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It was almost unnoticeable the way she became someone else’s.
Nearly four years of daily Artemis training had cemented it.
Sure… he’d first lost her to the NASA astronaut intake program, a few years later to Star City, then eventually to the ISS.
But this. This was different.
She hadn’t been like this with Nick Hague.
He’d never mentioned it; but one evening, and it was years ago now, she’d come home wearing an Expedition 41 hoodie, three sizes too big for her. At the time his mind didn’t leap to scandal, he just clocked it. He knew it was deeper, more cerebral than that. He rationalized it at the time: He’d probably just seen her shiver in an air conditioned briefing room and given it to her. Chivalrous. Innocuous. Thoughtful. But now the names woven into the mission patch embroidery, affixed to the hoodie’s shoulder, were repeating and echoing in his memory: Suraev, Gerst, Wiseman.
Reid Wiseman. Widower. Father. NASA Astronaut. Artemis II Commander. Former US Navy Test Pilot. And perhaps most significant of all:
The man his wife was in love with.
She hadn’t physically left; even now years in he still couldn’t completely verify whether or not the two of them had been physically intimate with one another.
He assumed on par they’d been as careful as they had been careless.
As far as he could recount Reid had always made himself benign. Ever smiling, a walking green flag, stoic, principled, respectful. Every time they had encountered one another it was always cordial, amicable, non-confrontational. Not offering more than a complimentary, clinical report card of Christina’s many merits. Never laced with adoration, desire, or the slightest bit of romantic interest. Completely professional.
He hadn’t been suspicious when they’d taken off alone to Stennis for launch tests. Or the subsequent, ever increasing, facility visits to Michoud, Huntsville, Kennedy.
In retrospect those too were probably something.
But ultimately it was the mission itself that confirmed it.
He’d confronted her, months after splashdown, over coffee in the backyard after she’d returned from a transatlantic outreach tour in Europe in conjunction with the ESA. He reconciled he couldn’t pretend to not see it anymore.
What he “and anyone else with eyes” could clearly observe was easily accessible in endless hours of NASA Artemis II live feed.
And it was only deepening in successive post mission photographs and interviews.
“I watched you in that capsule Christina. For days. You and Reid. He knew where you were without looking at you. His hands reached for your waist like he’d been doing it for years. Once I saw him lean across Victor to touch your face, he ran his thumb across your cheek under your glasses, but you remembered there were cameras surrounding you, you instantly flashed him a panicked look and reluctantly moved away. Two days later, he held you, his arms snaked around your frame like they belonged there, you leaned into it smiling, your shoulders completely relaxed and it looked like you were home. It was familiar, something not uncharted. Even in the dark when you thought the cameras wouldn’t see, couldn’t possibly see, they kept record, and there you were again, in dim microgravity. When Reid saw those photographs you took of earth rise on your camera display, he was breathless, he pulled you close, he didn’t let go of you Tina. But you didn’t let go of him either. His lips brushed your hairline. When he finally pulled away, he looked at you with love. And you mirrored it right back. A tiny go-pro caught it all, and gave you both away. There are sparks Tina… and then there are infernos. You and Reid, you’ll never leave each other alone. And I can’t ask you to without being the villain at this point. It’s too late isn’t it? You’re in love with him.”
She hadn’t refuted a word. She hadn’t gotten angry. She hadn’t yelled. She hadn’t stormed out.
She just looked up from her coffee, tears threatening to break past her eyelashes and nodded once.