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and he missed his girls. Surely this solar flare would be long gone by then.
     

Chapter 9
    27 Hours
    8:00 p.m., September 7
    Ryman Residence
    Belle Meade, Tennessee
     
    Madison scrolled down the iPad through her Facebook news feed and mindlessly clicked the like button on her friends’ posts. Her mind was elsewhere, and Madison probably would have chastised herself for liking the post of her neighbor who announced the loss of her father. Liking a post concerning the death of a loved one seemed like bad form without some accompanying comment of support.
    She paused the television while waiting for Alex. They both enjoyed watching Big Brother on CBS, and tonight’s episode was going to reveal a new twist in the final weeks of this season. Finally, growing impatient, she yelled upstairs for Alex.
    “Hey, are you finished with your homework?” Madison hated yelling through the house. Maybe she should’ve sent her daughter a text message. She laughed to herself at how lazy Americans had become.
    “Yes, Mom,” Alex hollered back, with a dose of teenage girl sarcasm. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
    Madison switched her iPad to Instagram and repeatedly double-tapped the heart button, indicating her approval of a particular image. She just wasn’t into it, so she set down her iPad and headed up the winding staircase to Alex’s bedroom. Their home was larger than the three of them needed. Besides the obligatory guest bedroom, they could have easily eliminated the formal living room, which gathered dust, and the other two upstairs bedrooms, which contained older, space-filling furniture.
    The upstairs was Alex’s domain. Her room looked like a page out of the Pottery Barn Teen catalog. Alex was not a girly-girl. As she got older, her styles gravitated to classic designs—very Hamptons. White and blues were prevalent in the furnishings. Paintings of famous oceanfront golf courses like Pebble Beach and Mauna Kea in Hawaii provided wall coverings. There were no posters of Justin Bieber or, heaven forbid, Kanye West. Alex enjoyed music. She just didn’t want to stare at it all day.
    Madison entered the mysterious domain of the teenage girl and found Alex on her iMac. Expecting to see Snapchat or Periwinkle or Periscope or some such, Madison was surprised to see the scorching red sun rotating on her computer screen.
    “Hey, Mom, check this out.”
    “Is this a new way to get a suntan?”
    “Very funny,” replied Alex with a roll of her eyes. “No, look at this website. It’s called SolarMonitor.org.”
    Madison laughed to herself as she pulled up a chair. Most parents are worried about their kids being propositioned by pedophiles online. My kid is watching the sun rotate. Madison thought there could be a bumper sticker concept in all of this.
    “Tell me about it,” said Madison.
    “This was one of the websites Mr. Stark told us about in class today. The other two were SpaceWeather.com and SpaceWeatherLive.com. You can learn so much about the sun from these sites.” Alex navigated through the web pages and showed Madison the various tools available.
    She stopped on the image revealing the sun in its present status. Using this particular satellite view, the sun appeared to be a variety of shades of purple with a fainter halo protruding from its surface.
    “This is the sun right now as it faces the earth,” said Alex.
    “Is this normal?”
    “Yes. The sun has good days and bad days. On the good days, there is very little activity, which means no solar flares.” Alex pointed to the monitor and ran her fingers across the bottom pointing to the lower half of the sun. “See here. NOAA states there are no active regions in this view. Active regions are areas for solar flare potential.”
    “Okay. This is good, right?” asked Madison.
    “Oh, this is good,” started Alex. “But this—not so much.” She navigated the cursor to a link marked far side .

    “Wow,” exclaimed Madison. “What happened to