PROLOGUE
That night, she dreamed of space.
Of stars, and planets, of a yawning void that appeared to stretch on through eternity, its vastness astounding her. She dreamed of things she’d never seen, things she likely never would see, and yet, impossibly, they surrounded her, so close that she could nearly reach out and grab on to a star as she hurtled through oblivion.
And then—a whisper—her name, the sound of it beating in her heart like a drum.
Viv.
When she woke, her husband was gone.
One
1968
Nine Hours Gone
In the early hours of the morning, astronaut Joe Mitchell's spacecraft lost contact with Mission Control in Houston at approximately three a.m. Two other astronauts are aboard the spacecraft that was on a mission to the Moon to complete a lunar orbit-"
Vivian Mitchell stared at the TV screen, at the news anchor dressed in a somber dark suit, immaculate white shirt, and subdued tie, as though he'd selected the outfit precisely for the severity of the occasion. Even though the broadcast was in color, there was a gray hue to the entire business.
Graham Carlson.
His tone was calm-after all, his was one of the voices the nation turned to in times of difficulty and despair, and they'd sure had plenty of those lately. But if you listened closely, you could make out the hint of grief threading through his voice as though he already knew the conclusion they were careening toward as surely as Joe's spacecraft had blasted through space, could hear the way in which his voice broke over the last name Mitchell as though the loss wasn't just professional to him, but a personal one, too.
If you knew Graham Carlson at all, you'd notice the way his right hand lifted as though his fingers itched to smooth down his tie as they always did when he was nervous. If seven years-a lifetime-ago you'd known him as closely as two people could know each other, you'd see the way he looked at the camera, the emotion in his eyes as though he were speaking directly to Vivian.
She'd thought about calling the newsroom in D.C. herself to see if Graham had any information about the missing spacecraft, but she wasn't sure their history would be enough to keep their conversation private. Astronaut wives had long been subjected to public fascination and consumption, and considering the army of reporters camped out on her front lawn waiting for a glimpse of her, they didn't care that this was one of the absolute worst moments of her life.
Her living room was filled with people, but if someone had asked Vivian who was there, she couldn't have answered save for a few. Some had been there with her last night when she'd begun what all the astronaut wives termed as "the death watch," for how excruciating it was sitting, waiting, praying that your husband would return to you from space, but most had left in the late evening hours. The wives who had traveled from Houston to Florida to view the launch returned to her home like clockwork after the initial knock on her door at six a.m. when Joe's boss at Cape Kennedy had come to notify Vivian that they'd lost contact with his spacecraft.
"Astronaut Joe Mitchell is a decorated fighter pilot, an American hero, and one of the elite astronauts chosen to be part of the Apollo program to go to the Moon."
"Turn that off," Polly Abbott snapped, rising from her seat on the sofa beside Vivian and striding toward the television ready to do it herself if no one obeyed her. "She doesn't need to keep hearing the same thing over and over again. If there's a change, we'll know about it first," Polly added, sending a pointed glance to Rick Adams, the astronaut NASA had sent over to act as Vivian's liaison and support.
Rick's presence had multiple functions-ostensibly, he was there to help Vivian and keep her informed as they tried to reestablish contact with Joe's spacecraft; undeniably, he was there to help NASA and keep them informed. He felt like a handler who had been assigned to Vivian to make sure she didn't discredit herself, Joe, or, most importantly, the space program.
One of the newer, younger wives jumped up to do Polly's bidding, the unofficial hierarchy that existed between their group playing out in Vivian's crowded living room. Polly was the undisputed leader of the wives given her husband's seniority at NASA, and while Vivian had all but eschewed the spouses' networking and the social interactions that came with it, having a best friend who people listened to and respected counted for a great deal in moments like these.
If any astronaut was going to be Vivian's support, it would have been Polly's husband, Frank, who'd known Vivian as long as she'd known Joe, but Frank's position as flight director leading the mission on the ground meant he was needed at the command center, and so they'd sent Rick to do the death watch with her.
