In their backyard on a starry night in August, watching for meteors, she says, “It blows my mind to think the universe is expanding.”

“Mm,” he says.

“Do you not find that amazing?”

“I might when I get an answer to a certain question.”

“And that is?”

“Expanding into what?”

Jim Courter’s short stories have appeared in the United States, Canada, and England. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee and has won an Illinois Arts Council award for short fiction. His essays have appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Smithsonian, and on the op-ed pages of the Chicago Tribune and The Wall Street Journal. His mystery novel, Rhymes with Fool, was published in 2018 by Peasantry Press. First Things First: Ephemera and Offscourings of a Distracted Writer, a collection of essays, humor, and short stories, was published in 2019.