Read Fiction River: Moonscapes for Free Online

from the moon, it wouldn’t be the same.
    Lincoln Parker’s widow sat in a comfortable chair of her own across from Nick. Her second Bloody Mary of the flight sat on a corkboard coaster on the small cherrywood table between them. She hadn’t touched much of it, even though she’d downed the first as soon as the flight had lifted off from the old Boeing field south of the city.
    “I should have my head examined,” Felicity Parker said to him.
    Nick lifted an eyebrow, expressing curiosity without saying a word. He’d come to know Felicity Parker well during the last six months. She’d trained right alongside him while he’d learned the new skills he’d need on the moon. How to walk in an environment suit. How to walk at all in gravity lower than Earth’s. How to interact with technology so advanced it seemed like magic.
    He was somewhat familiar with that last bit, having used his own unique form of technology for most of his life to perform what seemed like magic to the rest of the world. He’d shown the skeptical youngsters in charge of getting him ready for life on the moon that it was possible, after all, to teach an old dog new tricks.
    He’d been surprised that she intended to not only accompany her husband’s ashes to the moon, but live the rest of her days there. She truly had grown into an honorable woman, one who was capable of deep, abiding love. Nick wondered if he’d misjudged her as a child. Good and bad were such subjective terms, after all.
    When she didn’t take him up on the invitation offered by his lifted brow, Nick shifted in his seat to look at her more directly. He’d rather look out the window, but they wouldn’t arrive in Florida for another two hours. He still had plenty of time to take a last look at the places he had flown over so often in his life, even if he’d never seen most of them in daylight.
    “You mean about your decision to participate in the program in your husband’s place?” he asked. Going to the moon hadn’t been her childhood dream.
    She gave him a long look. She was a handsome woman of forty-two with a strong jaw line and a direct gaze. A formidable woman in the board room, no doubt.
    They were alone in the passenger area of the private jet. The other members of the team had left for Florida on a commercial jet the day before. Nick hadn’t known why he’d been singled out to accompany Mrs. Parker, but it appeared she had something she wanted to say to him when no one else was around to hear.
    “I remember you, you know,” she said.
    Nick’s breath caught in his throat. He tried to cover his surprise with a quiet cough.
    Even when they caught sight of him by accident, Nick’s kids never remembered him, not after they grew up. After they quit believing. Only a rare few could recall his face at all. But Felicity hadn’t been one of his kids, and she’d never believed.
    “I was seven,” she said. “And a precocious seven at that.”
    She had her hands folded neatly in her lap. She didn’t glance away from his face like she was trying to remember the night. Her gaze was steady on his.
    “I’d asked my mother for something foolish—a doll, maybe—but she told me I should write to you instead like all the other children.”
    She mentioned the doll in that offhand way adults sometimes did when they tried to camouflage the importance of what they were talking about. The doll had been something she’d wanted more than she was willing to admit.
    She paused, clearly waiting for some response from him. Maybe she expected him to deny what she remembered, but really, what was the point?
    “Did you?” Nick asked.
    “It would have been a waste of time. Even if I’d believed in you, I knew I wasn’t a good little girl. Oh, I wasn’t particularly ‘bad,’ but I wasn’t kind to my friends or my little sister.” Now she did glance away. She studied her drink for a moment before she picked it up and took a quick sip. “I’m going to miss these, I