Crestfallen, needing air, he stepped outside.

A neighbor’s voice, so close and urgent in the dark, startled him. “Look!” she said. Just in time he caught the streak of a meteor, and in its disappearance another bright trace against the stars.

“Look!” he said.

And that had to be enough.

M. Henninger-Voss is an award-winning historian, a personalist, and writer of essays, fiction, and poetry.