Naomi couldn’t help as much with the first two, but the last had become her area of expertise. NASA needed her more than Hawthorne did at present.

It had been risky, to be that brass-necked and state that they needed her. She’d channelled her inner Valerie Black. She wasn’t sure she could get away with it, or if the all-male panel would decide she was too arrogant. But it’d paid off.

Naomi packed up the rest of her things and officially moved in with Cole, who was already based out in Houston. They’d dated long distance for eight months, then gotten married. Even after marriage, they’d scandalised Cole’s parents by staying long distance until she got the job with NASA.

The week before training started, as she tidied away the last of her things, she realised her period was almost two weeks late.

She hadn’t thought much of it. Her cycle had rarely been regular. At the first sign of extra stress, it’d disappear for months at a time, then return when life calmed down. But for the last few months, she’d been regular within a week or so, even if her cycle was longer than the standard twenty-eight days.

The day before training, she slunk into a convenience store on the other end of town, a cap over her hair and her most opaque filter mask over the lower half of her face and bought a pregnancy test. Just in case.

She jiggled her knees as she waited for the results.

She did the mental math. She was maybe two weeks late. She and Cole were finally living together and the novelty still hadn’t worn off. When he came home from work, she’d reach for him almost as soon as he was through the door. He oversaw astronaut candidates in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, training them for spacewalks in the vast underwater pool. He always smelled of chlorine, his hair brittle beneath her fingertips.

They’d been careful. Cole had agreed to go on the male contraceptive pill, as hormones had never agreed with Naomi even if they regulated her cycle. They deeply affected her mood. They had still used condoms.

Cole must have forgotten to take it one morning with his orange juice and coffee. That and a broken condom was all it took.

It could be the stress of starting training had thrown her off again. This wasn’t the first time she’d taken a pregnancy test, just in case. Previous ones had always come back negative. This one shouldn’t have been any different. Naomi called herself a fool a dozen times as she stared at the little stick with its accusing blue lines.