The Future We Wish We Had

DESTINY by Julie Hyzy

‘I am not building a shuttle,” Gran said, irritated.

“No?” I asked with a tiny bit of hope.

“I’m modifying one I have.”

She must have seen the look on my face then, because she laid her warm, freckled hand on my arm and winked.

As Gran refilled my iced tea, a breeze kicked up and rushed through my hair. A little bit cool on this otherwise warm afternoon, it made me glance over to Emily, who sat on the whitewashed planking of the porch. Gran had given Emily plenty of cookies to share with the doll perched on one dimpled leg. To give myself opportunity to process Gran’s comment, I moved over to Emily to feel her arms. She was warm enough for now.

Back at the table, I took a deep breath. “Tell me more about this modification.”

“Now… you ask that like you’ve got a pain somewhere,” Gran said, grinning. “Look at you, trying so hard to smile, kinda gritting your teeth, your eyes all worried.”

I wanted to argue. But she was right.

Gran grabbed me by both arms and made me look at her. I could feel the strength in those skinny little hands, see it in her bright blue eyes.

“I have a project I’m working on,” she began, slowly, the same way she used to explain things when I was five. “And it’s something I don’t want just anybody to know about.”

“But the doctors said…”

“Those doctors,” she said with a sniff, “think they’re so smart. One of them came nosing around here. Can you believe that? Don’t they have anything better to do with their time than spy on old ladies?” Gran sat back, shaking her head. “They caught me, too,” she said, looking more bemused than angry, “out in the workroom. Had to come up with something, so I told them I was studying sculpture. Ha! Thought I fooled them. Guess not.”

“No… I guess not…”

“Come on then. You’re the only one I wanted to show, anyway.”

The workroom was a long walk from the house through a dandelion-strewn field. It was slow going, with Emily stopping every few feet to pick up the dried weeds and blow them to the wind. I grabbed her hand to pull her along but Gran bent down and plucked one of her own.

“Make a wish, Emily!” she said. Together, lips pursed, she and Emily scattered their wishes to the wind, and then turned to each other with twin grins of uncomplicated joy. I watched the seeds take wing on the breeze and tried to remember wishes I’d made when I was Emily’s age. How many of them hadn’t come true?

As we got nearer, Emily noticed humming and pulled me along, eager to see what was making the noise behind the door.

Gran’s eyes glittered as she stood before the keypad.

“Are you ready?”

I bit my lip. “Sure.”

She tapped in a code on the entry keypad. In answer the door whooshed open. Dust danced, fairy-like, swirling through sun rays that fell in from the skylights above. I watched the motes hover, then land gently on the silver contraption that stood before us.

“Yay!” Emily said, clapping.

Gran hadn’t been too far off when she picked sculpture as her cover story. Shiny metal flanges almost obscured my old playhouse. Gramps used to tell me it was a shuttle, and as a child, I’d spent endless hours inside, hoping it could fly me backwards in time so I could meet my parents. Now, graceful curves shaped like twisted flames engulfed the cab and reached skyward. I released the breath I’d been holding as I walked around it, unsure of what it was, now. And yet, something about it…

I pointed at the back end. Completely redone, and fitted with jets, wires, conduit. “What’s this?” I asked.

“A multiphase conversion catalyst.”

“Speak English.”

“Your grandfather and I invented this catalyst, years ago.” She grinned, rocking back and forth on her heels. “This little dohicky makes it possible to propel the shuttle and its occupants into another dimension.” She gave a little half shrug. “Theoretically.”

I almost couldn’t speak. “This isn’t a real shuttle, Gran. This is my playhouse… I hoped someday it would be Emily’s.”

Her eyes were clear, her expression bemused. Not at all what I’d expect from someone clearly losing touch with reality. “I believe this creation has the power to take us exactly where we want to go.”

“Us?”

She shrugged. “I’m hoping you’ll come with me.”

I didn’t know what to say for a long time. Finally, all I could do was ask, “Why?”

Gran pointed.

I ran my hand over the hull. Carefully lettered on its side-Destiny.

My eyes asked the question; Gran tut-tutted. “Now don’t you go thinking that I’ve gone out of my head. Think about it some, honey. Gramps and I decided long ago that people who really care about each other should be together. But then he died. Too soon.” She shook her fist at the sky, “Too soon, you hear me?” She made a funny face then, and I thought she might cry. Instead, she turned with a smile as big as the object before us. “I know he’s waiting for me, but he’ll have to wait just a little longer because it’s a bit more difficult with only one person working.”

