Start the Chase

Chapter 5

5

The stars were etched brilliantly against the sky when she woke. They were sharper up here in the mountains above twenty-one percent of the atmosphere at sixty-eight hundred feet than down on her island.

They never looked like this on a night flight, even with the instrument panel lights dimmed down. They were sharper than she’d ever seen. There were so many more stars than she was used to seeing, even from the darkness of her island home, that she had trouble finding the constellations Dad had taught her.

She hadn’t learned the constellations from the Big Dipper. She’d always started with the star-outlined thrones of the king and queen—Samuel and Olivia Holmes Chase.

“And there you are, Miranda. Riding the winged horse Pegasus.”

It had caused her no end of embarrassment in the only planetarium show she’d ever attended on campus. The presenter had stated that the constellations’ real names were Cepheus, Cassiopeia, and Andromeda.

She’d argued with the professor in front of the whole audience until he had produced four separate texts naming it for the Greek myth rather than her family. She’d stalked out of the show and gone to the university library. No matter what text or chart she’d consulted, the professor’s statement was accurate.

But that made her own father’s teachings…inaccurate.

How was she supposed to manage that?

She’d been fifteen and a freshman at the University of Washington. Her father was two years gone by then, so she had no way to ask him what else he’d taught her that were lies.

She hadn’t remembered much else after that.

Apparently she’d “corrected” over thirty-seven references—including three rare historical sky charts—before security came and escorted her out of the library despite her cries that she had to fix all of the others.

Just as she had so often in the last years of high school, Tante Daniels had attended classes with her for the next few months. Her governess had always been so kind and patient.

Miranda understood now, but she still couldn’t bear to enter a planetarium.

She looked up and found Sam Chase’s star-throne. The big W of Olivia Holmes’ was blocked by a mountain peak, but would be coming back out soon. And there was Miranda, her home in the sky.