She stood, her back aching from sitting for so long. She went and washed her face in the bathroom and then came back, angry and restless. If she’d known she wouldn’t be able to finish, she wouldn’t have started reading in the first place. It was like spending hours on one of those old jigsaw puzzles with the lighthouses or the majestic herd of horses and then finding out the last pieces were missing. Had Lenore made it to Beth? Had Beezie survived? How had the Ortizes ended up with the farm, when they weren’t in the picture at all? Even Galapagos had failed to make an appearance.
Adri rummaged in her nightstand for the postcard she’d found that first night in Canaan, and reread it. After a few moments of going back and forth she realized something wasn’t right there either. The postcard was dated May 7, 1920, almost a year after Lenore’s last letter. How could Lenore have come to America for the first time twice?
She sank back down into the piles of paper on the bed, burrowing into her pillow, wishing she hadn’t stayed up all night for something so pointless. She remembered one of the major reasons she’d always loved her regimen: her runs, her studying, her exhaustive schedule. This is what happens when you have too much time on your hands. You waste your energy on things that don’t matter.
A sudden sound downstairs jolted her eyes open. A loud, raucous laugh. Had she imagined it?
She followed the smell of coffee to the kitchen where, lounged around the table, were Lily and four other women. They were huddled over handfuls of playing cards, and they looked up as she entered.
“Well if it isn’t Rumplestiltskin,” a woman said. She and Lily were drinking coffee at the table.
“It’s the celebrity,” one woman said drolly. And then, standing, “Would you like a beergarita?”
“It’s eight in the morning,” Adri said, after a moment’s confusion.
“Exactly,” the woman said, pouring her a glass. “I’m Carol.” She and the other women were much younger than Lily—maybe in their seventies. They were all dressed in bright colors, and one wore an orange cloth visor.
“We tried not to wake you,” Lily said more kindly.
“I’m the dealer,” the woman in the visor said. “Abigail.”
“Where’d you all come from?”
“Didn’t you know I had friends, honey?” Lily teased. Apparently, Lily wasn’t as lonely as she’d thought. Adri felt a stab of jealousy, but she wasn’t sure of what—of Lily having four more friends than she did, or of the friends having Lily.
“You said all the people you knew were dead,” Adri said, knowing she sounded ridiculous. Lily looked amused.
“Well, that’s true, but I made more friends.”
“Play a round?” Carol asked.
Adri sank into an empty chair as Carol dealt her a hand (“I used to deal, but I’m too forgetful to do it anymore,” Lily said) and before she knew what hit her she was knee-deep in a game of seven-toed Pete.
“You were up late last night.” Lily eyed her with concern. “I got up to go to the bathroom around three, and your light was on.”
Adri chewed on a thumbnail, still trying to adjust. She felt like she’d spent the night somewhere far away. “Lily, did your mom ever mention any of the Godspeeds by name?”
Lily looked thoughtful for a moment then shook her head.
“Nothing about Catherine, or her sister, Beezie? Or what may have happened to them?”
Lily was about to reply, but Carol cut her off. “Ooh.” Carol’s eyes widened and she leaned forward. “Yes. The two dead sisters. My friend used to say that if you stood in the yard at midnight, you could hear them coughing.” Adri’s arms prickled.
“Oh, what a load of bull,” Lily said. “I grew up here, and I never heard that. Don’t listen to her, Adri, that’s just a mean old story.”
“Well.” Carol gave Lily a firm look. “They died, like, a hundred million years ago. Either way, Lily, it’s not like we’re hurting their feelings.”
“Do you know how they died?” Adri pressed warily.
“Oh, they died of dust pneumonia, very young,” Carol said and sorted her cards. “Both of them. Very tragic. It’s one of those local stories everyone knows.”
Adri’s throat hurt began to hurt. “Even the older one?”
“Well, I never heard that.” Lily said, squeezing her hands, then seemed to remember herself and pulled her fingers away. “And I live here.”
“You heard it, and you don’t remember,” said Carol.
Lily blew a dubious breath through her lips. “I bet they survived. I bet things worked out for them.”
“I think I found those letters your mom had,” Adri said.
Lily nodded. “Ooh, I’d love to see them, honey.” She looked interested, but not as much as Adri had expected. The women went on with their cards.
“Catherine and Beezie went to this place called the Ragbag Fair,” Adri offered, her voice faltering. She felt like everyone had already moved on. “To see a show called the Electric. They got tricked into thinking they could live forever.” She stared down at the table and rubbed her thumb against a crack in the wood. She felt heavy and dark.
“The Ragbag Fair,” Lily echoed. She looked up. For a moment, her eyes brightened in recognition, then clouded over again. “I knew about that once. You know . . .” And then she tapped her head and rolled her eyes apologetically.
Every weekday, Adri borrowed Lily’s car and drove into Wichita for simulations and training. There were zero gravity sessions that made her vomit, launch and landing run-throughs for troubleshooting the dangers of a Mars landing, and engineering sessions where they all took various sections and circuits of the ship apart and put them back together again. Evaluators stood by, studying how each trainee fared, marking things up on a tablet. Adri was always aware of their presence and always keenly aware that they held her future in the balance.
Luckily, she excelled at everything she did. She got to know the belly of her ship the way she’d known the belly of her car. While the others in her group talked between lessons, shared their histories with each other, and started making inside jokes, she focused on redoing things she had already done right, just to make sure.
Whenever one of the other trainees tried to strike up a conversation with her, she answered them in monosyllables.
When Alexa approached her and asked if she wanted a mint (she’d been handing them out), Adri told her without a trace of humor she was trying to quit. And when D’Angelo laid a tray down next to hers at lunch one afternoon and tried to ask her more about herself than just where she was from, she said she had to pee and left. She was never rude exactly, and they all had to interact fairly regularly. She was cooperative and respectful. But she sidestepped any attempts they made to get to know her.
In the evenings, Adri searched the house for more evidence of the Godspeeds’ fate, or of Lenore’s arrival in Canaan. She connected Lily’s Curiosity chip to her ear and searched online, breaking a rule only to turn up nothing but that the Allstocks had been a wealthy family who’d made their fortune during the industrial revolution and a picture of Lenore (a dark beauty in a nice dress, fuzzy and unfocused).