20

A dusting of snow covered the ground, but Chicago had yet to get its first December winter storm, and the evening was mild. Four months and eight days since refit and the 90-day patrol began. Gina had been the first thought when he woke up, the last before he slept. Mark parked in her driveway, retrieved his jacket on the passenger seat, picked up a single orchid. Gina was on the front porch in a light jacket, working on a potted plant set on a tall stand. She looked up and smiled, lifted a hand in welcome when he got out of the car, but otherwise she stayed focused on her task. She’d turned on the porch lights as the evening light was beginning to fade.

She might be engaged by now. She might be going to turn down his proposal, and this time Daniel wouldn’t be there to run interference. Regardless of what was coming, Mark was going to treasure what he could of the evening in case it was his last with her.

Her smile and hello were a bit tentative. He would have given her a hug, but he responded in kind. He stayed at ground level and rested his arms across the stair railing, working to maintain a relaxed posture while she finished up rescuing the plant.

He loved her. It took no more than the sight of her and that smile for the emotions to turn his chest tight.

“I planned to be ready early, and instead I’m way behind schedule,” she said.

“That’s okay. I take it you weren’t the one to knock over the plant?” Her front door was open, and there were two half-grown kitten faces and a puppy looking out through the glass of the storm door.

“The three chased each other into the sunroom where I had this plant. The cats dashed behind the pot, and the puppy got to taste dirt before his body stopped. I think the cats were smirking about that.”

Mark smiled. “Poor little guy. What’s his name?”

“Your niece named him Pongo, and I’ve found it has kind of stuck.”

“Pocket, Pages, and Pongo. You’ve got a pattern going.”

“I do.” She pulled off her work gloves.

There wasn’t a ring on her left hand. He felt some of the pressure in his chest ease. “How are you doing, Gina?” he asked.

“That’s a rather long answer.” She stored the potting soil, trowel, and extra pot in the closet at the end of the porch and picked up her rescued plant. “Come on in, Mark.”

He followed her inside.

Mark picked up one of the half-grown kittens, watched the puppy with feet too big for his body tug at a tattered piece of fabric on which the other cat was lying. The cat flattened its ears and hissed, but didn’t take a swipe as the puppy pushed its face into hers. Familiarity. They were playing together, of a sort.

Gina’s home had lost the neatness seen during his last visit, and small changes had appeared: large, heavy pottery by the front door, a new coatrack, another bookshelf in the living room. From the look of things, she’d mostly been living on this main level. There was a sweater tossed over the couch arm, a stack of mail on the coffee table, Post-it notes beside the television remote, work papers and a writing board beside one of the wingback chairs. A laptop had been placed on the coffee table. She’d gone into the kitchen and found a tall vase for the orchid and risked placing it on that same coffee table, then retreated to get them both drinks.

Mark glanced up as Gina reentered the room carrying two glasses of iced tea. She’d left the room not just for the drinks, he thought, but to give herself a few more moments of space. Her words and smile might have been calm and welcoming, but it wasn’t the full story. She hadn’t been sleeping well. The dark circles under her eyes had the look of being weeks in the making.

This was a woman who was uncomfortable, and his silence was making her even less comfortable. But he didn’t know what to say. He needed to get a read on what she was thinking before he could figure out what direction to go with his comments. She settled on the couch across from him. He sipped the iced tea she’d handed him and waited.

“Daniel and I talked a lot before he departed on patrol,” she said quietly. “Before this evening continues, you need to know that he and I are no longer dating.”

He hadn’t expected that.

“I don’t love him. I wish I did. I wanted to,” she admitted. “I wanted desperately for that final piece of the equation to fall in place. I finally had to accept it wasn’t going to happen.”

“That had to be a very tough decision for you . . . for him.”

“It was painful for both of us.” She rested her arm along the back of the couch. “But deciding he isn’t the one isn’t the same as deciding you are.”

“I accept that, Gina.”

“I flew back to Bangor to tell you no, the day after you proposed. Daniel talked me out of it.”

“I know that too. And now?”

She lifted one shoulder. “I’m not sure of anything about us. I’m trying my best to keep an open mind. I’m not trying to be difficult, Mark. I just don’t know what to think, what to do.”

