Page 42 of The Space Between

“Yes!” Rebecca says, tearing up slightly. “A little girl. They called her Lisa. So sweet. I’ve seen photos.”

“Well, that’s wonderful,” Jeanie says genuinely. It is wonderful. A little girl. Imagine that. Her eyes lose focus for a moment as she pictures herself pregnant, then holding a swaddled newborn. Being a mother to someone who will soon walk, talk, cry, and turn into a fully formed human. The very idea seems more outlandish to Jeanie than being chosen right here, today, to be on a mission to the moon. “That’s really something.”

Some of the men go for second slices of cake, but Jeanie notices that most women don’t even finish a first piece before trickling away, leaving their plates and forks in a large garbage can that’s been wheeled in for the occasion. Peter is standing beneath a twisted blue streamer that someone has pinned over his desk, and the only guys left over there chatting with him are two or three men from mission control.

Jeanie tosses her own uneaten cake into the trash and walks out into the hallway alone. It’s almost quitting time, and she’s ready to head home to her usual Thursday night lineup ofDonna Reed, My 3 Sons,andBewitched.If she can stay awake late enough, she might even watchPeyton Place. Maybe.

The sound of men laughing fades into the distance as Jeanie walks back to her desk to gather her things.

CHAPTER 20

Bill

Peter Abernathy is an alright guy,but Bill isn’t much for birthday celebrations at work. He never has been. Still, Peter is turning thirty, which is a big deal, so he joins in, accepting an oversized slice of cake from the Stardust Beach Bakery.

“Howdy, Lieutenant Colonel,” Derek Trager says, sidling up to Bill with his own plate of cake. The office space has been transformed into a watered-down attempt at a party, with one sad string of streamers hanging over Peter Abernathy’s desk. But the younger man seems thrilled by all the hullabaloo, so Bill plasters a smile on his face and elbows Derek as he takes a bite of cake.

“Hey, Trager. How are the wife and kids?”

“All good. Yours?”

“Never better,” Bill replies. It’s a typical exchange for guys who haven’t launched into sports or work talk yet, and after they’ve covered the niceties, they eat cake in peace for a couple of minutes as the other men tell loud jokes. Bill laughs in all the right places, then passes on a second slice of cake as one of the secretaries comes around offering more.

“I see Jeanie’s back and mingling again. Good to see her up and at ‘em. Couldn’t have been easy on the kid to be in an accident where her sister almost died,” Derek says, lifting his chin in Jeanie’s direction. Across the office space, Jeanie is standing with Rebecca Short, and they’re both picking delicately at their slices of cake as Rebecca looks at Jeanie with something that appears to be disbelief and concern.

“Yeah, it sounded pretty rough,” Bill says. “And it is good to have her back. She’s been pretty quiet, and I know she was hurt in the accident, so I admire her for getting back to it.” It’s about all he can say about Jeanie without his emotions getting the better of him.

Ever since he’d been taken off the orbital mission that’s set for December, Bill has turned every interaction he’s had with his coworkers over in his mind, and the only thing he can come up with is his conversation with Jeanie in the parking lot at The Black Hole. He’d revealed things to her in that moment that he’d never revealed to anyone—even Jo—and while he hadn’t regretted it then, he sure as hell regrets it now. Somehow she must have thought it was okay to share that information, whether with someone else on the floor, or with Arvin North directly, because not long after, Bill had been yanked off the mission.

“I heard a rumor that Pete here might ask her out,” Trager says, glancing at Abernathy with his pink cheeks and boyish flop of hair. Bill groans inwardly. He’s not a huge fan of Pete’s, and he can’t imagine that the goofus is good enough or interesting enough for Jeanie Florence.

“Huh,” Bill says noncommittally. Ed Maxwell is standing about ten feet away, and Bill suddenly remembers something he wanted to talk to Ed about. “Hey, will you excuse me?” he says to Trager.

Without waiting, he walks over to Ed and starts talking about Mickey Mantle’s home runs, trying to keep a serious look on his face so that Derek Trager won’t know that he just walked away mid-conversation to talk about baseball.

At the end of the day, much to his chagrin, Bill finds himself sharing an elevator car with none other than the birthday boy. He holds his briefcase in one hand and keeps the other in the pocket of his trousers as he watches the floors light up above the door.

“Have a good day, Abernathy?” Bill asks him out of politeness.

“You know, not bad for thirty,” Peter says. Bill can hear the grin in his voice. “Feels like a real milestone. I bet you remember.”

This grates on Bill’s nerves; it’s not that Peter is wrong—he is well beyond that milestone now—but it’s the presumption that Bill is some old, crotchety geezer that annoys him.

“Sure, I remember,” Bill says, turning his head, so he’s looking right at Peter Abernathy, with his rusty brown hair, his clean-shaven face that doesn’t yet grow a five o’clock shadow, and his eager eyes. “When I turned thirty, I had a wife and three kids, and a long military career behind me.”

Abernathy’s face falls slightly. This has quickly become a competition between the men, and Peter needs to decide whether he's going to accept the challenge or not.

“Good on you, Booker,” he says, his smile charging back to life as he himself turns to look at the numbers above the elevator door. “I kind of like being single at thirty, myself. There are a lot of, shall we say,desperateladies out there looking for love. Imagine: a woman gets to her late twenties, and no one has ever proposed, she starts to get anxious. She wants to settle down. She’s grateful when a man asks her out.”

Bill suppresses the urge to punch the guy. Abernathy sounds like a teenage boy who has never dated a woman before.

“In fact,” Peter says, “I was thinking of asking Jeanie Florence to go out with me. What do you think? You two seem pretty chummy—want to put in a good word for me?”

Bill’s blood instantly boils. It rushes through his veins and to his face, and he doesn’t trust himself to look right at Peter Abernathy. Instead, he flares his nostrils slightly and rocks back on his heels. “Interesting choice.”

“Do you know if she has a boyfriend?”

Bill squints his eyes, willing the elevator bell todingfor the first floor and for the doors to open. He holds his breath, and when the doors finally part to reveal the shiny floors of the quiet lobby, he gives Peter one last look.

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