Chapter 48 - The Light We Lost

Even though I’d been working on It Takes a Galaxy for a while, researching real-life stories, trying to pull conflicts from as many countries and cultures as possible so the writers could use them as the basis of various episodes, I’d never traveled any farther than Europe. So Darren and I decided to go to Turkey on our honeymoon. I wanted to hear the call to prayer. I wanted to see a tiny piece of one of the countries I’d researched. And when we got there I couldn’t stop taking notes. I saw women with their heads covered walking down the street, talking to women with hair falling around their shoulders. I pulled out a ticket stub and scribbled a message to myself to suggest a scene like that in our next episode, but with aliens, of course.

“Enough with the writing!” Darren said. “We’re here on our honeymoon. Work is back in New York. I haven’t checked in with the office once since we’ve been here, and you haven’t stopped scribbling and muttering to yourself.”

I stopped midword. “My work is important to me,” I said. But then I remembered what I told you when you’d called. “But you and I are more important. I’ll stop.” And I did.

Still, I couldn’t help thinking about what it would’ve been like if it were you and me on that trip. You wouldn’t have asked me to stop—you would have suggested things too. And we both would have been looking out for great opportunities for photographs, just like we did when we walked holes through the soles of our sneakers in Manhattan.

•   •   •

DARREN’S AND MY TRIP took us to Cappadocia, where we toured a landscape that looked like the moon and took off right before dawn in a hot-air balloon that rose up just in time for us to see the sunrise. It was exquisite—a swirl of pinks and oranges and purples—and Darren had his arms wrapped around me, keeping me warm, making me feel loved in the middle of the sky’s majesty. But I couldn’t stop thinking about those women. I wished I had spoken to them, asked them what their lives were like, what they would want American kids to know about Turkey.

•   •   •

LATER, DARREN AND I were at a spot called Devrent Valley. Darren read from the guidebook, “‘Devrent or “Imagination” Valley is filled with rock formations that look like people and animals. Spend time discovering what you see in the rocks.’”

I stood next to him, seeing a camel and a dolphin and a snake in a hat.

“I think that one looks like the Virgin Mary,” he said, pointing to a pillar. “What do you think, Mrs. Maxwell?” He’d been calling me Mrs. Maxwell the whole trip, which at first I found sweet and funny but then started to irritate me. I’d told him I’d take his name personally, but I was still going to be Lucy Carter at work. Is that how I’m keyed into your phone? Or did you change my name when Darren and I married? Your boss called me Lucy Carter Maxwell. You did too, actually. I guess that’s how you think of me.

I stared at the rock that Darren was facing, looking for a mother and child, looking for a veil. “I just see a man holding a camera,” I said.