Rain beat against the thick windows of the airport terminal. Helena wondered if her flight would be delayed. Her mother walked up with two cups of coffee and handed one over.
“I can’t believe how crowded the coffee shop was. I thought it would take forever.”
“You don’t really have to stay, you know,” Helena suggested quietly. Although she loved her mother, this visit home had been very stressful. Her mother seemed determined to find ways to entice Helena to remain on Earth. The cocktail party two evenings ago was ostensibly a going away party, but her mother seemed to have invited every single professional male in Chicago. It had been embarrassing.
“But it will be months before you get a chance to come home. I just want to spend as much time with you as possible.”
“You know, we can still write, and call too.” Helena said. “It’s not as if I’m vanishing forever.”
There was an awkward silence between them. Lee had vanished forever. Helena had stood in an airport just like this one, and kissed him goodbye and he had never returned. The pain was now just a dull ache, no longer intense and fresh.
Her mother shook her head. “I guess I’m just being an over-concerned mother.”
“Alpha is perfectly safe. And you know how much this job means to me.”
“I know, I know.” Her mother patted her arm gently. “I liked it better when you were in London, and I could come visit and we could go shopping together, or sight-seeing, or to the theatre.”
Having her mother visit her in London had been fun. They had wandered all over the city, and acted more like two sisters on holiday than mother and daughter, or the two widows they actually were. Helena shivered slightly. She didn’t want to be a widow any more. There was so much emotional baggage attached to that label. She also didn’t like remembering that her mother was a widow, because then her thoughts always turned to her father, and his last breath, taken in her arms while she was home visiting during her first year in med school.
“I need a change Mama.” She hadn’t called her mother ‘Mama’ in years. “This will be good for me.” She looked out the window at the rain, not at her mother.
“A change, yes, but I just wish you didn’t have to go so far away.”
“It’s only for a year or so. It’s the next logical step for my career.” It would be different. She would have the chance to experience first-hand the conditions she had been studying: prolonged exposure to space, the psychological stress, the physical stress. She already had a notebook full of ideas she hoped to put into practice. And without her mother hovering over her, feeling sorry for her, trying to ‘help’ her, she could make a fresh start, be independent, not an object of pity. She would know no one. She would establish her own identity there.
Her flight was called. She inwardly rejoiced. Outwardly, she turned soberly to embrace her mother.
“Now you call me as soon as you get there,” Her mother said, patting her back.
She pulled away and nodded, then turned and headed down the boarding tube, her steps growing more eager as she turned the corner, out of sight of her waving mother. This would be the start of a brand new adventure for her. There was no telling how far she would go, or what might happen to her. She hoped it would be interesting.