“They’re a living room thing. Or a study—if we got a house with a study I think that would suit you. Boats would work.”

“We could get it now,” he said. “And if I ever have a study, I can move it into there.”

She made a face.

“Other option: we don’t put a big piece of artwork up. We have the shelves, plants, we have the clock…”

“I want art.”

He pointed at the boat.

“I don’t want a painting of a boat in my bedroom,” she said. She indicated a picture.

Grays and reds and a bit of green, a background of blurred brush strokes, like a haze hung over the scene. Men and women in white gathered around their altar.

He stared at it for long moments, then shook his head.

“You’re hopeless,” Merindah said. “It doesn’t speak to you?”

“It speaks to me,” he said. “But it’s not saying nice things.”

She gave him a kiss on the bicep, a consequence of how petite she was.

“You keep at it,” he said. “Let me know if anything else jumps out at you. You want to eat before we leave the mall?”

“Maybe,” she said.

He stepped away, sighing.

His eyes turned skyward. Past the tops of the walls of the mall, it was open space—literal space. Black and so filled with stars it didn’t seem possible, with nebula hues and a streak of white where the stars were so densely packed together they looked like they were part of the same thing.

Something triple-helix in form reached across that space, black against a bright backdrop. A complex ladder, twisted, reaching across the void. Specks of black like birds taking flight jumped from it and took roost, each with a bright trail left behind them.

Teriyaki?

Maybe Greek for lunch.

An abrupt motion at the corner of his eye drew his attention.

A boy, teenager, with longer hair, a shiny short-sleeved button-up shirt that would have been better suited to a visit to a club than a shopping mall, and skinny jeans. He’d been leaning against a wall by a bookstore, and the abrupt motion had been him freezing.

It took Gilpatrick a second to realize why.

“You’re not dead-set on the boat painting, are you?” she asked him from the other side of the kiosk.

“No, Merindah, I’d rather have nothing than have the boat,” he said. “But if I had to have something, I’d go with the boat.”

She snorted. “I’ll find something we both like.”

“I believe you,” he said.

The teenager hadn’t budged.

“Waiting for someone?” Gilpatrick asked.

“Me?” the teenager asked.

“Yeah.”

“Maybe,” was the response. Defensive.

There were a hundred things Gilpatrick wanted to ask. To say. He found himself ruling them out, second-guessing. Like this might be a last chance, and one wrong answer would scuttle it.