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"How many parent Grace have, question?" Rocky asks one day, horrified at Grace's recent revelation that most humans rear offspring in small family units and not collective communities like on Erid.
"I had two parents. That's sort of the default for most people, at least where I'm from," Grace answers. If he went into details of single parents or second marriages or polyamory right now, he knows Rocky would remember it all and have no trouble making sense of it. Grace, however, likes to give his lessons on Earth in bite size pieces. Mostly for his own benefit. He goes on, "I had a mother and father. That's also the default for most people. Again, at least where I'm from. And when I was there, I guess? Other combinations were becoming more common, but still. Mom and dad is pretty typical. Oh, those are other words for them. Mom is short for mother, that's usually the female parent. Dad is short for father, that's the male parent."
"Human sex very confusing," Rocky complains, like he does every time it comes up. "And very inefficient at offspring rearing! Only two parent! Very difficult!"
"Humans aren't born in clutches, pal. It's just one at a time," Grace reminds him.
Rocky sings a tune that Grace has come to recognize as pensive. After a moment of silence, he asks, "Grace tell Rocky about parents, question?"
"Oh. You sure you care? I can go into the whole different combination parents thing if you want to learn more about Earth culture. Probably more interesting than just me," he offers.
Rocky stomps one of his limbs. "No. Rocky want to know about Grace parent."
"Fine, fine. When you go back to Erid and they ask why you're a Grace expert and not a human expert, don't come crying to me. My parents were... Let's see..." Grace frowns. His chest lights up with a strange warmth when he thinks of them, a gentle joy with dread creeping around the corners like a cozy Sunday night. He knows he loved them and that he was loved in return. Everything else, though, draws a blank. Grace's shoulders slump. "I don't remember. Sorry, Rocky."
Rocky trills in sad sympathy. "Is okay. Maybe remember later. Grace parents must be good good good to rear Grace."
Grace's chest aches. His head hurts with the effort to remember. He and his mother were close, he thinks. She smiled a lot, he thinks. She always put up with all his oddities, he thinks. She would be equal parts proud and devastated to see him on this world-saving mission, he thinks. She'd been dead long before Stratt recruited him, he knows.
***
The astronauts are training in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab in Houston for a few weeks. Grace is with them because Stratt insists he do everything they do, so he can be better equipped to test their tools and teach the astronauts what they'll need for their research in Tau Ceti. It's grueling work that keeps him away from his scientific work for longer than he'd like, but Grace has mostly taken to doing what he's told these days. Stratt is an unstoppable force and he is, unfortunately, an extremely movable object.
For the last two weeks, Grace has been suiting up and jumping right into the pool with everyone else. The exercises take up most of the day and Grace has mountains of reports to work through the second he's dry again. His new routine has been to wake up, chug as many coffees as NASA is comfortable giving him, test whatever new equipment Stratt wants tested in the pool, write up his reports while his hair dries, and crash into bed so he can do it all over again. Currently, he's in the crash into the bed portion of the day. It's only a little past eight - a blessedly early night in the Johnson Space Center! - but between work and jetlag, Grace has gotten used to sleeping at strange hours.
Today is Mother's Day, though.
Grace had scrubbed it from all his calendars a long time ago, but he'd been so busy with the project, he'd forgotten to go through his accounts and opt out of the endless stream of Mother's Day content. Ads, promos, dining specials, nostalgic throwbacks from every Substack he's ever subscribed to. It's amazing how much junk still makes its way to his email while the world is actively ending around them.
Grace knows he should ignore it, let it fade into obscurity under tomorrow's stream of junk mail or wait a few days before he goes to delete it. It's silly that it affects him as much as it does after all this time. But it does. It leaves him aching and panicking and he paces the tiny room he's been given for ten minutes before deciding this isn't going to work.
