Joan laughed. “Thank you, my love.” And then: “I ordered pizza for dinner.” Barbara offered a tense smile, but Joan knew she wouldn’t complain. Joan always paid, ordered too much, and sent Barbara home with the leftovers.

“Did you get pepperoni?” Frances asked.

“Yeah, and with extra anchovies because I know how much you love them.”

“Noooooo!” Frances said, and Joan grabbed her and tickled her ribs. Barbara set the plates for dinner.

After dinner, Barbara sent Frances to get ready for bed. She was spending the night at Joan’s, and the two of them were going shopping for back-to-school clothes the next day. It was their annual tradition. As Joan walked Barbara out, she handed her the leftover pizza. Then Barbara pulled Joan into the hallway.

“You seem happier,” Barbara said. “Lighter.”

“I do?” Joan felt a little jolt go through her.

“Yeah,” Barbara said. “It’s nice.”

“Well, I guess…” Joan thought of that feeling up in the jet. The pale pink of the clouds. “I guess I am a little lighter.”

“You’ve met someone,” Barbara said.

“What? No!”

“I thought for sure that’s what all this was. That glee in your voice.”

“Barbara,” Joan said. “No.”

Barbara sighed. “I swear, Joan, every time I think I understand you, I’m more wrong than the time before.”

“I’m not that hard to understand, Barb. I love my new job. It’s…the coolest thing I’ve ever, ever, ever done.”

Barbara looked at her, and Joan could feel the distance between them growing. She’d been just an arm’s length away a second ago, but she was gone now.

“If only I could find something I love half as much as you love talking about stars.”

Joan said good night to Barbara and went back inside her apartment with a smile still on her face. She could hear the condescension in her sister’s voice, but she could not be angry.

Joan so loved the beauty in this world: showing people the stars, spotting the fuzzy glimmer of the Orion Nebula with just her eyes, the rare moments when auroras are visible even in the southern states because of intense geomagnetic storms, trying one more time to really nail Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp Minor, rereading The Awakening, listening to Joni Mitchell and Kate Bush, drawing for so long, so late into the night that her palm cramped, running so far that she forgot to think, taking Frances for ice cream and watching how long she deliberated over which flavor to choose, the smell of Frances’s hair…

That was the stuff that made life worth living. And she worried Barbara didn’t see that.

“All right, babe,” Joan said once Frances was done with her shower. “Are we watching TV or reading a book?”

“Reading a book!” Frances said.