Star Dust (21 page)

Being called in to Parsons’s office three days before the launch was a bad sign.
 

Kit forced himself to be loose-limbed, assured, even though the hard plastic chair was already putting his ass to sleep. But he wouldn’t give Parsons the satisfaction of flinching. Or of appearing as anything but supremely confident.

No one else had been called into see Parsons, so he couldn’t ask the other guys what was going on. When Parsons went on a tear, the Perseid Six liked to be unified.

Parsons stared back, impassive and blank. He wasn’t angry, which should have been good. But he was always angry, so it wasn’t good. Basically, where Parsons was concerned, there was no good.

“I should tell you right off,” Parsons started, the usual dislike in his voice, “that I don’t approve of this decision.”

Kit kept silent. He didn’t even know what decision Parsons meant, but he wasn’t going to admit that.
United front. No cracks.

And a decision this close to launch? Kit’s muscles tensed, as if his chair were shifting.

Parsons steepled his fingers and tapped them together. Still not angry—more pensive. And maybe worried?

What the hell was going on? And was Parsons ever going to say it?

“Reynolds is out,” Parsons finally announced.

“What?” Kit came to sharp attention, all of him tingling.

What had happened? For them to pull Reynolds three days before launch, it must have been serious. Reynolds scored highest on all the tests, never made a mistake during drills—he was Parsons’s dream astronaut.
 

Which was why Reynolds was the lead and Kit was backup.

But Reynolds was out.

Kit drew in a jagged breath, adrenaline surging in his veins. Why was Parsons so calm? Given how tightly wound the engineer was, the man ought to be close to exploding. Instead, he was studying Kit with detached disdain.

Perhaps because Kit was the new lead? Kit’s lungs tightened.
Parsons hasn’t said that you’re the lead. Not yet.

“His kid got appendicitis,” Parsons said. “He claims he wants to stay to be with the kid, but his wife must be insisting on it.” He shook his head. “To be so goddamned hen-pecked that you’d scuttle a launch for your wife…”

And the wives and kids—the ones who get left behind—do they think it’s a fair trade?

Frances Reynolds hadn’t thought so. And apparently neither had her husband.

Anne-Marie hadn’t sounded as if she thought it a fair trade either.

He couldn’t think about her just now. He had to be focused on the mission. Which had now changed.

“Will Robbie be okay?” Kit asked.

“They think so. Which makes Reynolds’s decision all the more ridiculous.”

Think so
didn’t sound very encouraging to Kit. Maybe Anne-Marie knew more. He could ask her tonight.

And Parsons still hadn’t said who was the new lead.

“I wanted unmarried men from the very beginning,” Parsons went on. “Unmarried men have fewer distractions. But PR insisted that married men presented a better image. And now look what’s happened!”

What had happened? Was Kit going to space?

The screws digging into his lungs tightened further. If Parsons didn’t get to it soon, Kit would just come out and ask him. Screw putting up an impassive front.

Parsons sighed, his fingertips tapping out a staccato beat. “You’re the lead. In three days, you’re going to be orbiting Earth.”

He was going.
He was going.

“I… I’m happy to serve my country and the mission.” Trite, hollow words, nothing like the maelstrom churning within him. But he couldn’t very well shout,
I’m going to space, I’m going to space!

All the training, the drills, his childhood dreams of seeing the stars—he was going. The adrenaline was sharp in his mouth, but he swallowed and steadied himself.

No need to say any more than that.

“Hmm.” Parsons wasn’t convinced. “You need to be focused. No more sloppiness like with the hatch blowing. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that.”

Kit didn’t bother to point out once again that it hadn’t been his fault. He was going to space. “Yes, sir.”

He could afford to kiss Parsons’s ass at the moment. He couldn’t wait to tell Anne-Marie. And the kids—the kids would be over the moon.

He almost laughed at that.
Over the moon.

“At least you’re not married,” Parsons said grudgingly.

Kit froze.