He ends up in one of the break rooms by the Buoyancy Lab. He's had a few rushed breakfasts here and his feet know the way, even if his head feels heavy with memories he doesn't want to dredge through right now. There's a Mother's Day display in a corner table, balloons and markers and construction paper for the children who had been allowed to visit and tour the facility this morning.
It feels like it's been placed there to mock him, but Grace is too tired to try finding somewhere else to seek refuge. Besides, there's a television in the corner and no one around to argue about what to play.
He pours himself a coffee he'll regret later and fights with streaming services until finding Mamma Mia. Because he wants something lighthearted, not because it was his mother's favorite. Obviously. He's going to sip his coffee and nod his head to the music and be normal. So normal. Grace definitely doesn't well up at I Have A Dream and he most certainly doesn't pick a hole into his sweater from fidgeting.
Grace would be happy to stay there, sad and pathetic with no one but Meryl Streep for company until he's too tired to hurt. He would prefer it, actually. Naturally, the astronaut corps find their way in. Sometimes it feels like they have a tracker on him, the way they're never too far.
He hears them before he sees them. Ilyukhina comes bursting through the door first, belting along to Money, Money, Money on the screen. She has a liter of vodka in one hand and a carton of orange juice in the other. Yao isn't far behind. To say he's pleased at Ilyukhina's behavior would be an overstatement, but he's smiling and carrying a case of beer, so he can't be too upset. DuBois and Shapiro come in next, holding hands like they always are.
"Grace!" Ilyukhina crows, bounding over the back of the couch to come to a bouncing seat next to him. "You watch musical masterpiece without us? Very rude!"
"It was, uh, on when I got here," Grace lies. He finishes the last of his coffee in one big gulp. "Just having a nightcap. All finished, actually. I should make my way back to my room. Good night."
"No, no, no." Ilyukhina grabs him by the back of his sweater and tugs him back down when he tries to flee. "Tomorrow is day off. We are partying! You do very well in simulation today. Drink with us to celebrate."
"You might be off, but I have a three hour video call with Stratt and JAXA in the morning," Grace says.
Mentioning Stratt in Ilyukhina's presence is a mistake. Grace knows this. He knows it very well by now. Unfortunately, he's a fool with no sense of self-preservation. Ilyukhina grins at the mention. Her eyes stray to the Mother's Day display in the corner and her smile grows impossibly wider. She leaps off the couch as eagerly as she'd jumped on and hurries over.
Grace decides to accept the beer Yao is offering him. He probably needs it.
"Grace!" she exclaims, louder than before. It makes Grace's ears hurt, but he refrains from covering them. The astronauts already find him strange enough. "Did you see arts and crafts table? Is perfect!"
"I think that was set up for the kids," he mumbles.
"You make card for Mommy Stratt," she suggests. She can barely get the words out without losing herself in her own laughter. She grabs a pink piece of construction paper and folds it in two, just like the cards every kindergartener in the country came home with this week. She grins as she waves it in his general direction.
"Ilyukhina." Grace takes a measured breath and counts to ten. "I'm not going to do that."
"For Mommy! She will like!" Ilyukhina insists.
"She's not my, I mean, we're not-" The words die in Grace's mouth. He's too embarrassed to even say them out loud, though he knows they'll all interpret this as further evidence that he and Stratt must be having some sort of sordid affair. A while back, during a gag gift exchange to break up the monotony on the boat, Ilyukhina had gifted him a dog collar. Her laughter then had settled in his chest with the same discomfort as it does now. "For the last time, there's nothing going on between Stratt and me. We're coworkers. You and I are coworkers, too. Isn't this, like, workplace harassment or something?"
Ilyukhina just keeps laughing. She drops the construction paper and markers in front of him and ruffles his hair. "Is little Grace cranky? Should we call Mommy to fetch you away for naptime?"
"His mother is dead, you know," Shapiro pipes up.
Grace's head snaps in her direction. She's settled on DuBois' lap, arms wound around his shoulders. She just shrugs at him. Grace wracks his head, trying to remember why she would know that. He never talks about his parents. He tries not to even think of them. So why would...