I didn’t know what to say.

Gran wasn’t finished. “I’m going to be with your grandpa. We’ll be together again, forever, this time.”

“But Gran, that means you’ll die.”

She wagged a finger at me. “Now that’s where assumptions’ll get you into trouble.”

The doctor’s diagnosis flashed before my eyes. I tried to mask my reaction, but I knew that Gran had read my mind. She stopped right there and made what I used to call her “mad face.”

“You know I’m not crazy,” she said.

I must have squirmed, because Gran continued, a bit vexed. “Gramps and I had it all figured out, honey,” she said. “Death is just existence in a different dimension.”

Then she grinned and grabbed Emily’s hand, “How would you like some ice cream?”

“I’m worried about Gran.”

Don sat at the kitchen table, head bent, reading. Watching him, I grabbed a mug from the cabinet and banged the door shut a little louder than necessary.

The top of his head moved back and forth as he followed the words on the page before him, and he pushed his too-long brown hair out of his eyes. Don was one of those people who never learned to track the written word without moving his head, a habit that hadn’t bothered me years ago. Now, it was one of many that drove me insane.

I closed my eyes for a moment and breathed in the fresh-brewed aroma of the coffee warming the mug in my hands. Give me strength. A tentative sip stung as the liquid trailed a path down the back of my throat. The warmth felt good, very good.

Don was fiddling with his bottom lip, squeezing it till it formed a tight “U,” and studying a brochure he’d brought home. The same brochure that had been too important for him to put down earlier when Emily stood on tiptoe to give him a kiss goodnight. He’d said, “Uh-huh,” and absently patted her brown curly head. “Daddy’s busy.”

“Don?”

He made eye contact, but his mind remained on the glossy paper in front of him. I could almost see the struggle going on in his head: Keep reading? Or talk to her?

Talk won. Barely. His eyes were so glazed that I felt like he hadn’t stopped reading-that he was still poring over the copy now tattooed on my forehead.

“We gotta get one of these.”

“Get one of what?”

“Here,” he said, “it’s new.”

He turned the brochure for me to see, but when I tried to pick it up, Don held a corner, as if it were something very precious and he was afraid to let go. With obvious reluctance, he loosened his grip. “Where’s my coffee?” he asked as he stood.

I fluttered my hand upward toward the counter in a vague gesture that after four years of marriage meant get it yourself.

Nice brochure. Whatever they were selling, it had to be expensive.

I started to skim, and in a moment, raised my eyes to meet Don’s. He was hovering with a huge grin on his face. I gave him my best “you gotta be kidding” look.

The brochure was for Sensavision. The newest toy on the market for grown-ups so bored with the reality of their lives that they looked elsewhere for stimulation. This gizmo boasted a room-size screen with gears and sensors, speakers and cameras, aromabytes and atmospheric enhancers. Stressed? Hedonistic spa programs glittered to life, ready to soothe your troubles away. Ache for excitement? Design your pleasure. Physical, mental, sexual. Unparalleled virtual-sensory experiences guaranteed.

“We can’t afford one of these.” I said.

“We can, if we borrow from your trust fund.”

“No.” I said. “Not again. Gramps set that fund up for me years ago, for my future. And what have we done with it? Borrowed so many times I can’t count. We need that money for Emily’s education. And serious stuff.”

“There’s plenty there,” Don said, stressing the word “plenty.” I think his teeth were clenched.

“There won’t be at the rate we’re going. You bought that hover-camper last year and we’ve never even used it. I don’t think Gramps had campers and Sensavisions in mind when he put the money away for me.”

Don’s expression fell. He pulled the paper back to his side of the table with a huff and bent over it again, elbows on the table, face in hands. He started to read again, mouthing the words even as he maintained a pout. With his stubbled pink cheeks pressed firmly into his palms, his mouth was pulled up at the corners showing the bottom half of his teeth. He mumbled something I couldn’t hear, then said, “You got what you wanted.”

“What did I get?”

Don stopped and with a deliberate movement, turned his eyes upward toward the stairs and then back down at his paper.

It took me a moment. “Emily?” I asked. “You didn’t want the baby?”’

“Didn’t say that. Just saying you wanted it more,” he said, not meeting my eyes. “And I want this more.” Hitting the brochure with his finger for emphasis, he caused a wrinkle. He smoothed out the paper with care.

