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By the time Tess was properly tucked into bed she was wide awake again. Marguerite said, “Do you want anything? A glass of water?”
“A story,” Tess said promptly.
“I don’t really know a whole lot of stories.”
“About him,” Tess said.
Who? Chris, Ray, her grandfather?
“The Subject,” Tess said. “All the things that happened to him.”
Marguerite was taken aback. This was the first time Tess had expressed an interest in the Subject. “You really want to know about all that?”
Tess nodded. She lay back and bumped her head against the pillow, about one beat per second, gently. Summer air moved the window blinds against the wooden sill.
Well. Where to begin? Marguerite tried to recall the pages she had written with Tess in mind. Pages she had written but never shared. Stories untold.
But she didn’t need pages.
“First of all,” Marguerite said, “you have to understand that he was a person. Not exactly like you and me, but not completely different. He lived in a city he loved very much, on a dry plain under a dusty sky, on a world not quite as big as this one.”
Long ago. Far away.