Oh. Right. On the anniversary of their death, Grace had an inadvisable amount of liquor and knocked on her cabin door. He'd all but begged her for help in saying Kaddish for his parents. Grace had never bothered with it on any previous yahrzeits, having been content to let that part of himself die with parents, but exhausted and frazzled and feeling like the world was counting on him as he floated aimlessly through the Pacific, Grace had been desperate for something to tether him to reality.
Shapiro had been gentle with him that night, even when he needed transliteration for the Hebrew and stumbled through his words. She'd watched him cry and listened to him half share stories he hadn't told in years and hadn't even brought it up the next day. Grace wishes he'd had enough sense to ask her not to bring it up at all.
He hates how the air is sucked out of the room at that comment. He's always hated this reaction. He's a grown man. It's not unheard of for men his age to have dead parents. Plenty of people have dead parents. Why does no one ever know how to act when this information is revealed? Grace wishes they'd go back to laughing at his expense.
"Oh." Ilyukhina sits with a thud. She’s not always nice, but she is kind. Grace knows she’s sincere in her apology. "I'm sorry. Maybe is more reason to drink?"
Quickly, before the astronaut's mood goes beyond what can be recovered - and really, what sort of jerk would he be to ruin a rare night of relaxation for the people literally dying to save the world? - Grace scrambles to say, "It's fine! It's so, so fine. Nothing has ever been so fine. It was a long time ago."
That does nothing to better the mood. Instead, there's a collective wince that spreads between them. Even Shapiro cringes, though she's already heard the full story. Grace looks between all of them helplessly. This doesn't look like a room agreeing that it's fine.
"That makes it worse, Dr. Grace," DuBois explains, seeing the confusion on Grace's face. "That makes it so you must have been young when it happened. Therefore, worse."
"Can we please not do this?" Grace asks. He hates how whiny he sounds, like one of his students pleading for answers on a test.
Yao squeezes Grace's shoulder as he walks past. "I'm sure your mother is proud. Her son is saving the world."
He goes up to the corner table and takes down the decorations. It all gets unceremoniously shoved in a trash bag. Grace's stomach does anxious flips as he watches. Someone might have been coming back for those things. Not to mention, he's fine. He doesn't need all this fuss.
Ilyukhina stands to grab a glass from the cupboard. She pours out a screwdriver that's more vodka with a whisper of orange juice and, before coming back, gives the trash bag a firm kick. "Is stupid holiday anyway. Too capitalist."
Grace snorts. "My mom used to say it was just an excuse for daydrinking mimosas."
"Good woman!" she agrees. She sits back down next to him. "You want to talk about it?"
Grace shakes his head.
Ilyukhina nods. She offers him her concoction. "Want to drink about it?"
He gives up the fight and just grabs the drink. He can sleepwalk through the meetings by now, anyway.
***
When he was about seven, Ryland decided his thing was going to be space. It was very important for everyone to have a thing. His mother had told him that once while walking him through her collection of original Broadway cast vinyl records. Memory had played in the background and she waltzed him through the room as she sang along, drawing her notes out longer and higher until Ryland could do nothing but dissolve in a fit of giggles.
There was no singing or dancing in space, but his heart lit up with the same joy when he looked at the stars. They're just balls of gas, he explained to his mom after deciding space would be his thing. Some of them so far away, the dinosaurs were still alive when their light first started to travel to Earth. When they looked at the stars, Ryland had explained, they were traveling through time. Wasn't that cool? Wasn't that just as beautiful as ballads and duets?
His mother had loaded him into the car and driven him straight to the Morrison Planetarium. Never mind that they'd have to pay a full day's price for only a few hours before they closed or that dinner was half prepared on the counter or that there were still chores to complete. If Ryland found his thing, his mother declared, they needed to celebrate.