“Gina, go back some months to before you came to Bangor. What were you praying for?”

“To find a husband.”

“You’ve found one.”

She shook her head slightly, rejecting his calm assurance.

“I accept your emotions are all over the place right now,” he continued. “Answer me this. Would you be willing to spend some time with me, let us date seriously? Would you be willing to give us some time together for you to get to know me better?”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes.”

“I’ve got 28 days of leave. I’ll be in Chicago for as much of it as you would like me to be. I packed so I’d be able to stay.”

“I didn’t expect that.”

“I’m not telling you that to put pressure on you, Gina. Just that I think time together will be easier for you when it’s on your own turf. I made a list while I was on patrol—things you and I could do together. You can choose as many items from that long list as you like for the next month. Or add some of your own.”

He studied her face, wishing he better knew her expressions and could interpret what she might be thinking. “Talk to me. Just start somewhere and tell me what you’re thinking about me, about us. Give me some sense of the ground you’re standing on.”

“I still lean toward saying no,” she replied carefully, meeting his gaze. “I do admire you. You’re a man who bears responsibility well. You’re a leader and well respected. You had a good marriage. I trust you. I respect your advice. You’re gentle with me—I think you see me and understand me better than most people. I enjoy our conversations very much. In many ways you fit me better than Daniel. You have a quieter, more peaceful personal life.

“But the truth is, Mark, I’m too young for you. I’m chaos-writ-large at times. I’m emotionally needy. I’m unsure of myself. I’m not like Melinda. You need someone who has her life together. Mine keeps falling even further apart. There’s the possibility of you becoming the top submarine guy in the Navy one day. You need someone with more social strengths, more people skills, to help with your career. I’d be a liability rather than a help. I don’t bring much useful to the table as your wife. ”

He waited a moment to give her carefully thought-out statements some room. “Gina, I’d like you to see yourself through my eyes—”

“I don’t want to spend my life feeling that gap I can never close,” she put in, “between what you need and who I am.”

He agreed with about half her statement. “Marriage is an interesting proposition, Gina,” he finally said. “It’s a relationship, a friendship, along with a rich, deep level of intimacy. It’s a lot of things, dreaming together, planning a future together.”

“I’d spend my life leaning against you, hoping you could get me out of whatever latest troubles I’ve gotten myself into.”

“Your ideas and discoveries.”

“Yes.”

He smiled. “I was kind of looking forward to that part, Gina. I love how your mind works. I like responsibility—thrive on it. I could buffer some of what comes because of those discoveries, work out who should know what and when. Figure out the downsides and how to deal with them. We’d be a good team.”

He pulled a folded sheet out of his shirt pocket. “I wrote you a letter while on patrol. I actually wrote you several, but this is the first and most important one. I’d like you to read it.” He handed it to her. She hesitated a while before opening it. He knew the words, having thought about and read them over many times.

Gina, I once told you I would do my best not to steer you wrong. I’m still honoring that. I think you should get married because it’s something you have dreamed about, looked forward to, since you were a young girl. I also honestly think I’m the right guy for you to marry.

I’ve been married before, and it was a good experience. I know this terrain. Now it’s you I want in my life, you I want to build a new marriage with. I want to share breakfast with you, listen to what’s got you fascinated, and find ways to make you laugh. I want to show you places I’ve been, introduce you to people I know. I want to make a home with you, and fill it with things we both enjoy. I’d like to spend the rest of my life loving you. I know you and I can sort it all out to have a good marriage, one we both find meets our deepest needs. Take a chance on me, Gina. You won’t regret it. Be my wife.

Yours, Beloved.
Mark

She read it, read it again, and he simply waited. “It’s a lovely letter,” she whispered.

“I’m convinced you’re the one for me, Gina, and I also believe I’m the one for you. I love you. Share your life with me. Let me share mine with you. Whatever is necessary to reach the point where you can make that decision, ask it, work it through with me.”

She didn’t answer him, just sat looking at the page. She finally wiped her eyes. “You’re too far ahead of me, Mark. I can’t think in terms of marrying you. Not yet. Even if you’re right, the timing is wrong.”

