Touching Stars by Emilie Richards

Eric had stopped retrieving fruit. Instead, he was staring into space.
    “I heard them,” he said. “Even if they weren’t there.”
    She went back to work, eager to get to bed. “Sound carries in strange ways in the mountains. Maybe I’m just used to dogs in the distance. Or too tired tonight to notice them.”
    “It’s not a sound you forget.”
    His voice sounded strange. She glanced at him again. His hand was frozen in midair, as if he’d forgotten that a task had been planned for it.
    The sight of that hand, always wide and long fingered, made whatever she’d planned to say catch in her throat and dissolve. Eric’s formerly beautiful hands were like talons. The fingers seemed thin as needles, the skin rippled in distorted waves. And the hands were trembling.
    She sat back on her heels. Her voice was low. “You were having a nightmare.” It wasn’t a question.
    He looked down at his hand, then up at her. “It’s nothing.”
    “ Nothing wouldn’t have woken you. You look like hell, Eric. What can I do?”
    He went back to work, but slowly, as if he were forcing his brain to remember and guide every step. “Why are you still up?”
    “I told you, I was checking rooms. It hit me that some of the kids could have slipped up here to one of the guest rooms.”
    “Wouldn’t that have been fun to discover.”
    “I’m having enough trouble dealing with my own sons thinking about sex. Imagine the fun if I discovered their friends in demonstration mode.”
    She realized she was talking about sex with her ex-husband. And sex had never been one of the problems in their marriage. She looked up, her cheeks warming, and saw that Eric had managed a smile.
    “So they’re just thinking about sex?”
    “If they’re doing anything else, they aren’t sharing it with me. Last week I asked Dillon about a girl in his class, and he told me that from that moment forward I was not to discuss his love life.”
    “Love life?” Eric gave a low laugh. “We’re really going to have our hands full with that one.”
    Nothing astonished her about the sentence except the plural we. For just a moment she considered how lovely it would be to turn over all things related to male sexuality to Eric and let him paddle through those muddy waters without her help.
    “Yes, well…” She picked up the last orange. “He does look just like his dad.”
    “He’ll need to look to somebody other than me to teach him how to deal with women. I’ve never understood them. You of all people should know that.”
    “We’re getting dangerously close to joking about the dissolution of our marriage.”
    “What’s a little humor between the perfect exes? Didn’t we win some award for Best Divorce of the Twentieth Century?”
    Her head snapped up. “Did we?”
    He was back at work on the grapes, pinching them between his fingers and dropping them in the bowl. “Yeah, and it was a problem for a long time.”
    “What was?”
    “All that goodwill. No knock-down drag-outs about who got what. No fights over child support or visitation rights. The boys are mine whenever I want them. I give you every penny I can spare. When we talk we have cordial conversations. If you get married again, you’ll probably ask me to give you away.”
    “Oh, not much chance of that.”
    He found the last grape. They went for the last handful of cherries together, and their hands collided, his on top of hers. Both of them were perfectly still, as if viewing a moment from their past.
    Gayle was the first to pull back. “I’ll wash the fruit for you.”
    “I’ll do it in the morning. Don’t bother.”
    They were facing each other now. She cocked her head and tried to ignore the familiar chest, the ribs as prominent as corset stays. Unfortunately, she couldn’t ignore where their conversation had been leading. “Why is goodwill a problem?”
    “I bet it’s a problem for you, too. Think about it.”
    “It’s late, and it would be nice to have a