I rolled up the door of unit 63, my heart hammering with a fear I could not name, and the light fell on a telescope, a big beautiful one on a heavy mount, and around it star charts and notebooks and a worn chair angled up toward a skylight cut into the roof.
I had to hold the door frame to stay standing.
Only came at night, the young man had said, and now I understood why, it was not shame or secrets, it was that the darkest, clearest skies over Tulsa were out here on the east side, away from the city lights, and my Bill had been coming to look at the stars.
The lonely little life I had feared was no lonely life at all. It was the secret joy of a man in love with the night sky.
His notebooks were observation logs, sixteen years of them. Comets. Meteor showers. The rings of Saturn, sketched in his careful hand. Page after page of a quiet mans wonder, out under the stars, night after night, while I slept.
And there was a letter, tucked in the newest notebook, addressed to me.
He wrote: Old girl, if you found my hideaway, do not be cross. When I retired I took up astronomy, and I was embarrassed, a grown man playing with a telescope, so I kept it to myself. I came at night because that is when the stars come out, and out here the sky is black as velvet. I always meant to bring you, to show you Saturn, but I kept thinking there would be time. Look up for me now, old girl. I am up there somewhere among them. Love, Bill.
I wept in that unit until I could not see. Only at night. My Bill had been chasing the stars, not some dark secret.
That night, I stayed. I figured out the telescope from his careful notes, and I opened the skylight, and I looked up, and there was Saturn, rings and all, hanging in the black.
I understood him completely then. He had never been lonely out here. He had the whole glittering universe for company.
I kept the unit, and the telescope. I go out on dark nights now and look up, exactly as he asked. And I did more than that. I gave his telescope time to a local school, and now children come out to that dark sky to see the stars for the first time, the way my Bill loved them.
My daughter did not know why I really drove across town. Now she does. Her daddy was an astronomer, in secret, for joy. Only at night, because that is when heaven comes out. I look up for him now, every clear night, and I am never quite alone.