Robert Tine - The Astronaut's Wife

The twins were looking back at their mother. The sunny little-boy smiles gone now, as if their faces had been wiped blank and replaced with cold, dark, adult stares. Their eyes locked onto Jillian’s for a moment, and mother and sons stared hard at each other for a moment as if joined in some wordless form of communication.

“I’m only their stepfather,” the husband reiterated.

Jillian traced the embroidered wings sewn onto the chest of his flight overalls. “No,” she said firmly. “You are their father now.”

The bus horn beeped one more time and the link between Jillian and her twin sons snapped. There were smiles all round again, as if storm clouds had passed. The twins waved and clambered onto the school bus.

The twins knew most of the kids on the bus; they all lived near one another on the air force base. The other kids generally tried to make the ride to school a barely contained riot, but the twins seemed airily above it all. They walked to the very rear of the school bus and settled themselves in their seats. Each pulled a Walkman from his pack, plugged a pair of headphones into it and started the tape. As the sound reached their ears, the twins suddenly looked very peaceful, eerily so. The shouts and yells of their schoolmates faded away as the twins listened to that terrible sound, growing louder as the seconds passed. It was as if it were sweet music in their ears…