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Neville made a disbelieving sound. "Baby girl is hungry," he said in protest, waving a hand at his wife. "Let her eat."

Winnie looked back and forth between them again, seeming to weigh the potential consequences. She blew out a loud, exaggerated breath. "Okay," she finally said, giving the belt of her robe another tug for good measure. "What you want, child?"

Barbara watched Neville and Winnie together as they looked in the cupboard, and she tried to imagine them as newlyweds in another country, where she knew from overhearing Winnie tell one of the younger maids that she and Neville had gotten married on a beach with flowers in her hair. She tried to imagine them raising their own daughters and she wondered if these girls found Neville as funny as she did. If he played games with them and made jokes the way he did with her.

"Bread with butter," Winnie finally decided, one fist on her meaty hip. "One piece."

Barbara's heart sank. "Cookies?" she whispered, still keeping up the pretense that her father might not find her up and roaming around the kitchen in the middle of the night. "Please?"

"Oh, lawdy," Winnie said, laughing so that her ample bosom heaved with the exertion. She shook her head and looked down at Barbara. "You a con artist, little miss. You trying to get us in trouble!"

"I'm not," Barbara said earnestly. "I'm just hungry."

"Then bread it is," Winnie decreed, setting about the task of slicing a piece and then slathering it in salted butter. "If you hungry, you will eat the bread."

Barbara tried to swallow her disappointment, and as she took her first bite of bread, Winnie walked to the icebox and pulled out a bottle of milk, pouring a tall glass and setting it on the table.

"Thank you," Barbara whispered again, sliding the glass closer.

She ate her bread under the watchful eye of Winnie in her headscarf. Every time Winnie turned her back to wipe the counter unnecessarily (having been trained in the fine art of staying busy while on the clock, even if it meant making up work to do that didn’t truly need to be done), Neville would wink at Barbara, holding a finger to his lips conspiratorially. In return, Barbara held a small finger to her own lips and watched him with dancing eyes.

Leaving behind an empty milk glass and nothing but a few bread crumbs for Winnie to sweep away, Barbara slid off the chair and looked up at Neville, who offered his hand again.

“I will return the little miss to her room,” he said to his wife with a serious face. From the look she shot him, she must haveknown that he was up to mischief of some sort, but she nodded crisply, dismissing them both without another word.

Neville led Barbara through the darkened halls, past her father’s office, which was now dark and quiet, and back up the stairs of the West Wing. At the door to her room, he bowed slightly at the waist, slipping a hand into the pocket of the loose pants he wore now that he was no longer on duty for the day. From the pocket, he pulled two cookies, which he presented to Barbara as if he were Prince Charming handing her the glass slipper.

Barbara beamed at him, looking at his face to make sure he wasn’t kidding, and then back at the cookies. She hesitated only briefly before taking the cookies with a gap-toothed smile, revealing the two bottom teeth that she was currently missing.

“Thanks, Neville,” she whispered.

“Yeah, it’s okay, miss,” he said to her, ruffling her loose hair. “You go to sleep now. And don’t get any crumbs in the bed, or my wife will have my head. You hear?”

Barbara nodded eagerly, tiptoeing back into her bedroom and closing the door behind her.

It was the last time she ever saw Neville.

august 31, 1966

. . .

Barbie

Jo Booker is holdingBarbie’s hands so tightly in her own that they have become one knotted mass of fingers and white knuckles. The women sit, side by side, eyes trained on the radio before them as if they can somehow will their husbands’ images into view, rather than just the dead air that the audio provides.

Dave Huggins, NASA’s official photographer, is crouched in one corner, face hidden by his camera. He is quietly snapping shots of the scene. Both women have long since ceased to hear the click of his shutter.

“Mission control to Gemini,” Arvin North’s scratchy voice says. Barbie’s hands tighten involuntarily on Jo’s as they wait to hear a response. None comes.

“They are currently at one full revolution per second,” comes another voice from mission control. Barbie glances at Jo and sees a tear sliding down her perfectly placid face. All the blood has drained away in the mere minutes it’s taken for their husbands to go into a catastrophic roll in space.

The elation they’d both felt as the men successfully docked Gemini with the other space shuttle was quickly replaced byfear as Bill’s voice had come through the radio, letting mission control know that they were in a roll. The women's joyous hand-holding had morphed into them hanging onto one another for dear life.

“Jo,” Barbie rasps, tugging at her friend’s hands now, trying to pull her back from wherever she’s gone mentally. “They’re going to be okay, aren't they?”

Jo turns to her with haunted eyes. Her pupils are fully dilated, and she looks as though they’ve already gotten the final, terrible news that their husbands won’t be coming home.

“Jo?” Barbie tries again, freeing one of her hands and pressing it to Jo’s pale cheek. “They’re going to come out of this. They have to.”