Chapter 1

The heavy velvet curtains of the planetarium’s main hall parted with a soft, rhythmic swoosh, swallowing me whole into the cool, recycled air of the dome. It was a Tuesday evening, the kind of unremarkable night that usually dissolves into the gray blur of my mid-twenties, but tonight, the air felt thick, charged with a static electricity that prickled the hair on the back of my neck. I had come here to escape the noise of my own life, to find a moment of quiet under the simulated cosmos, but the universe had other plans. It had sent him. My father. He was standing near the center of the vast, circular seating area, a solitary figure in a sea of empty, red-cushioned chairs. The planetarium was nearly deserted, save for the faint, rhythmic hum of the cooling fans and the distant, muffled voice of a technician somewhere in the control booth. I should have turned around. I should have slipped out through the side exit before he noticed me, before the casual wave of his hand could trap me in this web of unspoken history. But my feet felt rooted to the polished concrete floor, anchored by the pull of