quite sure what it meant. "And at least it means I can do something I've been wanting to for quite a while now."

Jed's brow wrinkled. "What's that?" he asked her.

Abbey laid her hands to either side of his face, and tilted his head around to look at her. "Idiot," she said fondly.

And then she kissed him.

THE END