Page 12 of The Light Year

“Todd?” Barbie sets a hand on his knee tentatively. “Are you okay?”

Without opening his eyes, Todd blows out a loud breath. “I can’t do this, Barb. I can’t have surgery. I can’t be on sick leave. I was lucky to even get on that mission in the first place.” He opens his eyes and turns to look at his wife. “We all knew that Booker was a lock, but the other spots are always up for grabs.”

Barbie frowns. “What makes Bill a sure thing?”

“His seniority,” Todd says, ticking things off on his fingers. “His military experience. His relationship with Arvin North?—“

“What, do you mean that he kisses up to North?” Barbie wants to understand, and if there’s an unfair advantage for someone else in Todd’s work life—even if it’s the husband of someone she likes and respects very much—then Barbie wants to know about it.

“No, not like that,” Todd says, shaking his head. “But North favors him. It’s not widely broadcast or anything, but he has a special affinity for Bill. I mean, why else would he go to the trouble of rehabilitating Bill and having him lead a mission after he punched your brother, for God’s sake?”

Barbie turns her head to look out the window. She’d committed to not involving herself in the dramas of the men (even if one of the men in question is her only brother), and she isn’t really interested in parsing why Bill had felt compelled to hit Ted. Frankly, if she’s being honest with herself, there have been plenty of times in her own life when she would have liked to hit Ted.

“I guess he sees something in Bill,” Barbie says, knitting her hands together in her lap. The windows of the car are down, but it’s still hot in the September afternoon. The boys are being watched across the street from their house by Carrie, who agreed to take Heath and Henry in after the school bus dropped them off, and Carrie has had Huck with her all morning, so Barbie is starting to feel the itch to run over and get the kids.

“Which is fine,” Todd says, putting both hands on the steering wheel and squeezing it until his knuckles go white. “But there’s a lot of behavior being rewarded that, in my humble opinion, shouldn’t be.”

Barbie nods. “The fight,” she says knowingly.

“Right. The fight, the way Bill spends far too much time mooning over Jeanie Florence, the?—“

Barbie’s head snaps to attention and she turns to look at her husband. “Is that true? The whole thing about Bill and Jeanie kissing?”

It’s Todd’s turn to look at her quickly, and when their eyes meet, she knows that Todd knows more than he’s let on.

“Todd Roman!” Barbie shouts, thwacking his upper arm with the back of her hand. “It’s true! You knew about it!”

“How didyouknow about it?”

“Carrie mentioned it over coffee,” Barbie says with a shrug. “But I thought maybe it was just gossip, and I didn’t want to hear it or spread it around.”

“Well,” Todd says, looking resigned to the facts at hand. “I don’t think it’s just gossip. Bill is always watching her, and she’s always watching him, and the rumor is—between you and me, because please, I don’t want to get caught telling tales—that there’s actual video footage of them kissing in the stairwell on the night of the explosion at the Cape.”

“Wow,” Barbie says, blinking a few times. “Just wow, wow, wow.” Her mind immediately goes to Jo, as it had when Carrie first brought up the topic. How is this fair to Jo, who works her tail off for everyone else, and how is Bill going to carry on like this and humiliate a woman as solid and good as Josephine Booker? Barbie can hardly imagine it.

“I know.” Todd gives a single shake of his head. “And he’s not even canoodling with a Cape Cookie like Mack Poulson. He’s gotta muddy the waters at work, which is just bad form.”

“Wait!” Barbie whacks his arm again. “Mack Poulson is messing with a Cape Cookie? Doesn’t he have that nice wife and the five kids?” She is stunned and scandalized at the thought of a nice, clean-cut guy like Mack Poulson carrying on with a loose woman.

“Yeah, that’s Mack.” Todd looks so nonchalant about it that Barbie is even more scandalized. “Is this something thathappens a lot? Do the guys at NASA pick up girls at The Black Hole and step out on their wives?”

Todd makes a face and then revises it so that he looks slightly remorseful at having to deliver the news to his wife. “I guess some do,” he says, shooting her an apologetic look. “Guys being guys and all. But most of the core ones in my group are straight shooters, Barb. Believe that. Jay Reed, Vance Majors, Ed Maxwell—no way. They might appreciate a beauty as she sweeps by on her way to the jukebox, but I’ve never seen one of them so much as dance with another woman. Now, Bill… before this Jeanie business, I would have put him in that category too, if I’m being honest. In fact, I thought of him as our unofficial leader. A real no nonsense kind of guy. But knowing he might have kissed one of our engineers calls that into question…”

“Okay.” Barbie nods, trying to accept this news about a man she knows relatively well. “Ugh. Do you think Jo knows?” This pains her to consider.

“Oh, jeez.” Todd puts up both hands in surrender. “That would be more your area than mine, hon. Women’s talk is not something I engage in a whole lot. Doyouthink she knows?”

Barbie chews on the inside of her cheek as she looks at their closed garage door through the front windshield. “No,” she finally says, shaking her head and folding her arms across her chest. “I don’t.”

They sit there in silence for a beat, and then it’s Todd’s turn to pat her leg. “Well, babe, then I think we should keep it that way. It’s not our business, and you know Jo better than I do, but I think she’s the kind of lady that wouldn’t take too kindly to hearing something like that from anyone but Bill.”

“You’re right about that,” Barbie agrees.

“Listen, how about if I get the mail while you grab the boys?” Todd offers. “I’d walk over and get them, but I don’t want Huckto demand that I carry him when I’m feeling unsteady on my feet.”

“No, of course,” Barbie agrees. “I should thank Carrie for watching them anyway.”

And she does just that, greeting her sons and lifting Huck up onto her hip as she thanks her friend for taking care of her brood. She’s distracted, and Carrie is busy with her own two children, who are running around and excitedly discussing a school play as the phone rings in the kitchen.

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