A long minute passed.

When he did look up, he grinned. “They take credit.”

Dr. Andrews called me again Monday. Grin missed another appointment.

I agreed to talk to her.

“My aches and pains are my own,” Gran said when I tried. “I can handle them. A few visits with those pill peddlers and I’ll be ready to pull the plug myself.”

“Gran,” I reminded her, “you’re not hooked up to anything.”

“Not yet.” She wiggled a finger at me, “But there’s a reason behind the expression ‘doctoring up.’ They want to change me. Or worse, to put me away. And I won’t have it.”

The Triage Trio, as Gran so eloquently called them, kept in contact with me. They asked that I report to them anything strange in Gran’s behavior, any indication that it was time to take action.

“What kind of action?” I’d asked.

Their answers made me cringe. Maybe a cranial implant would do the trick, maybe a short admittance to a holo-home. Maybe permanent admittance. They spent lots of time singing the praises of one particular holo-home. The best in the business and, after all, isn’t that what Gran deserved? This place, they insisted, would be virtually indistinguishable from her current home. And virtual commitment was their preferred method of treatment. She’ll love it, they said. Guaranteed.

But would the holo-emitters be able to capture the sun on the hyacinths? I wanted to know. The hyacinths were Gran’s favorite.

They suggested I visit the place, to feel better about sending her there.

They’d done their homework: I had to give them that.

Emily wiggled out of my arms and ran through the holographic house, calling, “Gannie!”

“She’s not here, honey,” I said. Yet.

How, I asked, had they managed the detail? The picture I’d painted when I was five was there, the awards Gran had won were there, even the smell of the baking cookies that permeated the room. Yes. They’d gotten that right.

Casual but prim, the woman in charge of admissions smiled, showing perfectly straight white teeth. Her nose crinkled like a ferret’s. “There’s no rush, you know. We can keep your grandmother’s house on our digital file indefinitely. We want you to be comfortable with your decision.”

“How did you do this?” My mouth was open, but I was too overwhelmed to be embarrassed.

“We sent an operative to her home,” she stage-whispered, though only Emily and I were there, “posing as a realtor needing information for a neighbor. Took digigraphs of the whole house. Did we get it right?”

She giggled, knowing full well that my answer was, yes, perfectly.

So why did I feel like crying?

Safely tucked in bed by eight o’clock, Emily went right to sleep. I poured myself a cup of tea and sat down to read, thinking that a good book would help me relax. When Don walked in moments later, I was surprised.

“You’re home early.”

“Yep.”

Don always went straight to bed or sat in front of the teleview when he got home. Right now he was standing in the family room doorway with his hands behind his back.

He’d gotten a haircut.

“These are for you,” he said all in a rush, and thrust a bouquet of roses at me.

“But…”

“Happy anniversary.”

“Don,” I said, taking the flowers, “our anniversary was in May.”

“I know that. But remember how hurt you were that I forgot?”

I didn’t remember being hurt in the least. He’d forgotten every anniversary except the first one, and frankly, I’d gotten used to it.

He knelt before me and took my hands in his. Too startled to think, I let him. He was still good-looking. His brown eyes twinkled and his mouth curved into the smile that I fell in love with so many years ago.

Encouraged, he took my book, closed it, and sat next to me. Tentative, his fingers stroked my forearms with light touches, moving upward in slow circles. He cupped my chin and kissed me, softly. My eyes sought his as we parted. What could have caused this change?

He pushed my hair behind one ear and pulled me close. “Tell me what’s new with you and Emily,” he said.

And so, with my head on his shoulder, I told him about the doctors and their diagnosis, and worries about Gran. I left out the part about the shuttle, which was tricky, but I sensed that he wasn’t analyzing my story too thoroughly anyway, probably because there was so much to catch up on.

We sat there for a long time and I talked. It felt wonderful. I turned to look at him. That sparkle in his eyes was what did it for me. I leaned forward and kissed him on the lips, happy to feel the tingle again. The tingle I’d thought was gone for good.

When I described my visit to the holo-home, Don started to ask questions. Yes, it looked just like Gran’s house. Sure, she could have an outdoor and an indoor world. She could even plant flowers. Could she change the program? No. That would be up to me. The goal was to make her feel as though she was truly at home and not in an artificial environment. State of the art? Absolutely. Expensive, too.

He made a passing comment about wanting to see this holo-home, and in my naivete, I jumped at the suggestion.