“No, sir.” Anne-Marie wasn’t his wife. Freddie and Lisa weren’t his kids. No matter how it had felt during the dinner party. And after, when he’d held her…

“What about this divorcee?”

Shit.
Of course Parsons would hear things—engineers gossiped as much as the rest of them.

How to answer?
She’s my neighbor
was true—but she was more than that. They’d agreed last night—they were both reaching for more.

She’s my lover.
It was true too. They might both be reaching for more, but Kit had come to more all on his own a while ago. And he would have told her so last night if she hadn’t stopped him.

Parsons wouldn’t understand that. Love couldn’t be engineered and was therefore irrelevant to him. Worse than irrelevant: Parsons would see Anne-Marie as a distraction.

He’d just demanded Kit’s full focus for the next three days.

Kit ought to deny anything was between them. But after last night—after promising her they’d find a way together—it felt like a betrayal. Of her. Of them.

But if he admitted how he felt for her… he might not be going.

He could reach for her or the moon. Just not both at the same time.

“She’s just my neighbor.” Saying those words pulled his heart into a jerky rhythm, but he kept on. “Her kids take care of my dog when I’m at the Cape. And that’s it.” He put a point on those last three words, a warning to Parsons to drop it.

“You’re sure?” Parsons’s voice was cool.

“Of course.”
Liar.

Parsons didn’t look relieved by his admission. What would Kit have to do to convince the man? Besides denying his feelings for Anne-Marie, of course. His fingers tightened on the chair and he wished desperately for a stick of Juicy Fruit. Anything to help work off this tension.

“I need everything to be perfect,” Parsons said, gesturing for emphasis. “You, the equipment, the calculations: nothing can fail. The Soviets beat us to space, put a man up before we did. If we lose…”

A chill ran across Kit’s skin. It wasn’t only his childhood desire to go to space or his relationship with Anne-Marie at stake here. The nation’s future was riding on this.

“You don’t have to remind me,” he said, steady as anything. “I know my duty.” Kit had spent his entire adult life serving his country—he knew his duty better than Parsons ever could.

“I hope so. All those rockets that failed, all those cosmonauts triumphant in Red Square—I have nightmares about it.” The engineer rubbed a hand over his face as if to erase the echoes of those nightmares.

Kit had never known Parsons cared so much. He’d always had the impression that Parsons considered the space program his personal set of toys and resented the rest of them for touching them. But this confession was almost… human.

“This is everything I’ve ever wanted,” Kit assured him solemnly. “I know you and I have had our differences, but I won’t let anything jeopardize this mission.”

And if his growing relationship with Anne-Marie was a threat to the mission, then he’d deny it. He’d walk away—for the moment at least. Once he came back, they could take up where they left off. Could move together toward more.

She’d understand. All those confessions of his under the stars—she’d have to understand.

“I’m glad to hear that,” Parsons said, displaying the first bit of warmth Kit had seen from him. “But I still would have preferred if Reynolds hadn’t backed out.”

Kit gave a half-shrug. “Fair enough.” No matter what Parsons thought, Reynolds was out.

Kit was going.

“No distractions,” Parsons said again. “Nothing but your total focus on this for the next three days.”

“You’ll have it.” His country deserved nothing less.

Parsons rose and held out his hand and Kit wiped a sweaty palm on his pants before taking it.

“Congratulations, Commander Campbell. You’re going to space. And I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure you come back in one piece.”

Someone was crying in the bathroom.

Anne-Marie stood in the corridor at work, one hand resting nervously against the bathroom door. Should she stick her head in and check? Scurry back to her desk and pretend she hadn’t heard a thing?

She tried to jiggle the handle, but it wouldn’t budge. Locked.

Inside, the muffled crying turned to sobs. That was it: She had to check.

Knocking softly on the door she said, “I’m sorry, but are you okay?”

Whoever was within took a few steps. Telltale heels clicked on the tiles. The crier was a woman, but she didn’t answer.

Anne-Marie knocked again. “Can you let me in? We can talk about whatever it is.”

