Chapter 1: Hunter
International Space Station
I should feel excited today. I know this. I’ll be going back home, where I can piss with ease and eat food that tastes and feels like food. Hell, I can sleep without being tethered to the wall. But all I can focus on is my unfinished work. I’m so close to finding answers. If I had another 6 months I think I could change everything…but I failed to find the answers in the time allotted.
I only get six months up here. I have to just trust the science and believe whoever they’re sending to replace me will do the work. Trust is not my strong suit. Neither is handing off my work to another scientist.
Digger floats by as I’m packing up my belongings. I don’t have much. Just some plant samples I want to bring back in the capsule. He asks, “What are you gonna eat first, Crawdad?”
“You know I hate being called that,” I tell him, ignoring the question. I definitely will not miss being forced into repeated social interactions with this same group of people. At least everyone up here has a firm grasp of the scientific method and an interest in math. Digger—everyone has a stupid nickname, too—glares at me, though, so I appease him. He’s got three months remaining, after all.
“Strawberries,” I tell him. “Maybe a pineapple, if they can find one.”
Digger’s mouth waters as he helps me and one of the Russian scientists get situated inside the capsule that will take us home. The two of us will be crammed in there for hours until we touch down on the ground. The actual ground! It’s funny. Our float back to Earth will take less time than my eventual plane ride back to Texas. A little over three hours to drift from the International Space Station back to the life I’m supposed to feel excited to re-embrace.
The truth is, I have no idea where the Space Agency will send me next. My research, at this point, belongs to them, and so I belong to them. The thought makes me uneasy, but who else has the right resources to support tissue research in a zero-gravity environment?
The Russian and I are silent as we plummet downward, anticipating the first impact. I’ve done this before. I don’t think he has, though. My siblings would probably talk to him and offer comfort. I can’t bring myself to do it. I’m waiting for the hit.
The first parachute opens and it’s like a car crash. I feel my bones shake in their sockets, and I embrace it because it’s the first time I’ve sensed gravity in half a year. Each time, I forget. I forget what it’s like to feel the weight of my frame, to feel my blood moving inside my veins.
The soft landing jets ignite just before we crash into the steppe of Kazakstan. Only then does it occur to me that I haven’t heard from my wife. My mother emailed repeatedly, wanting up-to-the-minute information. My wife should have reached out, right? Should I have contacted her? We only get to use the satellite phone once a week, but we have unlimited access to our email. All my brothers and my sister sent good luck messages, and all of them made some dumb joke about how I don’t believe in luck. Heather should have at least emailed. The realization that I can’t remember the last time I communicated with my wife washes over me like an uncomfortable haze. I can feel the weight of that, too.
This is my second mission since we were married. That would take a toll on any marriage. All the separation. She’s likely having a difficult time. I should miss her, probably.
The way I miss fresh fruit and sunshine. Don’t people miss their spouse when they’re separated?
The capsule skids to a halt and someone opens the lid. Smells wash over me. I forgot that, too. I haven’t smelled anything or felt the earth beneath me. Haven’t felt heat like this. Seen daylight bathing the earth. We’re immobile in our landing suits, so we have to be extracted from the capsule like babies being pulled from a car seat. I tolerate this because I know as soon as they set me down, they’re going to hand me a plate of fruit and the satellite phone.
My mother tried to pull strings to be here at the landing site, but the best she could do was book a room in the village nearby. Very few people say no to Rose Mitchell, and I can envision the argument with the director of the space program. I try to laugh out loud at that image, but my mouth feels like it’s stuffed with cotton. I realize I’m parched.
The thirst is immense and I can feel my lips cracking in the sun while I wait for someone to unfasten my suit and let me use my hands again. I’m aware of the media, cameras in my face, reporters firing questions at me and the Russian guy. I start to panic, actually, even though I know this isn’t rational. I know all my bodily systems are being monitored. Nobody would let anything happen to me. My mind seems disconnected from my central nervous system, though, and the panicked thoughts begin to rush over me. I think again about Heather, wondering why she wouldn’t reach out when her husband was floating through the universe in a damn tin can.
