The Comet Comes By

Ellie had been waiting for exactly twenty-three days, which, when you are seven years old, is basically forever.

Ever since Dad had circled the date on the kitchen calendar with a fat red marker, Ellie had been crossing off each day with a big blue X. And now, finally, finally, the last X was done.

Tonight was the night.

"Is it dark enough yet?" Ellie asked, pressing her nose against the screen door. The sky was still that purply-orange color it gets when the sun can't quite decide if it's done for the day.

"Not yet, Jellybean," said Mom, carrying a tray of hot chocolate out to the porch. "The comet won't be visible until after nine."

"Nine o'CLOCK?" Ellie flopped onto the porch swing so dramatically that it swung sideways and bonked into the railing. "That's a MILLION years from now."

"It's forty-five minutes," said Mom.

"Same thing," said Ellie.

The porch was all set up like a little living room outside. Dad had dragged out the big quilt — the one with all the mismatched squares that Great-Grandma Mabel had sewn from old dresses and shirts and even a pair of curtains. There were lawn chairs and pillows and a whole plate of gingersnap cookies that Ellie had helped bake that afternoon, even though "helped" mostly meant she'd eaten a lot of dough.

The screen door creaked open, and there was Great-Grandma Mabel herself, moving slowly with her walker, wearing her favorite green cardigan and a wool hat even though it was June.

"Is it here yet?" Great-Grandma Mabel asked.

"No!" said Ellie. "We have to wait a MILLION years."

"Oh, good," said Great-Grandma Mabel. "That means I'm right on time." She winked, and Ellie ran over to help her settle into the big cushioned chair Dad had carried out especially for her.

Great-Grandma Mabel was ninety-one years old. Ellie thought about that number a lot. Ninety-one meant she had been alive for longer than trees. Well, not all trees. But definitely some of them.

"Okay," said Ellie, climbing up onto the quilt next to Great-Grandma Mabel's chair. "Tell me again."

"Tell you what again?" said Great-Grandma Mabel, pretending she didn't know.

"GREAT-GRANDMA."

"Oh! You mean the story?"

"YES. The story."

Great-Grandma Mabel reached for a gingersnap and took a slow bite. Ellie waited. Great-Grandma Mabel chewed. Ellie waited MORE. Great-Grandma Mabel brushed a crumb off her cardigan.

"GREAT-GRANDMA."

"All right, all right." She smiled, and her eyes got that faraway look, like she was reading a book that nobody else could see.

"I was sixteen years old," she began. "It was 1950. My daddy woke me up in the middle of the night — and I mean the middle, Ellie, it was two o'clock in the morning. He said, 'Mabel, get your coat. There's something in the sky you need to see, because you won't see it again until you're an old, old lady.'"

"And were you grumpy?" Ellie asked, because she would definitely be grumpy if someone woke her up at two in the morning.

"Absolutely grumpy," said Great-Grandma Mabel. "I put my coat on over my pajamas and stomped outside like a bear with a sore tooth. And then I looked up."

She paused.

"And?" said Ellie, even though she'd heard this part eleven times before.

"And I forgot every grumpy feeling I'd ever had in my whole life."

Ellie hugged her knees.

"It had a tail, Ellie. A great long tail, stretched across the sky like someone had taken a paintbrush dipped in silver and just — swooshed it across the dark. And it was so quiet outside that I could hear my own heart beating. My daddy put his arm around me and he said, 'That comet has been traveling for seventy-five years to get back here. Last time it came by, my grandmother saw it. And next time it comes by, maybe your granddaughter's granddaughter will see it.'"

Ellie's eyes went wide. "That's ME! I'm the granddaughter's granddaughter!"

"That's you," said Great-Grandma Mabel softly.

Mom sat down on the porch steps and pulled the quilt over her lap. "I was so jealous growing up," she said. "All my friends had grandparents who'd seen the Grand Canyon or the Eiffel Tower. My grandma had seen a comet."

"Way better," said Ellie.

"Way better," Mom agreed.

Dad came out with the binoculars and handed a pair to Ellie. They were heavy and smelled like the leather case they lived in. Ellie put them up to her eyes and saw a very blurry close-up of her own thumb.

"You might want to point those at the sky," Dad said.

The purple-orange was fading now. The first stars were poking through, tiny and shy, like they weren't sure if anyone was watching. Ellie sat on the quilt and leaned against Great-Grandma Mabel's knee, and Great-Grandma Mabel rested her hand on Ellie's hair.

"Great-Grandma?" Ellie said quietly.

"Mmm?"

"Were you scared? When your dad said you wouldn't see it again until you were old?"

Great-Grandma Mabel thought about this. "No," she said. "I think I was excited. It meant I had a whole big life ahead of me. All those years between one comet and the next, full of things I hadn't done yet." She squeezed Ellie's shoulder. "And look at all the things that fit in there. I got married. I had your grandma. Your grandma had your mom. Your mom had you. I learned to drive a truck. I burned approximately four hundred casseroles. I read so many books that the library gave me my own shelf."

"They did NOT give you your own shelf."

"They should have."

Ellie laughed, and then the porch got quiet. Crickets sang their creaky songs. A dog barked somewhere far away. The sky turned from deep blue to blue-black to black, and the stars stopped being shy and came all the way out, hundreds and hundreds of them, more than Ellie had ever noticed before.

"There," said Dad suddenly. He pointed.

Ellie looked. At first she didn't see anything different. Just stars and more stars and the dark tops of the maple trees. But then —

"Oh," she whispered.

There it was.

It wasn't like a shooting star, quick and gone. It was there, really there, hanging in the sky like it had always been there and she just hadn't looked hard enough before. A bright, steady glow with a tail that swept behind it, soft and pale, like breath on a cold morning.

Nobody said anything for a long time.

Ellie lifted the binoculars. This time she pointed them at the sky. The comet jumped closer, and she could see that the tail wasn't just white — it had blue in it, and the faintest shimmer of gold, and it was so beautiful that her throat got tight in a way she didn't totally understand.

She lowered the binoculars and looked at Great-Grandma Mabel.

Great-Grandma Mabel was crying. But she was smiling too, bigger than Ellie had ever seen her smile, and she lifted one hand toward the sky like she was waving hello to an old friend.

"There you are," Great-Grandma Mabel whispered. "Right on time."

Ellie crawled up onto the arm of the chair and tucked herself against Great-Grandma Mabel's side. They watched together. Mom and Dad stood with their arms around each other, looking up. The comet didn't seem to move — or maybe it did, but so slowly that you'd never catch it, like the hour hand on a clock.

"Great-Grandma?" Ellie said after a while.

"Mmm?"

"When it comes back next time — in seventy-five years — I'll be eighty-two."

"That's right."

Ellie stared at the comet. She tried to imagine being eighty-two. She tried to imagine all the years between now and then, stretched out like that long, shimmering tail. All those days she hadn't lived yet. All those things she hadn't done.

She couldn't picture it. Not really. It was too big.

But for the first time, too big felt wonderful.

"I'll sit right here on this porch," Ellie said. "And I'll tell someone the story."

Great-Grandma Mabel kissed the top of her head.

"I know you will," she said.

Above them, the comet kept going — the way it always had, the way it always would — steady and bright, trailing silver across the dark, on its way to somewhere far away, already beginning the long, long journey back.