Ryland cries during the show. The universe is more beautiful than his books could convey. It lights up in bright colors, bold patterns, so many wondrous beauties in the vast nothing. He cries and rocks and flaps his hands. The people around them give him funny looks and huff when he gets too disruptive, but it's hard to care when his mother puts a steadying arm around his shoulders.
She leans in close to whisper, "You could go up there someday. I bet you'd make a great astronaut."
Ryland shakes his head and presses closer to her side. "No, Mommy. I want to study the stars from right here. So I can be with you!"
***
Grace lets another set of chain fall from his hands. He still has so many more to do if they want to stay on track, but he can't focus. His head feels foggy. His heart aches. His hands tremble when he tries to pick up another chain.
He drops them and stumbles towards one of the windows. He feels more unsteady on his feet than even during his bender after first waking. There's still so much about his childhood he can't remember, but the little that has managed to bleed through this nightmarish amnesia hits him like a truck.
"Grace!" Rocky calls out, following along in his tunnels. "Grace okay, question? Early for break even for weak human hand."
"I'm fine, buddy." Grace waves away his concern. He slumps down by the window and just takes in the stars. Has he even really appreciated any of this since he got up here? He'd avoided the window when he first woke up, too terrified to face the reality that he was stranded up in space, and ever since Rocky joined aboard, they've been full steam ahead on their mission. When had space just faded into the background, as boring as his commute to Grover Cleveland Middle?
"Grace see something out ship, question?" Rocky asks, chittering nervously.
"Just stars. I remembered something about my mom," he explains. That makes Rocky relax for a moment, before immediately tilting his carapace in curiosity. "She used to take me to look at the stars a lot. At the planetarium, mostly. Sometimes we'd go out camping, though, and we'd take turns looking through my telescope. I used to explain everything to her and my dad. They weren't science kind of people, but they liked hearing about it. I can't imagine what she'd say if she found out I was up here.'
"Grace parent happy happy happy to know Grace is saving stars." Rocky does a set of jazz hands. "Grace watch stars. Rocky make more chain."
"I'll be there soon," he promises.
He hopes his mother really would be proud. He's also glad she's not around to have watched her son be sent off to die.
***
Grace doesn't remember waking up to a call from the hospital. He doesn't remember getting dressed. He doesn't remember driving to the hospital. He doesn't remember identifying the bodies. He doesn't remember calling the funeral home or the rabbi or their family.
Everything is a blur for a few days. Grace floats through life, aware that he has an open wound, but too shocked to feel the pain. He keeps his focus on the things that don't matter. What shoes to wear to the funeral, how unusually hot it is for a San Francisco March, how the hair clip on his kippah tugs uncomfortably, how his mother would have hated the flowers her sister sent, how the fistful of dirt he'd thrown in the grave clings to his nailbeds long after he's left the cemetery.
It's easier to fret about things like that. He knows the pain will be unbearable when he lets himself feel it.
He's back in the house now. He hasn't lived here since he left for college and it feels even less like his home now that it's crawling with mourners. Grace wishes he hadn't let himself be guilted into a traditional shiva. He just wants to be alone right now.
Grace is sitting in a corner of the living room, just wishing the walls would swallow him whole. No one knows what to do with him here. What do you say to a man who lost two parents from one moment to the next? All because someone decided a red light was too much to wait on. There's nothing to say.
It doesn't mean people don't try. Two of his aunts approach him, soft and slow like a wild animal. Maybe that's what he is now. Grace doesn't bother looking up at them. He just keeps picking at his thumb, relishing in the sting. One more distraction from the well of grief he's trying to ignore.
One of his aunts grabs his hand to stop him. "Oh, careful, Ry. Let's not do that."
If she's trying to sound sweet, she's failing. It's grating, condescending. It's how most of his family talks to him. Everyone but his parents. They saw a diagnosis when he was a kid and never bothered learning how to treat him like a human being. He wishes his mom were here. She would put them in their place.