I’m on the verge of blackness when I’m handed the phone. I see myself reach out to accept it, as if from far away, and I bring the phone to my ear. I hear it ring. Again. Again. Then my wife’s voice comes over the voicemail.
This is strange, I think, as I drift out of consciousness. She should answer.
* * *
When I open my eyes, I’m surrounded by bright, white light, and then I see the form of my mother. My senses seem to re-engage one at a time. I smell disinfectant and saline fluid, a slight tinge of bleach. I take stock of my body and realize I’m lying down in a bed, hospital sheets scratching my bare skin. The light weight of the sheets against my limbs…I smile as I notice the feeling of it all. Then comes my sense of hearing, and Rose Mitchell is giving someone a lecture.
“How you could allow my son to become dehydrated is well beyond me,” she snarls. “You haven’t figured out a better methodology for transporting these heroes back to Earth? They’re up there for months doing research in the name of our nation and you drop them like an egg in a shoe box. Plop! Back to the ground. No water. You should be ashamed.”
“Ma,” I croak. It’s good to see her. I don’t make it home to Oak Creek often, even when I’m on this planet.
“Oh there you are, Hunter. Sweetheart, shouldn’t you be advising your colleagues about dehydration? You have heat stroke, Hunter Crawford. How on earth does someone contract heat stroke when they’re being so closely monitored? When did you last have a drink of water?”
I gesture toward the IV in my arm. “Ma,” I try again. “Where’s Heather?”
She sighs. “Oh, sweetheart.”
* * *
I really am the only one to blame for this. I know that. I don’t communicate well. This has always been a challenge for me—expressing my feelings. Thinking about Heather’s feelings. When she’s not yelling at me, she’s often explaining that I don’t value her. Which isn’t true, but I understand that what she means is I do not make her feel that she’s a priority for me.
I look around our empty condo. She took everything except my equipment and my clothes. All the furniture. The toothpaste. She left a note taped to my microscope telling me her lawyer would reach out with paperwork. I assess the moments leading up to my arrival back in Houston. The media is camped outside my building, frothing at the mouth to get the scoop on the scorned astronaut.
I can ignore them with ease. I just walk past them. That first day home, alone, I opened the door and my primary concern was for my frozen plant samples, followed by concern for my microscope. I really didn’t feel very strongly about the absence of my wife. Heather is right. She is not a priority to me. She was…comfortable. Marrying her made sense. Or it did at the time.
Had I ever made real space for her? We met when I was in graduate school the first time. Heather dictated all the terms of our relationship, told me when to show up for dinner, how to dress for the occasion. I thrived under that treatment. No fuss. No work for me to do outside my research. Once we moved in together, she did the shopping and planned our free time together. I liked that, too. She made things very simple for me. I see it now.
I hear my phone ring and stoop to pick it up from the hardwood floor. “This is Hunter Crawford.”
The low, rumbling voice of my supervisor comes through the line, inquiring about my health, making the type of small talk we both detest. I’m seconds away from curtly asking him what he wants, when he sighs and says, “Crawford, they cut your funding.”
“Excuse me?”
“The agency no longer wants to prioritize the study of microgravity on human tissues.”
“Burt, that’s irresponsible. What the hell are you talking about?”
I hear him telling me there’s no further funding for studying the ways human bodies change during space flight. I know he’s talking about administration cuts, and I’m aware of him suggesting I might find a position in academia. Academia! We both know I’m not meant to teach. But as he’s talking, I don’t think. I climb into my car and drive to the research lab even as I’m hanging up with Burt. As if I’m watching a movie, I see myself kick open the door to the building and stomp past the receptionist.
I watch myself pound my fist on the director’s door and I note the concerned look in his eyes as I barge in and demand that he reinstate my program. This work I do is vital to the future of the space program. “You have all insisted that space exploration is the key to the survival of our species, Alan!”
There’s an edge to my voice I’m not familiar with. I can tell I sound unstable. This is unlike me. “How can you send astronauts past the stratosphere without researching what it will do to their bodies??”