“Gina . . .” Mark hesitated. “Do you realize you’re afraid to get married?” he asked gently. “Daniel would have been a good choice for you. I’m a good choice. When you find there are none of your must-not-haves and all of your must-haves, it’s time to say yes. I love you. And I’m confident you’ll love me well in return if you let yourself take the step. Say yes and marry me. Your doubts are real, but they won’t survive first contact with reality.”

She bit her lip. “Your certainty about this surprises me, Mark.”

“I didn’t ask you to marry three months ago because I somehow wanted to outdo Daniel. I asked because I love you, and I can see a very good future for us.”

She said nothing, and he shifted the discussion slightly. “When my command of the Nevada ends, I’m not opposed to Chicago as our home base. I’ve got family here. I like the area. You don’t have to consider returning permanently to Bangor. If you prefer to work in California, there are nice options for where to settle there. I’m not expecting you to give up who you are—the work, the continued pursuit of degrees and new subjects, the somewhat nomadic way you go from project to project. I just want you to share your life with me and let me share mine with you. I want to build something that is us.”

He let the silence last more than a minute before he added, “I know this all sounds like a full-court press, even to me, but the reason I’m so certain about this is what I see in your face. You’re afraid to seize your dream. Are you able to recognize that, Gina? The panic that came after my proposal, your decision to turn down Daniel—you want so much to be married, yet you fear failing and it’s keeping you from accepting that this time a relationship will succeed.

“This is that moment, Gina.” He leaned forward in his chair. “All you need to do is trust me, and reach for that dream. It’s right here. A good marriage. Someone who loves you more than you can yet know. All you have to do is say yes.” He watched the play of expressions across her face. “You will not be a disappointment to me. I see you clearly, I understand you. I’m not going to steer you wrong. I’m the guy.”

“You don’t know enough about me to say that, Mark.”

He could hardly hear her words, her whisper was so faint. “I know enough that I can be the husband you need. You’re the wife I want. I’m certain of that.”

She got up from the couch, walked to the window, looked out at the night that had descended. He waited for her to make a comment, to give him a sense of what she was thinking. Instead she simply stood there, silent. She finally turned. “I need to tell you no, but it hurts too much to do that. Yet the longer this goes on the more hurt we’re both going to feel later. Time isn’t going to make things any easier.”

“Why do you need to tell me no, Gina?” he asked quietly.

“I’m in trouble.”

Her words made him blink, and tension coiled through his body. “Did something happen with Daniel—?” He stopped as she immediately shook her head.

“No, no, nothing like that. Work trouble.” Resigned acceptance passed over her face. “The kind that seems like a constant, recurring nightmare with me.”

He could feel his emotions shifting as her tone registered with him, as he detected an underlay of fear he hadn’t heard from her before. She’d changed the topic and driven them full speed into a brick wall. Of everything he had been braced to hear, this wasn’t what he was expecting. “How much trouble?”

“So much trouble I’m actually considering marrying you before I tell you just so you’ll feel really bad if you yell at me.” She tried to come up with a chuckle at the end of that statement but couldn’t pull it off. She wiped a hand across her eyes.

“Tell me,” he said simply. “Just start somewhere, Gina. Wherever you like. I promise to listen.”

“There’s a photo on the dining room table. You should probably go look at it.”

He held her gaze for a long moment, seeing so many layers of emotions in her—a lifetime of wishing she wasn’t smart, wanting to be “normal,” of pain that she couldn’t avoid. He walked into the next room.

He turned over the large 24x36 glossy print on the dining room table. A simple picture, computer-generated, he was looking at a line drawing of the world’s coastlines, the expanse of the oceans and landmasses in stark white. There were clusters of small objects near the coasts, a few objects in the deep oceans, accompanied by three numbers in small font beside them. A depth number, location numbers. He realized what he was seeing and his heart rate spiked.

He was looking at a photo of all the submarines in the world’s oceans on—he found a date and time in the upper corner—the second of November, 8:17 p.m. He forced a deep breath, his heart pounding now. He’d just turned over a live explosive.

