Page 7 of Starlight & Dark Nights

“Mission control to Gemini,” comes a voice through their headsets. “This is Arvin North.”

Derek snaps to attention, leaving the reverie of his family behind for the moment. He’d expected Bill Booker’s voice.

“Gemini to mission control,” Murphy Hendricks responds for them. The three astronauts look at one another with curiosity.

“Men, I’ll be replacing Booker on this mission. All systems are go on this front. On-board checks completed?”

“Checks completed,” the three men say in unison.

“Good. Countdown starts in five minutes.”

The men exchange another look, but none of them bring up the topic of Booker’s removal; there’ll be time to discuss that later.

When the countdown begins, Hendricks and Young stay focused on the panel before them, and Derek runs through the mental checklist of his own responsibilities, preparing himself for what’s to come. Space. Leading his first real mission. This is the start of something enormous.

“T-minus ten seconds,” comes the voice from mission control. Derek braces himself. His heart begins to race. “Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. And, liftoff!”

“Godspeed, men,” a second voice crackles over their headsets. It’s Arvin North.

It’s the last thing Derek Trager, Bob Young, and Murphy Hendricks hear as the shuttle bursts into flames.

CHAPTER2

January 1965

JUDE

Hope and Faith,whose eighth birthday is the following day, are standing in the middle of the living room, arguing over a doll.

“I got that for Christmas,” Hope says, glowering at her identical twin. “Santa brought that forme.”

“You can share, Hopey,” Faith says in a bossy tone of voice. “Mama said we have toshareeverything.”

Jude is standing in the kitchen as her girls go back and forth over this damn doll, and it’s taking all of her willpower not to add a splash of vodka to her orange juice to soothe her jangled nerves.

Being a mother has been one of the great joys of her life, though Jude doesn’t think that it’s a job she does particularly well. When she’d gone into the hospital to give birth, she’d expected to come home with one giant, lumbering baby boy. A baby who would turn into a toddler and tumble all over in the grass, break things, and show a natural curiosity for the world that might guide him on his own adventures, leaving Jude free to mostly observe.

Instead, she’d been handed a tiny, squirming baby girl covered in slippery vernix, and the doctor had immediately gone back down between her legs, telling her to keep pushing. Much to Jude’s dismay, a second girl had emerged, and Vance, her patient, stoic husband—waiting outside the delivery room as fathers generally did—had been informed that he had not one boy, but instead, two girls. He’d come in to Jude’s room as soon as he was allowed, standing aside from her hesitantly, a look of shock on his handsome face.

“So,” Vance had said, laughing and crying at the same time. “I guess we have two weddings to pay for.”

Jude, flooded with hormones and exhaustion and terror, had begun to sob openly. “Twins,” she said, shaking her head. “I had no idea.”

Vance laughed louder. “Honey,” he’d said. “How could you have known? It was a total surprise.”

“But what will I do withgirls?” she asked, her eyes skating towards the window and focusing on the gray sky outside the hospital window. They were living in Texas at that point, and the January day was overcast, but not rainy.

Vance shrugged. “You’ll love them. You’ll read to them and sing to them and raise them up right. You’ll teach them everything you know about being a woman and a mother.”

His words were meant to be soothing, but instead, they’d struck fear into Jude’s heart. How could she teach anyone how to be a woman and a mother when she barely remembered her own mother? When her sole impression of womanhood was a stepmother who had shunned her for most of her childhood? She’d had a few teachers to whom she’d looked at with admiration; women of superior patience and femininity, but as far as a mother figure…well, she hadn’t seen her own mother since 1941.

“Jude?” Vance had asked gently, as if he were calling her back down from a high place, begging her to join him. “Everything is going to be okay. I know you’re tired right now and probably hurting, but I promise, things will be good. The babies are healthy and they’re beautiful.”

“Do they look…” Jude couldn’t bear to finish the question. She’d spent her life trying to look as American as she possibly could, and it was so ingrained in her, the importance of blending in, that she immediately wanted that for her daughters.

“They look gorgeous,” Vance had said forcefully. “Perfect in every way.”

Once he’d left to get a cup of coffee and to look at the babies in the nursery, Jude had allowed herself to stare at the sky until it lulled her into a hazy sleep-state. While dozing, she considered all the many ways she’d tried to acclimate and assimilate to her surroundings over the years: she’d stopped speaking Japanese altogether, to the point that it was but a distant memory that tickled the back of her brain now. She’d immersed herself in all things American: the music, the movies, the pop culture. And, as a teenager, she’d gone so far as to start dying her dark hair a mousy blonde, though there was nothing she could do about her dark eyes. It had all worked, at least in Jude’s estimation, to help her blend in and be what she needed to be to survive, but she feared for her brand-new baby girls that they’d spend their entire lives doing the same thing: trying to be something different, something elusive, somethingbetterthan what they were.

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