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 not feel the 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 when Joan 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 the q in ‘quit’ on the triple letter score?” she asked Joan.

“Oh,” Joan said. “Sorry.”

“Better for me!” Frances said, using Joan’s q to 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?”

Joan went into the bedroom and set up the futon. She tucked her in and said good night.

When she shut the door behind herself, Vanessa was leaning against the kitchen counter, staring at her.

“Jo,” Vanessa said. “What is going on? I’m serious.”