“That would be great, Don. You have no idea what it would mean to me to have you see it too. I mean,” I shook my head, my hands making helpless gestures, “it just doesn’t seem right to send Gran to one of those places. You know?”

I should have known better.

Don grinned. “Yeah,” he said, “I would love to see one of those things. They’re supposed to be just like that Sensavision I want, only better.”

“Sensavision.”

“Now that you got your chance to talk, I thought maybe I could tell you some more about the Sensavision.” He reached into his back pocket, displacing me from his shoulder, and pulled out another brochure, different than the one we’d argued over. “You’re gonna love it, I just know.”

I was dumbfounded. He continued, oblivious. “Y’see what a nice time we had tonight, with me home? I’d be home every night if we had one of these. Wouldn’t you like that?”

Sitting up, I grabbed the flowers. “Is that what this is all about? You trying to look like a sweet and thoughtful husband so you could romance me into buying one of those?”

His eyes told me he was confused by the question. But his shrug told me more.

I threw the flowers to the floor. “You fooled me. I’ll give you that. Here,” I went to the banking console and inputted the code that transferred funds from my trust account into a debit disk. He watched me, the whole time, his eyes alert, not contrite. I waved the silver disk at him. “Buy the stupid thing. But don’t ever pull a stunt like this again.”

The next day we sat in Gran’s kitchen.

Emily sat at my feet, and I sighed with pleasure. For the past hour, she’d been pressing Gran’s door chimes over and over. Programmed to play Emily’s favorite song, “Whatsa Whatsa,” they’d been the hit of the morning. I was relieved she’d finally gotten bored with the game.

Gran sat down next to me, “So. What are you going to do about it?”

I bit my lip. Complaints about Don had just fallen out of my mouth. I usually tried to keep marital discord safely under wraps, but today something had snapped. And now Gran knew it all.

“Marry in haste, repent at leisure, isn’t that how it goes?” I asked. I was kind of kidding, kind of not.

Gran snorted. “I married your grandfather knowing him only two months,” she said, her blue eyes telling me an important point was about to follow. “And a finer man, a better lover, there never was.”

Settling in for a “talk,” Gran continued. “We knew. We both knew that no matter how many years we had together, no matter how many thousands-no-millions of moments we had-they were never going to be enough. A lifetime together was just going to be the start. And we knew that right off.”

She looked at me. “So it isn’t that you married young, or quick, honey. It’s that you married someone who couldn’t make you the center of his world.” Offering me her ever-present cookies, she added, “I’d move on, if I were you.”

I hadn’t expected that. I took a pink sprinkled cookie from the plate, even though I didn’t want one. “What about Emily?” I asked, “She deserves to have a father.” I looked over at my daughter, singing to her doll, crumbs covering both their faces.

“You think Don’s the best one for the job?”

There it was. “Why didn’t you say anything before?”

“No one could have talked me out of marrying Edwin. They had no right. If you would’ve asked, I would’ve given my opinion. But you didn’t, so I kept my mouth shut.”

Not for the first time since my consultation with the doctors did I question their sanity. Gran was the most lucid person I knew. I needed Gran’s company. I craved her advice, her insight. These were not the rantings of a crazy woman.

If it weren’t for that shuttle thing.

She handed Emily a photo imager just like the one she’d let me play with when I was little. “Take lots of pictures for Grannie, Emily.” Then she dug into her pants pocket. “Here,” she said.

It was a debit disk.

I didn’t understand.

“Take it.” She shook it a little, tapping my arm. “There’s enough here to cover what you took from your trust. And then some.”

“But…”

“I don’t need money where I’m going.” She grinned and sipped her iced tea.

“Don?”

He nodded, his eyes glazed, fastened in rapt attention to the scene playing out on the Sensavision before him. “Oh!” he said. “Ah!”

Leaning in the doorway, I watched him.

The Sensavision, nine feet tall and twelve feet wide, took up nearly an entire wall of our family room.

Though it stood two-dimensional, Don was standing on the bridge of a futuristic spaceship. It looked a lot like the one from the sci-fi television show he liked to watch. He wore a uniform of sorts. Several people around him, similarly clad, smiled up with looks of bland adoration and called him “Captain.”

I looked at the far wall out the spacecraft’s window where stars went on endlessly. Yeah, Don was sure imaginative if this was the best he could come up with.

A hiss, a puff and one of the hidden modules released some experience-enhancing aroma. I wrinkled my nose, not knowing what to expect.

