My father had bought her the apartment. My mom was a server at a party my father’s business partner, Benjamin Clairmont, had dragged him to. Javier was a highly intelligent college student on an academic scholarship, juggling multiple jobs, struggling but determined not to fail when he met Ben at college. Their friendship turned into a business partnership, funded by Ben’s seed money, but it was my father’s shrewd mind that grew it into what it would become. Ben opened doors to the business world via his father’s connections, but I don’t know if either he or Ben expected the level of success that they achieved. They were just on the cusp of that success when my father met my mother at that party. She was a beautiful, hardworking white girl with grand ambitions, and I think, despite his claims about practicality over passion, he loved her. She told me that she’d confided to him about wanting to live in “an apartment in the sky,” and so he bought her the Midtown East place as a wedding gift.
But then they had Miguel and decided they wanted a house outside the city. But the Midtown East apartment stayed in my mom’s name, and she didn’t want to give it up. Sentimental attachment. With financial backing from my father, Mom had gone back to school, studied interior design, and had launched what would become a very successful interior design company.
She’d taken down two walls in the apartment, turning it into a spacious one bedroom and an open-plan living area with a kitchen, dining, and sitting room, all with a massive corner window that looked out over the city.
When Mom died, he sold our family home and bought a bigger apartment in Manhattan, and Mom left the apartment to me and Miguel. When I turned eighteen, it was ours. We’d kept it as a rental, but after my brother died, I took the money Mom had left us from the sale of her company to cover the monthly maintenance costs and moved in. I’d updated the decor to put my taste into it since it hadn’t been touched in years.
My inheritance was being eaten up by the costs on this apartment because I hadn’t made any decisions on what to do next professionally.
And I refused to take anything from my father.
I’d made low six figures a year with NASA, but that door was no longer open.
The only decision I’d made so far was to retire from the air force. I’d been a test pilot before I’d applied to NASA.
That had not gone down well with my father. Leaving combat, I mean, to become a test pilot. I’d made captain in four years in the air force, and just as they had honored me with the rank at a mere twenty-seven years old, Miguel died. My brother was the whole reason I’d signed up for military life, applying to the Air Force Academy at eighteen, graduating with my degree in systems engineering. I trained as a tactical fighter pilot. I served my country. And none of it seemed to matter once Miguel was gone. All his life he’d dreamed of being an astronaut, talked about the decisions he’d wished he’d made that would have taken him down the path to applying to NASA. So when he died, I was not only weary of combat, I’d decided my skills were best put elsewhere, somewhere useful. So I’d applied to train at the test pilot school at Edwards Air Force Base with the vision of one day applying for the astronaut training program at NASA. If Miguel couldn’t be here to do it, I’d do it for him. I’d impressed them so much at Edwards that I ended up serving as an exchange officer at Patuxent River Naval Air Station as a pilot performing research for NASA.
I just didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. Now that the dream was completed for Miguel.
For months, I’d hung around this apartment, lost. And it wasn’t like the world wasn’t watching. NASA PR got me on talk shows once I’d gone through weeks of recovery; I’d kept up the Instagram account, sharing with the world what recovery from space travel was like. Then experimenting with sharing random, everyday photos of New York and lunches with friends; my maternal aunt’s dog, Bandit; walks on the beach near her home . . . and to my shock, those photos and videos racked up views and comments too. Bizarrely, I still interested people, even in my non-astronaut form.
They weren’t the only ones watching the suddenly sleepy pace of my life back on Earth though. My father was definitely watching. Avoiding his phone calls and worrying about the fact that I would soon be forced to move out of the one place that made me feel close to my mother had become my full-time job. If I didn’t rent the apartment, it would eventually eat away at my inheritance and savings until I had nothing, and then I’d have to sell it.
The realization was a dull ache in my chest.
Turning from the windows that looked down over East Forty-Sixth Street, I decided to change into my workout gear. I liked to jump on the tram to Roosevelt Island and jog around now that it was finally possible to do it. Three months after my return to Earth, my first week back in Manhattan, I’d gone for a jog. Big mistake. My limbs were heavy, I couldn’t catch my breath, and I felt faint. I’d realized with much frustration that despite the physiotherapy and tests we’d undergone upon our return, my heart just wasn’t ready for that kind of activity yet and neither were my bones.
Now it was. I worked out every day, and it was good to have my body back. Even though, I admit, I missed zero gravity.
I’d just pulled a T-shirt on and grabbed my keys off the sideboard in the foyer when my cell beeped in the living room. Striding over, I picked it up and raised an eyebrow at the banner across the screen. Apparently I had an email from Kate, my IT contact at NASA.
I tapped it open.
Chris,
I received this video in my email. It’s addressed to you. Let me know what you want me to do about it.
Kate
That was cryptic.
When I tapped open the video, a woman with cotton candy–pink hair filled my phone screen. She had huge long-lashed blue eyes, which, paired with the pink hair . . . she looked like a Disney character.
I’d never seen her before in my life.
“Hi, Christopher.” She gave the camera a little wave. “You don’t know me.”
“I know that,” I muttered a little impatiently.
“But I’m Darcy Hawthorne’s engagement party planner, Hallie Goodman, and she accidentally sent me your video letters from the International Space Station. And I watched them. I’m so sorry! Darcy doesn’t know, and I feel just awful—”
I switched her off, feeling a burn of something more than irritation as I tried to remember exactly what I’d said in those videos to Darce. Things a complete stranger now knew. Who did that?
Surely when you opened a video and saw it was private . . . you closed it and deleted it, no? You didn’t watch the whole thing and then watch all the others.
I hit Reply to Kate.
Don’t know her. Don’t think she should have your email. Make this thing bounce so she thinks your email is dead.