The television cut off, and still Vivian stared at that blank screen as though it would somehow give her the answers she sought, would help her understand how they had gotten to this place. She kept waiting for the door to open and for Joe to stride into their living room, to wrap his arms around her and sweep her up as he pressed a kiss to her lips that set off flutters inside her.
Vivian kept waiting for someone to tell her that it was all a mistake, a communication problem that had been resolved, that they'd made contact and all was well. She kept waiting to wake from this nightmare. It was her worst fear realized, the scenario she had dreaded for years, and despite all the time she'd spent anticipating such an event, now that it was here, she couldn't make the event land, couldn't conceptualize the fact that she was staring down the reality of her husband lost in space.
She'd known when he went up that the chance of him coming back to her alive was as good as a coin toss. Now those odds seemed decidedly worse and stacked against her.
How could they lose a spacecraft?
Or did it count as being lost if it was out there and they just didn't know how to contact it or where it was?
Did Joe realize that they'd lost communication with NASA?
He must have.
Was he panicking right now thinking of how he was going to get himself and his men back to Earth? Or was he still focused on trying to salvage the mission, to get them close to the Moon? There were three astronauts aboard that spacecraft, but it was Joe's mission, Joe's responsibility.
Vivian kept waiting for someone to tell her how she was supposed to act in a situation like this, what she was supposed to say, what expression she should school on her face. There was an understanding about these sorts of things-they were astronaut wives, and before that they were fighter pilot wives, and when your husband had the sort of job where you kissed him goodbye when he went off to work knowing that he might not come back, you steeled yourself for the possibility of a crisis such as this one.
Or at least she thought she had.
Maybe there were some things no amount of worrying could prepare you for.
I'll come back to you. Always.
How many times had Joe told her that?
When he said it, despite all the odds that suggested otherwise, it had been impossible not to believe him. After all, it was Joe-one of the best and brightest the space program had to offer, and most importantly, he'd promised her he'd always come back to her, and Joe had kept almost all his promises to her.
"I'm going to get some fresh air," Vivian murmured to no one and everyone at once, not even sure if the outside was what she needed. All she knew was that she couldn't be stuck in this overcrowded room anymore, waiting for word that wasn't coming.
Surely, if there had been an explosion or something terrible like that, NASA would have evidence of such a catastrophe. The launch had been fine. Everything had gone according to plan.
Until it didn't.
How did a man disappear in space?
When you were doing things no one had ever done before, crossing barriers mankind had never encountered, it was difficult to know what was possible, to understand all the vagaries of the universe and their daring quest to navigate it. There were some questions math and science had yet to answer, some things that existed just out of their reach.
Vivian wove her way through the living room, into the kitchen, past murmured words of condolence and comfort that floated through her as though she were made of air. They'd only been in the little beach house near the Cape for three months, and she couldn't tell if that made it easier or harder to feel grounded at a time like this. There were fewer memories of Joe to haunt her, but given the nature of their lifestyle-the uncertainty that came with being an Air Force pilot's wife, and now an astronaut's wife-she'd learned to carry her memories inside her rather than packing them in boxes that shuffled from house to house or were affixed on ever-changing walls.
Joe was her home.
There were fewer wives filling her living room than would be here if she had chosen to remain in Clear Lake-or "Togethersville," as it had been nicknamed-in the Houston suburbs like the rest of the wives. Her departure had raised more than a few eyebrows, but she'd felt like she was suffocating in Clear Lake.
Besides, in her mind it had never made sense for Joe to spend his workweek at the Cape, flying his little T-38 airplane cross-country to come home on weekends. Not after the accidents, not after some of his fellow astronauts had died flying their T-38s. There was nothing keeping her tethered to Togethersville anymore. Cocoa Beach, Florida, had become home-for a moment, at least, same as all the other places they had lived.
