My hands drop. “He said: ‘I looked and looked but I didn’t see God.’”

“About when he was in space, you mean?” she says.

“Yes. Can you believe it?!”

“Okay … so he was an atheist in the Soviet Union. What’s so surprising about that? He’s just saying he has proof that God doesn’t exist. Or so he thinks.” She rolls her eyes. “Typical rocket scientist.”

I grip her shoulders. “But he looked, Nah. One of the foremost scientific minds in the world. He knew better. Why did he look? YURI GAGARIN IS FUCKING WITH MY SERENITY.”

Yuri didn’t just look: He looked—and looked. Like he was hoping to find something. Perhaps it was just dry Russian humor. But I’m not convinced. It’s that second looked that’s getting me. Looked and looked. Once: You’re a cheeky atheist. Twice: You really looked for God-with-a-capital-G up there. Just in case.

She cocks her head to the side. “How could he not? You get up there, you have to wonder, right? Some of the smartest people in the world—Mom included—believe there’s something out there. It’s not just the weirdos and little people who believe.” She leans in. “Also: He said he didn’t see God. But everyone knows you feel God.”

That gives me pause.

“What does God feel like?”

She loops her arm though mine, and we start toward where Nate is trying to get a tan.

“I think it’s different for everyone,” Nah says. “For me, it’s that feeling I get when I look at a kick-ass sunset over the ocean or when I realized Drew had been secretly using Dad’s miracle life lesson on me all along. When I read one of Yoko’s poems.”

“But that’s not God,” I say, stubborn. “That’s neurology. Psychology. Chemicals in your brain responding to outside stimuli.”

“Every culture has its own name for God, its own way of talking about God. Dad said he was an atheist, but get him talking about the universe and he sounded downright religious. He just used big science words instead of woo-woo words, whatever. We’re all talking about the same thing, I think. Remember what he said? I don’t need to pray. I just need to look into a telescope.” She grins, sneaky. “He looked and looked.”

“I’ll allow that it feels like an intelligence is at work,” I say. “But Dad always said that the universe is like a complex symphony playing itself, and our job is to listen.”

He also said he wanted to leave our mother. Maybe I should stop quoting him.

The hole widens because I am a hungry ghost and I want my dad to come back from the dead and make me a happy atheist again.

“Every symphony has a composer,” Nah says. “And every orchestra a conductor. Remember The Phantom Tollbooth?”