The way the universe had developed—the way God itself unfolded—was that Vanessa had been here for thirty-seven years.

But Joan had been given four of them.

She had been given so much of Vanessa when so few ever understood her at all. She had been given that face to sketch for the rest of her life. To spend her days trying and failing to capture her hair.

In this one moment of brilliant clarity—a clarity Joan knows she will lose her grasp on within seconds, and have to fight like hell for years to come back to—Joan understands that God gave her something spectacular. A love, and a life, beyond the confines of her imagination.

Small, slight, unimportant Joan. Just one person of five billion, on a small planet orbiting a small star, in a humble galaxy, one of billions of galaxies. Joan is so insignificant and yet, look what God had given her. Look at all that God had given her. Look at what no one will ever be able to take away.

Vanessa has gone into the ether.

And it will make Joan even more eager to take each breath.

What a world.

Joan hears a crackle in her headset. She lunges forward.

She watches Jack turn his gaze to the screens. All at once, they begin to update.

“—ston, this is Navigator. Do you read?”

The air rushes into Joan’s lungs. “Vanessa? Vanessa, are you there?”

And then Vanessa’s voice comes through, loud and clear.

“Houston, this is Navigator. Lydia Danes is alive. I’m about to land at Edwards.”

The entire room erupts into such loud cheering that Joan jumps.

“Navigator,” Joan says. “We read you.”

Vanessa lets out a wild sigh, sharp and whistling.

“Hi,” Vanessa says.

Joan takes a breath. “Hi.” She closes her eyes and smiles.

Maybe they had not asked for too much. Maybe they would get everything they wanted.

Acknowledgments

For the past few years, I’ve been joking with my family that I should dedicate this book to “artistic license.” It was incredibly challenging to get close to historically accurate in order to create Joan and Vanessa’s world. So much of my growth as a writer was in accepting that my work cannot and will never be flawless. I am flawed; my scope of understanding the world is limited. And thus, so is this book. But, with any luck, within the flaws there is something that can mean something to somebody.

What technical accuracy this story has is thanks to the books I’ve read—a selected list of which follows these acknowledgments—and to the people who agreed to help a stranger with a crazy idea.