Page 134 of Atmosphere

“Thank you, sir,” Joan said.

She picked Frances up from her first day back at school that afternoon, but could not remember anything else she did that day.

For two weeks, Joan pretended,with every cell in her brain, that she needed time to figure out a plan.

But she knew what she had to do.

Instead, she hid.

She dropped Frances off at school every morning and then scheduled as much time as she could flying. She took any meetings she could off campus. She made appointments to see two-bedroom apartments in Frances’s school district so that she and Frances could be moved in by the new year.

When the phone rang, she let Vanessa leave messages on her machine. And then she called Vanessa only when she knew she’d be out, and left messages on hers.

She took Frances to pick out a Christmas tree, to buy ornaments. The two of them decorated it together. As they did, Frances asked if Joan would be willing to talk to her class about going to space.

Joan was thrilled to be asked, thrilled by the idea of making Frances proud. “Of course!” she said. But she could notfeelthe joy she knew was in her.

She was numb to almost everything.

Except for those moments in the middle of the night, while Frances slept but Joan could not. It was only then that she gave in to the profound sorrow, and wept as quietly as she could.

She had known from the moment she’d left Antonio’s office what had to come next. And she could not bear it.

It had been easy to avoid Vanessa at first, because Vanessa’s schedule was incredibly intense. She was only weeks out from her mission. But then, as Vanessa got more insistent about seeing Joan before leaving, it suddenly wasn’t easy at all.

“So I’ll come over the night before I leave,” Vanessa said whenJoan finally picked up the phone. “Because I have to see you both just one more time.”

“Right, of course,” Joan said.

“Is everything okay?” Vanessa asked.

“Yeah, everything’s great. We’re excited to see you,” Joan said as she found herself agreeing to what felt like her own execution.

That night, Vanessa cheerfully brought over a pizza and helped Frances with her homework as Joan’s heart raged in her chest.

Tomorrow morning, Hank, Griff, Lydia, Steve, and Vanessa would all fly to Cape Canaveral to begin preparations for their mission at the end of the month. Maybe this could wait until Vanessa came back.

The three of them played a game of Scrabble in which Joan could think of no good moves and Vanessa kept looking at her, confused.

“You didn’t notice you could put theqin ‘quit’ on the triple letter score?” she asked Joan.

“Oh,” Joan said. “Sorry.”

“Better for me!” Frances said, using Joan’sqto play “queue” with the rest of her tiles and win the whole thing.

“All right, babe,” Joan said. “Brush teeth, get your pajamas on, and I’ll be in to kiss you good night in a moment.”

Frances went into the bedroom.

“Okay, what’s going on?” Vanessa said.

“Hm?” Joan cleared the table. But as she walked by Vanessa, Vanessa took her arm.

“Joan, what is going on?” Vanessa said again.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Joan said.

“Joanie!” Frances called out. “Can you help me roll out my bed?”

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