“Yeah,” Michael says. “They got all the way there, right? They’ll be okay. I think, I mean I think so.”
He says it less because he’s convinced of it and more because saying anything else would be awful. He doesn’t usually do things like that, he says whatever he really thinks, but he can’t bring himself to do it. This is too important. And the transmission nags at him. The part of him that’s been pulled away with the astronauts can’t do that to them.
He smells Lee’s hair, presses his mouth to the top of her head in a quiet kiss. He feels protective. In a way, she’d been in space for a while. She’s back, and she’s okay. The astronauts can do it too.