I sniffed, then smiled.

Cinnamon.

This stripped-down version of the Sensavision was all I’d been willing to buy. Don wanted the top of the line model, but I’d finally put my foot down.

Aliens appeared on the bridge. Angry, green monsters, with bright yellow fangs. The entire crew jumped up from their stations to fight.

I watched my husband pull a knife from his pocket. The weapon didn’t belong in this time frame, but Don must have wanted to hold something real. I recognized it as one of many from our kitchen drawer. He dodged a light-beam and then charged the hologram alien who’d fired on him and whose round silver eyes quivered in fear. The warrior screamed in pain even though Don’s blade only glanced the being’s upper arm. In a blink, I understood. The Sensavision, loyally programmed, had adjusted the knife’s trajectory and the holographic soldier lay dead on the floor, pierced fatally through the heart.

“Haaaaaaaaaah.” My husband released a long breath, and dropped his shoulders.

“Don?”

He turned, eyes blazing, and advanced on me. I stepped back. “Hey,” I said, attempting a light tone, but failing to keep the panic from my voice. Although the soldier at his feet wasn’t real and the aliens’ weapons weren’t real, the blade Don held, and my fear, were.

He launched himself at me, knife high and ready to strike.

I screamed.

And, just like in stories, he blinked. For a moment, ever so brief, he looked sheepish. Then, as he lowered the weapon, his mood changed. The Sensavision froze.

“Don’t ever do that!” he yelled.

“Do what?”

“Interrupt me. You always ruin everything.”

A burst of anger skyrocketed in my chest. My mind exploded with white light as I fought for control. “Me? Ruin things for you?”

“Look,” he said, still furious, “I work all day. This is my way to relax. All I ask is that I get a little uninterrupted pleasure here. At least I’m home. Most guys go out on Saturday nights. Can’t you just go… do something?”

I opened and closed my mouth twice. “You aren’t here,” I said. “You don’t know anything about anything around here. You have no time for me. But you have time for this-thing.” I shot my hand toward the Sensavision.

He sat down hard on the chair behind him. It gave a high-pitched whoosh. “You want to talk? Fine. All the fun’s gone now anyway. Whaddyawanna talk about?”

In that instant I realized how futile it would be to discuss my concerns about Gran with him. And so I said the only other thing that was on my mind.

“We have no life together, Don.”

Did I expect him to sit up and take notice at that? I suppose I did. When he shrugged and said, “So?” my legs went a little limp. I sat down on the couch.

A few hours ticked by. But it was only seconds.

Don stood up. “OK. So, are we done talking?”

“Yeah.” I said. And I went to go check on Emily, because that’s all there was to do.

Gran and I took Emily to the very same playground that I’d scampered through in as a child. We watched her go up to a bigger girl, about five years old, I guessed, and start talking. Soon they were both giggling. Emily’s brown curls and other girl’s straight blond hair waved in the breeze and got in their eyes as they played a rhyming game that started them skipping in circles.

On the bench next to me, Gran said, “She makes friends easily. That’s a gift.”

I watched them.

She kept her eyes on Emily. “You always did, too. Make friends easy. Adjust.”

I stared at the sky, but a question nagged. “What if it isn’t Gramps? Out-there, I mean.”

Gran gave a half-smile that I caught out of the corner of my eye. “I’ve considered that. Had to.”

Emily was dancing now. She’d did make friends easily.

Gran was looking right at me. “And what if it isn’t? I’ll be disappointed, to be sure. Very disappointed.” Her bright blue eyes clouded, and for a moment she looked just like she did the day Gramps died. “But there’s a place out there that’s different from here. Do we look unusual there? Don’t know. Can we taste, smell, hear, see, touch? Don’t know.”

She laughed. “All I know is that I’m willing to go see. To find something-more. It isn’t my time yet. I’m not going to just sit here and wait to die. And if your grandfather’s there, all the better. But it isn’t a deal-breaker.”

I understood. All of a sudden. It surprised me. She was doing everything in her power, taking the necessary steps to unite her with Gramps. I was here, doing nothing, staying with Don. So which one of us was crazy?

“The only thing that could keep me here,” she said as she grabbed my arm, “is you and Emily. You two are everything to me. And if you don’t want me to go, I won’t.”

She gripped harder and looked at me intently before she spoke again.

“I’d even go live in one of those virtual homes if it made you happy.”