Vivian opened the sliding glass door in the kitchen, slipping wordlessly outside onto the tiny cement patio, shutting it gently behind her lest the noise draw unwanted attention and interrupt her much-needed solace.
They used to sit out here at the end of the day, sipping cocktails Joe mixed at the little bar off the dining room and making conversation about their days.
None of the homes they'd had throughout their marriage and Joe's military career had been particularly glamorous. A military officer's pay didn't go far-and Vivian had learned to economize with a frugality that made her proud. But even she had to admit that the diminutive house on Cocoa Beach with a postage stamp for a backyard had been a bit of a disappointment.
When she'd heard "Florida" and "beach," she'd envisioned towering palm trees and crashing waves. The ocean was beautiful, to be sure; it was just that their stretch of street was too far away to properly enjoy it. The landlord had sold them on the fact that the beach cottage had a view of the water, but he'd neglected to mention that you had to be standing on the roof to see it and, thus, enjoy it. She knew this because a few weeks after they moved in, Joe and some of his astronaut buddies had ended up on the roof drinking beers and eating peeled shrimp by the pound while they set off fireworks to celebrate the Fourth of July, seemingly impervious to the fact that a storm was building in the background.
Those were the moments in her marriage when she just had to shake her head and accept that Joe and his friends were built differently, that while it was impossible for her to fathom why grown forty-something-year-old men would think it was a good idea to climb up on the roof of their rental home and shoot off pyrotechnics-think of the security deposit, she'd implored him-given their line of work there was little that fazed them, little that they would say "no" to, particularly if it came in the form of a dare from another astronaut.
These were the instances when Vivian vacillated between wanting to scream and falling a little bit more in love with him, because there was something so utterly charming about Joe when he was incorrigible.
And so, despite the dubiously appointed "beach view," Vivian set out making the cottage feel like a home, just as she'd done in the three other places they'd lived in the last five years.
Not that Joe minded where they resided or if he could see the beach, or mountains, or any other vista. He had the sky-and his eyes turned toward space-and nothing else really mattered.
A helicopter sounded overhead, and Vivian almost regretted that she hadn't taken NASA up on their offer to move her to a safe house for the period surrounding the launch to escape the overwhelming media attention. The other wives who had gone through this before her had warned her that it would be unlike anything she'd ever experienced, but even so, she hadn't been prepared. There were some things you just couldn't anticipate until you were thrust into the middle of them.
Thankfully, today Polly had the foresight to draw the drapes closed.
Vivian had never grown used to the notoriety that came with being an astronaut's wife, never warmed to the instant celebrity that had followed them because of Joe's job. There were reporters camped out on her lawn at this very moment, their flashbulbs trained on the beach cottage's front windows. They'd been there since the week leading up to the launch, yelling questions out at her when she got in the car to go to the grocery store or went to the salon to get her hair cut and colored. They climbed in bushes, knocked on doors, and generally made a nuisance of themselves even though much of the interest that the initial astronauts evoked had lessened throughout the Gemini missions and now for the Apollo ones. The novelty had somewhat worn off, the idea of a man going into space no longer as awe-inspiring as it had once been.
Frank and Joe had hypothesized that going to the Moon might be the thing that rallied the nation and the world, and Joe's lunar orbit was supposed to be a critical first step on that journey, particularly after the series of setbacks the space program had faced.
Vivian glanced up at the sky, at the fluffy white clouds, the placid blue, and the unknown beyond. She tried to imagine Joe out there somewhere, pictured him floating through space in the little spacecraft they'd built as part of their quest to eventually put a man on the Moon.
It was a moment she'd repeated on military bases throughout his career, when she'd heard the roar of an engine and glanced up at the sky, wondering if he was flying above her, holding her breath until he landed.
Sometimes it felt as though she were strung together by those moments, all those held breaths, luck, and bravado enough to get by on.
Copyright © 2026 by Chanel Cleeton. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