“Hunter, I’d hoped you and Burt could discuss this calmly. I know you’re newly back and you’re still a little jet-lagged.”
“Jet lag? Are you fucking kidding me? You’re closing my research program! What about the fucking tissue samples I left in the Space Station? This is decades of my life, Alan! I want my work.”
I don’t register what he says to me next. I think about my empty apartment, my absent wife. I think about the carefully arranged notes I left by the slides, the tissue chips I built to mimic the functions of various organs. All I have ever wanted is to understand the way cells function, to unlock the secrets of life.
Of all life.
Like a fiend, I have pursued this research since I was a teenager, begging to assist in the labs at the college where my mother now serves as president.
Alan places a hand on my shoulder and tries to nudge me toward the door. I look down at his hand on my body, and I watch myself grab his arm, twisting and clenching. I see the fear in his eyes as I squeeze his bones together. My life flashes before me until I’m a kid again, wrestling with my brothers by the creek.
I was always smaller, even if I was the oldest, so I had to understand physics and leverage. Like a frantic child, I snarl as I wrench Alan’s arm from my shoulder and shove him away from me until he stumbles into the wall.
Panting, my chest heaving, I look up to see security officers shouting into their radios as they flock in to haul me off the property.
Chapter 2: Abigail
Greenwood, Ohio
As I pull into my driveway, I realize I’m dreading going inside. That’s not good, I think. Things have definitely been…stagnant. I sigh and look down at my polo and khakis. Working at my dad’s construction firm was never part of my plan. Not that I had a plan exactly, but Baker and Sons just isn’t a destination for me. This was supposed to be a part-time job while I finished school.
I look at Jack’s truck in the driveway. I can tell he hasn’t moved it from yesterday, which means he’s been home the whole time. Again. Layoffs happen to everyone. He’s taken it so personally, retreating deeper and deeper inside himself the longer he goes without work.
As I go through the mental checklist of “get a job” items I think he should do, I realize Jack is most of the reason I’m biting my lip right now, lingering in the driveway. Things just haven’t been good. He wasn’t supposed to be a destination, either, I remind myself.
Jack was someone I dated in school. Then I just never got around to breaking up with him, I guess. I moved into the house he bought, and gradually took on more of the roles he thought I should, and more of myself slipped away each passing month.
I exhale and grab my lunch bag, steeling myself to go inside. The hinges on the side door squeak as I nudge it open with my hip, juggling my lunch bag and the mail.
“Hey, Babe,” I call out. The air smells stale in here. Jack grunts from the couch. He’s watching one of those judge shows on tv, and starts berating the defendant.
“Babe, I don’t want to hear about those people’s bad choices, if that’s ok, it’s been a long—”
“Well excuse me,” he sneers. “So sorry if my ‘low brow’ entertainment offends you.” He throws an empty soda can across the room. I cringe, thinking about the splatters of sticky liquid that will surely dribble onto the carpet. We’re going to get ants.
He stomps past me into the bedroom and slams the door. I sigh and stoop to clean up the soda, absent-mindedly scrubbing the rug.
This would actually be a great scene, I think. Late at night, once Jack is asleep—passed out if I’m honest—I’ve been trying something new. Something I always wanted to do. I started writing a novel.
I get a thrill just thinking about it, saved inside my laptop in a locked folder.
I know I shouldn’t feel the need to password protect something on my own laptop in the house where I’m supposed to live as an equal. But things with Jack have been so strained. He’s not the same person he was three months ago. He was fine as a boyfriend. Attentive, kind, generous. I think getting laid off triggered a depression in him, shook his sense of himself as a man.
And I’m just not ready to share this fiction whim with him yet. I’ve been carrying the mortgage, but I don’t mind. He wasn’t asking me for any rent or anything before. I’ve been living here basically free for a year.
Sure, I chipped in for groceries when he lets me whip my card out first, but I think Jack liked supporting me. I glance toward the bedroom, where I hear him moving around, making noises. Angry.