His other aunt jumps in when it becomes clear Grace has nothing to say. "We're so sorry you're going through this. I know it doesn't seem like it now, but you'll come out the other side of this stronger."
"Maybe you'll consider meeting someone?" his aunt suggests. Grace's stomach churns when he realizes what this is. "Not right now, of course. But soon? We hate to think of you dealing with this all alone. And I know your parents would have loved to see you happily married."
Grace shakes loose of their hands and bolts to his feet. He mutters, "I have to go."
He escapes to the upstairs bathroom, in his parent's room. Their things are still everywhere. Half squeezed toothpaste on the counter, towels hung on the wall, a dress discarded in the corner. Grace curls in a corner of the shower and sobs until he throws up. He goes digging through the cabinets and swallows every pill he finds, mindless and grief struck.
Later, when he's getting his stomach pumped in the emergency room, the only words he'll manage are, "I want my mom."
**
"I want my mom," Grace sobs.
He's hungry. He's so hungry it almost doesn't register as hunger anymore. Just an emptiness that stretches through every inch of him. Grace had known this was what awaited him when he turned around for Rocky, but knowing is different from being here in the trenches of it. Erid has never been closer. Erid has never been farther.
He's been on a diet of mostly Taumoeba for a week now. That's a fairly optimistic read of the situation. He should have been on a diet of mostly Taumoeba for a week now. Instead, his body has gagged and convulsed and thrown up every dose he's tried to give it. His throat burns, his head hurts, his nose drips, his precious calories are in a wet puddle on the floor.
Grace spends energy he doesn't have on his tears. He feels like a child, crying out for his mother, but he lost his dignity a long time ago. He claws his way closer to Rocky, using what little energy he has to curl his body around his.
Again, Grace hiccups, "I jus' want my mom."
Rocky fidgets nervously. "Grace parent not here. Grace forget?"
Grace shakes his head. It's all he manages. He wishes this would be over already. He wishes he didn't have Rocky forcing him to cling to life like this. By now, it's not the dying that scares him. It's the pain. Grace wishes he could end this once and for all, but Rocky has long since confiscated the gun. Anything else just feels like too much effort.
Rocky runs a careful claw through Grace's ever thinning hair. He strokes his hair and rubs his back and sings his Eridian lullabies and if Grace keeps his eyes closed, he can almost pretend it's like being with his mother again.
***
It's Mother's Day. At least, in the calendar Grace has been cycling, it's Mother's Day. He knows it's not accurate for so many reasons, but having even this mismanaged form of timekeeping keeps him a little more sane. So if Grace says it's Mother's Day on Erid, then it's Mother's Day.
Grace plays his mom's favorites while he drinks his morning Taumoeba shake. Mamma Mia, Cats, Phantom of the Opera, even Jesus Christ Superstar. He thinks back to dancing around the kitchen with her and for once, he smiles. He goes on his morning walk humming along to Cats and lets his mind wander through the memories he ran away from for so long. Funny how crawling back from the brink of death on an alien planet could give you a little perspective on grief.
Rocky comes scampering along the beach like he does every morning. "You're early! It's a goddamn miracle!"
Grace snorts out a laugh. "I wish you'd never taught me the curse words."
"I still haven't taught you the really bad ones," Rocky reassures him. "You were singing human music. Very pretty."
"Yeah. It was one of my mom's favorite songs. It's called Memory. I'll play it for you back at the house. Today is Mother's Day, y'know. A holiday back on Earth to celebrate mothers. It's sort of silly, we should probably appreciate them all year long, but it was always a nice day," Grace explains.
"You can tell me about them," Rocky offers, hesitant. Grace's parents is a subject they still haven't been able to breach without Grace spiraling. "If you want."
"Yeah." Grace sits by the water and extends an arm for Rocky to settle against him. "Yeah, I think I will tell you about her."