“That came out wrong.” Naomi took another sip of wine. “I just mean people are selfish. I’m sure there are some people whose funerals are more about the living wanting to appear to mourn. Or hoping to impress someone else who might attend.” Naomi nodded towards Valerie, who was surrounded by a small gaggle of “mourners.”

“I take your point. How long before Valerie pitches Cavendish to the people here?” He scoffed. “What am I saying? She probably already has. I mean, the Man of Mars is here. Poster boy for the new world, surely.”

Naomi craned her neck to see better. She had clocked him on the other side of the boat. “How did Cole Palmer know your father?”

Evan’s mouth turned down. “Business. Sponsorship. Who knows.”

Naomi reached out for his hand. He started, looked down at their clasped fingers, then at the other people in the room. Pulled his hand away. Her palm smarted, as if burned.

They’d both spent years with outsiders viewing them as siblings, even though they hadn’t been raised together and weren’t related by blood in any way. Over the past year, she’d thought about that kiss, time and again, and wondered why she had been so worried about what people might have thought. Evidently Evan hadn’t come to the same conclusion.

Another mourner came up to Evan and she used it as an excuse to slip away from him. She moved towards Valerie and those caught in her orbit. Naomi saw Valerie’s lips form the words Cavendish and she stopped, as if hitting the transparent wall of her biome. Evan had been right. Even here, at her ex-husband’s funeral, Valerie wouldn’t stop the hustle.

Naomi took another glass of wine. Across the rooftop garden, Evan’s expression was shuttered. Naomi left the rooftop, heading back into Evan’s father’s apartment. She skulked through the rooms, an interloper, until she found a quiet, back sitting room. It was as smooth and minimalist as the rest of the penthouse, the walls lined with large, framed prints of the universe captured by the James Webb telescope. Daniel Kan had been taken by space as well, it seemed. Or his interior decorator had.

She’d finished her wine when the door opened. Naomi didn’t startle.

She expected Evan, but Cole Palmer paused, his hand still on the doorknob.

“Sorry,” he said. “Thought it’d be empty.”

“It’s all right,” she said. “You can sit, if you want. Escaping everyone wanting to meet the First Man of Mars?”

“Got it in one,” he said, with that megawatt smile she’d seen on countless news feeds, documentaries, and photos. It was always strange, to see someone in the flesh you’d only seen through the lens of a camera on a pixellated screen. But that was a real smile instead of the one put on for strangers knowing it’d be captured for the masses.