My stomach growls, and I feel a sense of sadness that I turned down a dinner invite with my family. Again. One of these days, I ought to just go over there without Jack and enjoy myself. Lately, he’s said no to my dad’s “charity” every time they invite us over for supper, like they’ve done once a week since I moved out. I see my dad and brothers every day at the office, but I haven’t seen my mother in weeks. I miss talking to her in person.
I fire off a quick text to her, saying I am sorry again for missing tonight. Jack is feeling really down, I write, wondering if she can read between the lines. Probably not. My mom seems pretty set in her belief that I need to settle down with a “good man who can take care of us.”
As I slide the phone back in my pocket, I shriek because the bedroom door flies open abruptly.
“Abby! What the fuck is this?” Jack has my laptop in one hand. His eyes are wild, angry.
“You scared me,” I tell him, bringing my hand to my chest. I’m still squatting on the carpet where I’d been cleaning up the spilled soda. I start to rise to my feet, but Jack stomps over to me.
I actually feel afraid, and I don’t like it. This isn’t ok.
I shouldn’t feel afraid in my house, of the man who is supposed to love me.
“You have locked files on here? What? Are you keeping shit from me? In my own house?” Small flecks of spit fly from his mouth as he screams in my face, and I know that I have to leave this house.
Immediately. I scan the room, noting my keys on the peg by the side door. But Jack is standing in my face, his chest heaving.
“You need to calm down, Jack. This isn’t ok.”
“Calm down? Fuck you, Abigail! Calm down?” And then he shoves me backwards—places a hand on my shoulder and pushes with all the strength of his six-foot frame. I stumble back a few steps before catching my balance.
I’m so startled that he touched me in anger that I can’t think of what to say or do. I bite my lower lip and try to walk past him, toward my keys. I yelp as a searing pain rips through my head. Jack has hold of my ear, painfully twisting my head and pulling me across the room to the couch.
“Unlock it,” he whisper-yells, still holding my ear. “Open the folder. I want to see what you’re fucking typing about me in there.”
“Jack, you’re hurting me!”
“Open the mother fucking folder!” I start to cry as he tugs my head over toward the laptop now propped on his knee. I can’t explain why I don’t just do as he says and show him the contents of the folder, but for some reason I just do not want him to see my novel. It feels private. Sacred.
My secret is mine. Whatever the cost.
Jack snarls again and releases my ear, shoving me back against the couch. He meets my eye, and I see that any resemblance to the pleasant young man I met is gone.
All that remains is clouded in anger.
Hot fury twists his face until I barely recognize him. Jack cracks the laptop screen backwards over his knee, the metal grinding and splintering. I scream as the screen shatters. He throws the useless computer across the room. A sense of calm washes over me then, as I rise from the couch. Wordlessly, I stoop to pick up my broken laptop. Without a glance back, I walk toward the door, snag my keys, and start to drive.
* * *
A few minutes later, the adrenaline leaves me and I notice my head is throbbing. I assess my ear at a stoplight. I don’t think I need medical care. Just some ice and sleep somewhere safe. I consider driving to my parents’ house, but the thought of explaining all this feels like too much. I just keep driving. Soon, I cross from Ohio into Pennsylvania, and I pull off the highway near Pittsburgh. One of the chain hotels boasts free dinner on Tuesdays, and a hot tub, which both sound perfect until I realize I’ll have to sit in public with my swollen ear and I didn’t pack any clothes, let alone a bathing suit.
I chew my lip again and look around the parking lot, spotting a drive through fast food chain. Five minutes later, I’m checked into a room with a bag of greasy fries and a milk shake. I press a baggie of ice against my head with one hand and dial my father’s office phone.
I don’t want to disappear without a trace, but I also can’t stand the thought of talking to my family tonight. Dad’s voicemail message begins, his singsong voice announcing “Baker and Sons Construction—finest work in Greenwood. Leave a message and one of the Bakers will call you back. You have my word about that!”