Emily and I ran up to the holo-home with some last-minute enhancements for the program. With Gran’s debit disk in my pocket, I was prepared to prepay all the necessary fees. The disk would ensure years of uninterrupted care. Gran and Gramps had amassed a fortune in their day, and there was plenty in the bank to cover every cost, even after the debit disk ran out.

When I got back, I finally sat down with Gran. We talked, we cried, we tried to make sense of it all. And she agreed to go to the holo-home the next day. When I told Don about it later that night, he wanted to be part of it, and his cooperativeness made me suspicious.

“You’ll be there?” I asked. “You sure you want to?”

“Will I get to see it? The holographic house?”

“Of course,” I said. “But why do you care? You have your Sensavision.”

“Yeah, but I want to see the top-of-the-line version.” He winked at me. “And you’ve got full control over her money now, don’t you?”

Gran and I arrived exactly at two and sat on hard orange chairs in the brightly colored lobby to wait for Don. Gran was holding a bouquet of fresh-cut hyacinths. Her head bent; she took a deep breath.

“Are we doing the right thing?” I asked.

She didn’t answer me.

Don arrived late, but he clapped his hands, and said, “Let’s go!” when he got there.

The resident liaison, Alice, led us to the eighteenth floor, chatting about everything and nothing at the same time. My mind raced. Could I do this?

Emily liked the elevator. She pressed her face against the glass and watched the world slip away beneath us. Don watched the numbers change on the readout and avoided looking at me.

My first thought when we reached eighteen was that there had been a mistake. Before us was pure white. It was luminous and beautiful, but I didn’t understand until Alice pressed a few buttons on her handheld control. Two doors appeared. The one on the right, Alice told us, was for the maintenance crew access. Don looked at the control she held and raised an eyebrow at me. He didn’t look at all displeased.

He mouthed the words, “She won’t be able to get out?”

“She’ll never notice,” I whispered, moving closer to him. “To her, it’ll feel like she can go anywhere, do anything, see anyone. What would happen if all the poor demented souls here could come and go as they pleased?” I asked, then added, “Gran’s not one of them, of course.”

“Yeah, right,” he said with a snort.

I pointed toward the remote. “They’re giving me one of those for when I want to visit.”

“And behind this door…” Alice opened it with a flourish.

Gran’s house was there, even better than before. The sights, the sounds, the smells, all perfect.

Even Don was impressed.

“Wow,” he said, “wow.”

Alice whispered, as she backed out the door, “I’ll leave you to settle in here.”

Gran stayed near the door. She looked a little shell-shocked. Emily stayed with her.

I led the way to the kitchen. Don followed, his mouth agape.

“What do you think?” I asked him.

“Way more sophisticated than what we have at home.”

“Fully self-contained.” I pointed to near-invisible sensors on the ceiling. “Those pick up the resident’s life signs. Just to monitor health. Otherwise everything is completely private. State-of-the-art.”

He gave a slow whistle. “I’ll say. What I wouldn’t give to have this technology for my Sensavision.”

“Speaking of which, I had one installed in the spare bedroom.” I walked in that direction.

“For your grandmother?” he said, giving a short laugh. “What a waste. She’s never going to use it.”

He followed me. This room was larger than the real one at Gran’s house and I’d had it stripped bare of all decor. All four walls held Sensavisions. And since this was a holo-home, I tried not to think of how this was just a holographic image of holographic screens, because it hurt my head to make sense of it.

“I have a surprise for you.”

I flicked the “on” switch. Before us, the spaceship’s bridge shimmered to life. No cinnamon in the air; this time, I smelled the metallic freshness of a brand-new vessel. Space stretched out before us and aliens suddenly appeared, ready to fight. A blue-jumpsuited officer walked in and locked eyes with Don. “Captain,” he said, “we’re under attack.” He handed Don a weapon.

Don looked at me, then the scene, then at me again.

“I want you to have something to keep you busy,” I said, in my best conciliatory voice, “while Gran and I get ourselves together.”

He smiled then, and for a moment, heartbreaking in its brevity, I saw a flash of the man I married.

“Have fun,” I said.

But he didn’t hear me say goodbye.

Back at the front door, Gran took my hand. “Are you okay?” she asked.

I nodded, thinking about the playhouse-how many hours of enjoyment Gramps and I had had with it when I was little, and how much fun Emily would have with it now. Gran had been right all along. That little pretend shuttle really did have the power to transport us to our destiny.

And I held Emily tight as the three of us rode the elevator down.