Gina came to stand beside him. She pointed out a few of the objects in the deep ocean waters in the photo. “These two are Russian Akulas. These two are British Astutes. This is an Australian Collins class. These are the eight boomers the U.S. had in the Pacific and Atlantic that day. These five are U.S. fast-attacks. Given the locations, these four are probably the diesel Kilos that China purchased from Russia. I can tell the submarines apart by their dimensions.”

“Gina. How on earth—?”

She didn’t let him finish. “I want you to tell me it’s okay to destroy this photo, to light a match and make it go away like it never existed.”

“Gina . . .”

“It’s an accident, Mark. That’s all this discovery is, an accident no one else will repeat for a century or more. I want you to tell me it’s okay to forget this ever happened, to erase it forever with a match, to be able to go on with my life.”

He pulled out a chair at the table, nudged her into it. He hunkered down beside her to be at eye level, to be able to see her expressions. “You’ve got to talk through the building blocks that led to this before I can answer you. I promise you, we’ll talk it through until you have an answer you can live with. But first I need some facts. When did you print this photo?”

“November 22nd, nine days ago. I did it here. I’ve got an architect’s wide printer in the office upstairs.”

“Who have you told?”

“You. Only you.” She took a deep breath, let it out. “No one else can create that photo. The data no longer exists. I’ve destroyed or corrupted the original data files to prevent it from happening.”

He felt some of his tension ease a fraction. “There’s always a simple observation in your discoveries. Was there one that led to this?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell me about that?”

“I can show you,” she said. She got up and went back to the living room, changed a remote setting so the TV displayed her laptop computer screen. She logged into the server deck and started a video playback.

“This is from the NOAA weather satellite EO-1,” she said as he moved beside her to view the screen. “It orbits the earth every 21 minutes—one of many weather-related satellites NOAA has deployed. This particular video is from the infrared camera. The different colors are different temperatures. The oceans are cooler here and warmer here,” she said, pointing, “and rain is falling there. This data feeds into the weather models and helps meteorologists make their weather forecasts. This particular satellite has been in orbit about 10 years. There’s nothing particularly unique about it. It’s just a convenient one whose data I’ve used over the years to work on the satellite drag problem.

“There was a large solar flare on the 30th of October. I got an alert about it from the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena. Beginning about 60 hours later, lasting four days, there were communication problems between satellites and their ground stations—these random sparkles you see in the video. A solar flare causes all kinds of changes in the earth’s upper atmosphere as the high-energy particles in the solar wind hit the earth. Things like the brilliant northern lights that we see, but also more subtle things like satellites encountering additional drag as the atmosphere warms up and expands.

“I wrote an algorithm to clean up the video, remove the sparkles, so the data could process faster. Those of us who work with satellite instruments and large data files—it’s not a large group, and most of us know each other, at least by email. Someone mentioned I had a cleanup algorithm that worked well. People dropped me emails, asking if I could run my cleanup algorithm on their data files too. Over the next week I cleaned up data from 32 satellites and 84 instruments, removing the sparkles thought to be transmission errors caused by the solar flare.

“I was surprised to find the sparkles appeared across every instrument—from the narrow-wave gamma ray and x-rays, the infrared, down to the very long-wave microwave and radio frequencies—every part of the electromagnetic spectrum had them being recorded.” She paused and watched the video. “I finally got curious about the sparkles.” She reached over and ran her finger lightly across the screen. “These random sparkles are not transmission errors. They’re reflections from deep in the sea.”

She didn’t say anything more. She didn’t need to.

Reflections. The underlying discovery was genius-level simple. He walked back to the dining room and looked again at the photo. “You mapped them to this?”

“With some rather elegant analysis, yes,” she replied, joining him. “The solar flare’s high-energy particles are reflecting off the submarine hulls, like a billiard ball bouncing off a rail. They scatter in all directions, and unlike visible light waves, water doesn’t reabsorb them. Satellites circling the earth are at the right place and time to capture a portion of those bounced reflections. Once I figured out the satellites’ orientation and the instrument angle, I time-synced the data sources and compressed back the motion video to the original shape and form of the object. I combined the various instruments’ data and plotted the sparkles. And I saw every submarine in the oceans.”

Every submarine, including the U.S. boomers that spent their patrols with standing orders to stay undetected. In the wrong hands, this photo would be devastating.