“Dad, it’s Abby,” I say, my voice wavering more than I intended. “I’m sorry for the short notice, but I won’t be in the office tomorrow. Or the rest of this week, actually. I need to get away for awhile. Nothing’s wrong. I don’t want you and Mom to worry.” I sigh. Of course they’ll worry. “I just needed a change of scenery. Sorry again.”
A few minutes later, I toss my empty cup in the trash by my bed and snap off the light. I drift off into a dreamless, exhausted sleep, not knowing what the future holds.
Chapter 3: Hunter
I stare out the window of my brother Archer’s truck, watching the scenery blur past. My car, along with the meager pile of my other possessions, is in a shipping container en route to Oak Creek. Part of the discharge package from the Space Agency.
That’s what they’re calling it, anyway. Despite news of my breakdown leaking all over the place, the official word is that I resigned after my mission.
They didn’t even have the balls to go public with the information that the research program is being canceled. I assessed the financials, and I still don’t have enough to move forward with my tissue research on my own, not even with my severance.
And so, with no wife, no furniture, and no prospects, I am headed home to Oak Creek. I know I’ve been the main focus of the gossip mill there, but I never can find it in me to care about those things. Heather indicated my aloofness was part of the problem. I don’t care enough about anything when it comes to other people, apparently.
I didn’t call my brother to come fetch me. I’m pretty sure my mother sent him. He showed up as the movers were packing my lab equipment and told me to get in the truck, and so here I am. We cross into Kentucky and Archer starts singing along with the country music on the radio.
“I hate this type of music,” I state without looking at him.
“Tough shit, Hunter,” Archer says during an instrumental lick. “You find a place to stay yet?”
I shake my head. I thought I’d stay at our parents’ house, which seems a fitting place for a man whose wife left and career exploded.
Archer taps out the rhythm on the steering wheel and says, “I know you haven’t been home in awhile. Dad turned each of our rooms into a different sort of theme. That’s what he calls it. They bring in international students to stay in, like, The Meadow Room and The Observatory Room. It’s like fucking Clue with kids from Thailand and Saudi Arabia sitting down for tea with Dad.”
I grunt noncommittally. He grins. “Wanna crash at my place?”
I shrug. “I can buy someplace as soon as that can be arranged.”
At the next rest stop, Archer pulls out his phone and makes a call while I’m ordering our lunch. He tells me he found out about a duplex for sale right in town and will get me set up with a realtor. My kid brother is the only accountant in Oak Creek. He knows everyone, knows their business, and manages to remember every single birthday of every Oak Creek resident.
Mom likes to joke that he got all my social skills that I left behind in her womb. I can barely manage to figure out when people are joking.
Today I feel even less like working on it, and Archer shakes his head as I reserve our hotel room using single syllables.
* * *
It feels good to drive a car on the vast expanse of highway after spending so long cooped up in a tube with no gravity. Even if I hate the lack of fuel economy in my brother’s beast of a truck, I appreciate the feel of my body in the deep leather seats. He props his feet on the dash while I take my turn, navigating toward eastern Pennsylvania on instinct. Archer looks at me for a long time before saying, “Jesus, Hunter. I’ve been waiting for you to say something.”
I shrug without taking my eyes off the road. “Should have let me know, then. What were you hoping I’d say?”
“I don’t know, man. Small talk! Fuck, dude, what must it have been like for those other space nerds to be up there with you for six whole months.”
“It was fruitful in terms of research outcomes,” I say, then I grit my teeth. “Though not as fruitful as I would have liked.”
He laughs at me. “You going to take Ma up on the job offer?”
I see the exit for our next highway and put on my turn signal, ignoring my brother. Teaching undergraduate biology at Oak Creek College sounds less attractive than bankruptcy. Even if my mother calls me a Distinguished Guest Professor, it still feels very much like what it is: a charity offer for a man who has been blackballed throughout the bioresearch community.
Archer continues to stare at me, and I figure out that he’s still waiting for a response.
“I told her I’d try for a semester,” I say, accelerating onto four-lane road toward home. “Just until I finish a proposal for investors.”