"I want to be everything," he said, stopping the car a safe ten feet from the pond. "Everything to you."

She wasn't ready to look at him. So she stared at the dashboard instead, dusty blue leather and beyond it, glass, trees, water. The moon, and they were going to put a man up there in the next few years, or so the President had said. There was late frost on the windshield, and she felt it on her skin, creeping under her cardigan. "What's everything?"

He laughed, the gentle laugh she loved. "Well, what do you want?"

A lover. Friend. Provider? No. She knew it at her core, where the chill couldn't touch her, where there was always fire: she had to take care of herself. And she would--crossing her fingers on top of knee--if she could make it through the next four years.

He saw her hand move and covered it in the dark with his own. "This isn't a test."

But it was. And he was so sure she would pass, like he was sure of everything: that he could find a way to feed poor children, that there was healing in her hands. So sure. If she even breathed doubt she felt like she'd already failed. "You can't just ask me things like that," she said.

"Sorry." He released her hand, and moved his arm to her shoulders. The shock of brown hair falling onto his forehead was silver in the moonlight, and his eyes like stars. "It's simple."

"Really?"

"No. Yes. I want the best things in the world for us, Abbey. I want to make this the best world for us."

"Can you do that?"

"I can do anything." He leaned closer, and she remembered that stars were burning, even when they twinkled. "Everyone says so."

Everyone did. No one ever said that about her, expecting that she'd have babies and give the rest up. Just like her mother, like everyone's mother. But he loved to hear her talk about medicine. He believed in her as an article of faith. She shivered. "I won't go to England with you."

His face was as calm as still water, or the sky. "I know."

"You don't mind?"

"I'll wait."

He would, and they both knew it. She wondered if she could do the same. She wanted to; feared anything that might change her mind. But she looked at him, and thawed, and smiled. "Just don't start naming our children."

"Edward and Elizabeth," he said with a straight face, and he was kissing her.

With his hands in her hair, she felt the earth fall away. The used Ford was a satellite, and gravity was gone--physics was never her field. She could taste the future on his tongue, feel it where his fingers brushed against her body. When they stopped to breathe, she was the one laughing.

"I want the moon," she said.

"It's yours," he replied, and for the moment she believed him.