The crier blew her nose and paced a bit. Several beats passed. Maybe the crier was waiting for Anne-Marie to go away. How long should she wait? She didn’t want to force a confidence. Whoever it was had chosen to cry in the work bathroom—but had probably still expected a measure of privacy.

Finally the lock snapped open and the door pulled back to reveal Roberta.

Well, that was unexpected.

Since she’d started work, Anne-Marie had gotten respectable at her job. She’d finished with the backlog of reservations and made friends with almost everyone. But the blonde office manager remained aloof. Anne-Marie had the sense Roberta continued to gossip about her. She frequently came around the corner into thickets of whispering that abruptly hushed. Her colleagues’ eyes would be guilty, and Roberta would smirk. The woman just did not like her.

Anne-Marie supposed most people would feel triumphant about finding Roberta crying in the bathroom. But she didn’t feel vindicated or pleased. There was something sad about this.

She stepped inside and closed the door. “Are you okay?” she asked as evenly as she could.

“Yes.” Roberta wouldn’t look at her. She dabbed at her cheeks with wadded-up toilet paper. The mass was smudged with foundation and blush.

Anne-Marie waited and then asked, “If you’re all right, why are you crying in the bathroom?”

Roberta didn’t answer. She tossed the paper into the trash and pulled some lipstick out of her purse. She touched up in the mirror and then clicked the tube shut with enough force to rattle Anne-Marie’s teeth. Wrenching her purse open, she threw the lipstick inside. Her chin wobbled and she shook herself. At last she turned.

“Why did you leave your husband?” The question was a demand. A plea. An enquiry. As far as Anne-Marie knew, Roberta was unmarried. But whether for herself or someone else, the other woman wanted to know why Anne-Marie had committed that unforgivable sin.

Anne-Marie swallowed and then spit out, “He was unfaithful. As far as I could tell, once I figured it out and put together the pieces, he’d never been faithful. It… it made a sham out of my life and our family. I couldn’t put up with it.”

“What happened? When you left?”

Anne-Marie crossed her arms over her midsection and leaned against the wall. “No one thought I should leave. Not my friends. Not my parents. No one. It wasn’t easy. They thought I would fail—they told me so. But I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t let the kids grow up in that, thinking that it was normal—that I thought marriage should be like that.”

“But you didn’t fail.” Roberta wasn’t asking a question now. Her tone wasn’t ironic or mocking. And that Roberta didn’t think Anne-Marie was a failure was a very interesting turn of events.

“No, I didn’t,” she said with a shake of her head.

Roberta nodded and turned back to the mirror. With practiced sweeps, she started to rearrange her hair, to put every strand back into its proper place.

The tension in the bathroom had eased. Maybe Anne-Marie should start telling the story to everyone she met—or at least all the women.

Anne-Marie waited, knowing Roberta might want to share whatever had driven her in here. Or at least wanting to give her space to do so.

Finally Roberta said, “My sister’s husband is an ass.”

Anne-Marie snorted but didn’t press. Now that the confession had started, it was all going to come out.

“No, he is,” the other woman insisted. “He’s not faithful. He yells. He… he’s an ass.”

There were many varieties of asses, Anne-Marie supposed. So she asked, “Does he hit her?”

Doug, whatever his faults, hadn’t been violent. She suspected that had he been, the reaction to the divorce might have been different—but she wasn’t certain of that. Plenty of women’s husbands did hit them and still they were told to stay.

“No, nothing like that.” Roberta waved her hand. “Though he has a temper. He’s just…
This
”—meaning modern marriage—“is supposed to work because men are supposed to be caretakers. He’s just
not
.”

Anne-Marie understood. She’d left college. She’d raised children. She’d given dinner parties and made Doug’s career the center of her world. And in exchange, he’d ignored her and their vows. He’d turned her sacrifices to rubbish with every hotel room he’d traipsed into with strange women, with every night he’d been late while sleeping with a secretary or kissing someone else’s wife at a party.