The Astronaut’s Widow

The letter arrives on a Wednesday.

Official-looking, too crisp, the paper too white. Julia stares at it, heart hammering, hands trembling, because she already knows what’s inside. You don’t get envelopes like this on normal Wednesdays. You don’t get them ever.

But it’s been two years since they declared Neil missing, and Julia thought she was done with surprises.

She reads the letter once, twice, just to be sure.

"Mrs. Garner, we regret to inform you…"

No, that part’s old news. Neil’s ship, The Valhalla, lost somewhere in the void. No beacon, no signal. Just… gone. Like a ghost ship, swallowed by the dark. And then NASA’s stiff condolences, the press conferences, the interviews: How do you feel about your husband’s sacrifice for mankind, Mrs. Garner?

But this—this letter—it’s something else entirely.

They found him.

Not him exactly. The letter’s full of jargon, bureaucratic gymnastics that bend and twist the truth like origami. They didn’t find Neil. They found his signal. A ping. Out there, on the edge of the solar system. One solitary blip on a radar. And then another. And another.

They say it’s impossible, but the letter doesn’t care about impossible. The letter’s here, real and solid, right in Julia’s hands.

Neil is alive. And they want her to speak to him.

That’s where the letter ends. Just that. No apologies, no explanations. Just a date, a time, a place.

A place two hundred miles underground, in a secret NASA facility that she didn’t even know existed.