The Astronaut’s Widow

The letter arrives between a Pottery Barn catalog and a credit card offer promising 0% APR for eighteen months.

Julia finds it Thursday morning, 6:47 AM, still wearing Neil's MIT sweatshirt. The one that smells like fabric softener now instead of him. Government watermark. Twenty-four-pound cotton fiber. The kind of paper that costs more per sheet than her daily Starbucks habit.

Her iPhone buzzes against granite. Neil's mother again. Third time this week about the pension benefits.

Twenty-six months since NASA declared him missing. Twenty-six months of paperwork that arrived in Times New Roman, size twelve, bleeding bureaucratic sympathy through laser printers.

This envelope weighs different.

Crackle as she tears the seal.

"Mrs. Garner, we regret to inform you that recent deep-space monitoring equipment has detected intermittent signals originating from coordinates consistent with Valhalla's last known trajectory..."

She reads it twice. The words taste like ash.

Neil's ship went dark two years, two months, fourteen days ago. No beacon. No distress call. Just silence eating the radio waves where her husband used to be.

But the letter continues: "...request your immediate presence at Deep Space Communications Facility 7 for preliminary contact procedures. Transportation will be provided."

The address doesn't exist on Google Maps.

A black Suburban idles outside her Craftsman bungalow at 2:00 PM sharp.