In the kitchen, Sharone has her famous butter rum corn bread laid out on the counter. A pan of mac and cheese sits heavy on the stovetop.

“You know damn well he gets home at five thirty on the dot,” Sharone says, pouring an oversize glass of sangria. “He’s in his study, but he can wait. I need wine first.”

“Cheers,” Grace says, cutting into the corn bread. “You know, you could always come live with me. I am Dr. Porter now. I’m a catch.” Sharone rolls her eyes. “Is that a no?”

“It’s also a hell no,” she says, humor twisting her lips, “unless you start making the same money he makes.”

Grace shrieks, the laugh carrying through the echoes of the big home. She and Sharone fall into each other, laughs eking out into little cackles. “After almost ten years,” Grace says, “you’ve finally outed yourself as a gold digger.”

“Oh, honey.” She lifts her glass. “That was never a secret.”

A cleared throat announces the arrival of another person, and instinctively Grace straightens up, brushes the crumbs from her mouth and her lap. Colonel stands tall in the doorway, leaning against the frame as he rubs at the titanium that makes up most of his right leg.

“I heard laughter,” he says. It still takes Grace aback after all these years, the deep bass of his voice. He can still command her attention. “Thought we agreed that wasn’t allowed in this house.”

“That’s just you,” Sharone says, but she moves gracefully toward him, reaching up on her toes to give him a quick, chaste kiss. She offers her arm, but Colonel brushes it off, limping stiffly inside. “Porter and I know it’s laughter keeping us young.”

“Is that right?” he asks. “What do you think? Is it laughter keeping you young, Dr. Porter?”

“Don’t start,” Sharone says, hovering as Colonel lugs himself onto a stool at the kitchen island. “Ain’t nobody tell you to come out of your study to nag.”

Grace picks at the remains of her corn bread.

“All right, sweetheart,” he says. He’s like a pod person sometimes, with how normal he is with Sharone. “No nagging. We’ll have a nice dinner.” He winks at Grace, and she squints back. “What are we talking about, then?” he asks while Sharone starts bringing over pans of food.

She’s been gearing up to tell Colonel about her big interview. Professor MacMillan set it up with a private company in Seattle. They’d discussed for weeks ahead of time. Grace wore her best suit. She slicked her hair back and practiced answering questions in the mirror. She showed up twenty minutes early.

She doesn’t quite know the Porter way to say, I put on my best voice. I sat up with my back straight. I made eye contact, but not enough to seem threatening. I said ‘yes, sir,’ and ‘yes, ma’am,’ and I hated every second of it. She doesn’t know the Porter way to say, They picked me apart, questioned me until my eyes stung and I stormed out. I saw one person of color on the way to the door.

Maybe instead she could say she got drunk-married in Vegas. How she drank away the memory of her interview. And at the bottom of a cocktail she discovered the world did not end, it just felt like it did. There was so much more work, more climbing to be done. And then the rose-petal girl took her alcohol away, and they danced, and they got married.

Colonel breaks the silence. “Okay,” he says, looking at her over the rim of his glass. “I’ve been wanting to talk about what’s next for you.”

“Well, we’re watching Waiting to Exhale when I get home,” she says. “It’s movie night.”

Sharone lays a hand over Colonel’s, straightening out his clenched fingers. “What he means, baby, is what’s next for Dr. Porter? You worked so many summers doing research for Dr. MacMillan’s lab. Are you going to stay with her for a while? What were you working on last year?”

Colonel would have her head if she slumped at the table, but she wants to. “Using Gaia’s data for high-speed observation of white dwarf binaries,” she mumbles.

Sharone squints. “Will you keep doing—that?”

Grace exhales deeply. In her head, she thinks of the most efficient way to get through this. Colonel taught her how to turn a stressful situation to her advantage. Sometimes you do that with deflection, with questions, with subtle manipulation. Sometimes you just lie.

“I had an interview before I left for Vegas,” she admits. “With a company in Washington. Kunakin.”

Colonel narrows his eyes. “How did it go?”

Grace almost shrugs before she catches herself. “They said I wasn’t the right fit for the company culture.” She looks down at her plate. They didn’t say that, but they thought it. They probably said it aloud when they checked back in with Professor MacMillan. “But, it’s fine,” she says quickly. “They were good, but not the best. A Porter always goes for the best.”

“We do,” Colonel agrees. “Perhaps you and I should sit down with your mentor. She advised me—”

“You talked to Professor MacMillan? Why would you do that?”

Colonel blinks. “Admittedly, I know less about the trajectory of employment in—” he pauses here, mouth twisting “—astronomy than in medicine. I wanted to know your degree isn’t being wasted. It’s not as stable a field as medicine would have been.”