Page 87 of Atmosphere

“I love you!”

“I love you, too.”

“You are the best sister in the whole wide world, and the best aunt in the world, too.”

“All right,” Joan said. “I’ll get her to school on Monday, and you will pick her up.”

“Thank you, I love you.”

And then she was gone.

Before Joan could think about much else, she went and opened the bathroom door. Vanessa was sitting on the closed toilet lid, reading the ingredients on the back of the shampoo bottle.

“How do you think you pronounce j-o-j-o-b-a?” she said.

Joan told her. “Frances is sleeping here tonight. She’s with me all weekend.”

Vanessa put the shampoo back in the shower. “Yeah, I heard. I’ll get my stuff and get out of here.”

“Thank you, I’m sorry.”

Vanessa kissed her on the temple. “Please do not worry about it. Frances comes first.”

Vanessa started packing her things up. Joan watched her.

“Frances and I will have fun this weekend. I just…I don’t understand my sister.”

“Well, not to overstep by agreeing too quickly, but from what I just heard, I don’t understand her, either,” Vanessa said. She put her arms around Joan, and Joan sank into her. “But it seems like Frances is very lucky to have you. To have someone as incredible as you to love her as much as you do.”

Joan nodded, although she was tempted to shake her head. Frances wasn’t the lucky one. Joan was. It felt so good to love Frances. Joan’s love for her had not been Joan’s gift to Frances, butFrances’s gift to Joan.

“So do I take Barb at face value?” Joan asked. “That she’s dropping Frances off with me because she’s trying to make their lives better in the long term?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you’ll only know in time. But I can sit here with you, until you want to go to sleep. And I can rub your feet.”

Joan chuckled. “I mean,it would help.”

“C’mon,” Vanessa said. Joan sat down on the couch and Vanessa rubbed her feet, and soon, Joan felt the world go fuzzy and she could feel Vanessa putting a blanket on her.

—

In the morning, Joan wokeup to see that Vanessa was gone and Frances was standing in front of her, her hair sticking straight up in the back.

“Joanie, what am I doing here? Where is Mom?”

“I asked your mom if I could have you for the weekend,” Joan said, her vision still blurry.

Frances jumped on top of Joan and startled her, Frances’s kneeshitting her in the ribs. Who cared? Who cared what hurt when Frances was this happy?

“Thank you, Joanie! Thank you!”

—

That Monday, Joan dropped Francesoff at school and then headed straight to the all-astronauts meeting. After that, she worked with one of the investigators on Spacelab through lunch. She’d need to get to the airfield by three—Hank had offered to let her fly with him that afternoon, and Joan was behind on her hours.

She went home to change and then head to the airfield, but just as she was about to leave—with her bomber jacket on, her aviator sunglasses in her pocket, her keys in her hand—the phone rang.

Joan almost ignored it. But she looked at the time and instantly knew exactly who it must be on the other end of that line.

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