Ten Years to Win Her, Two Weeks to Leave Her novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Open Night

Joan called it Open Night, and by nine o'clock on Saturday two hundred people had parked along the gravel road to the Northwestern Branch.

There were families with folding chairs and thermoses, a school astronomy club, and a retired couple who had driven from Bend with their own telescope.

Joan had hung paper lanterns along the path to the dome.

Open Night paid for the Branch's heating through the winter, and she had never let it fall through.

Nolan stood at the top of the dome steps with a laser pointer, showing a boy of about nine where Andromeda would come up.

"It's a smudge," the boy said.

"It's two and a half million light years of smudge. Give it ten minutes."

Lydia was down on the field in her gray coat, running the sign-in table.

She had been at it since six.

Nobody on the field knew whose daughter she was, and she hadn't told them.

Nolan watched her hand a paper cup of cocoa to an old man and say, "It's from a packet, I'm sorry," and the old man laughed.

He had not forgiven her.

He watched her anyway, and he was waiting badly.

Then the light changed at the gate.

Two vans pulled in, white ones, with a satellite dish folded on top of the first.

Four people in black jackets got out and started unloading lights.

A fifth stepped down from the passenger side in a pressed gray jacket, smiling at nobody in particular.

Leland Crewe raised a hand to Joan across the field and called out to her.

"Joan! What a turnout. We're doing a live segment tonight for a science channel, the Deep Field announcement. I hope you don't mind. Public interest."

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