“We’re going to eat something. What do you want delivered? Pizza? Chinese?” he asked abruptly.

“Chinese, if I have to choose between the two.”

“What would you prefer?”

“Italian, maybe. Something with chicken.”

“Have you slept much since this printed?”

“Not much,” she admitted.

“Get comfortable on the couch, put your feet up, close your eyes, and catch a nap while we wait for the food. We’ll talk after we eat.”

She hesitated. He picked up one of the cats and handed it to her. “Is this Pocket or Pages?”

“Black is Pocket.”

“Stretch out on the couch. I bet she’s asleep before you are.”

Mark walked over to the bookshelf, slit the plastic on a new three-pack of composition notebooks, took out the top one and pulled a pen from his pocket.

“You’re welcome to use the laptop if that’s a faster way to put your thoughts and questions in order,” Gina offered, watching him.

“A notebook is easier to burn if necessary.” He walked back to her, tipped up her chin, and kissed her. “We’ll figure this out. Get that nap, Gina.”

Gina was asleep. She’d finally told someone about the discovery, the photo, shared the stress of it, and her body was demanding rest. Mark knew what that stress felt like, could feel it still draining through his own system. Lord, I don’t know what to do here, he said silently in a prayer that came from deep in his heart and his mind. The hull of a sub was unlike any other structure man designed in composition and form, and solar-flare energy reflected off of it—a simple discovery. Yet so breathtakingly complex in what it signified.

Gina, the genius. A term of affection, a term of endearment. Jeff said it, Mark thought it. But also in terms of fact. Gina noticed things. She simplified matters. She didn’t see what she did as particularly a gift. Her discoveries were simple, most of them instantly understandable by others. She thought it was merely an oversight that someone else hadn’t already done the same thing she thought to try. The simplicity in what she realized was what showed her genius. This photo was only round three of what life with her would be like. It would be a fascinating future, spending the next several decades with her.

This last discovery was an accident, but she’d had the skill to recognize that something more than transmission errors were occurring, had the skills to pursue the idea and take that data back to the underlying photo. Smart didn’t adequately convey what it meant to say Gina had talent.

He loved her. And she needed him. This kind of discovery was something she shouldn’t be asked to carry alone. She needed someone more than just her brother in her life. Jesus, give me a heart able to see this woman clearly, one you love even more than I do. Help me see what she needs in this moment and in the days ahead. He sat in a chair across from the couch, notebook on his knee, and watched her sleep.

She needed time, and that was the one thing this situation wasn’t going to give him. She seemed to have lived her life at two speeds, the intellect and work and curiosity moving forward at such a speed that the personal side—the self-confidence, the relationships and friendships—were noticeable in how they’d lagged behind her work life. She needed time and confidence and friends, and someone to love her without limits. She’d thrive within that environment. He so wanted to be that person for her.

Mark didn’t bother to wake Gina when the food arrived. He put her chicken Parmesan in the refrigerator to keep until she was ready to eat it, out of reach of the kittens. He started in on the lasagna he’d ordered for himself while he turned his attention to the problem she faced.

In his job he dealt with the more-than-theoretical reality of nuclear war. He had to balance hard concerns every time he took a sub out to sea. He knew how to make tough decisions, but factoring in the implications to Gina for this one was not simple. For a year now, Gina’s sonar discoveries had grown progressively more revealing. She was at her limit. She desperately wanted to destroy this photo. Whatever decision was made now had to accommodate what Gina was feeling. Showing the Navy that photo would land a world of attention on her. That fact worried him.

She hadn’t destroyed the photo before she had shared it with him. If he wondered if she trusted him, he had his answer. When her life was stressed beyond bearing, she had put it on his shoulders. He was glad for it. She hadn’t told her brother about the photo yet—Jeff and the USS Seawolf had departed days before she printed this photo—and Mark was pretty sure he could convince her not to tell Jeff when he was back in port.

She’d just destabilized the strongest leg of the nuclear-deterrent triad: air, land, and sea. Land-based silos could be bombed, planes could be shot down or prevented from taking off. But ballistic-missile submarines at sea had to be found before they could be attacked, and she’d just taken a photo of every deployed boomer.

He leaned back in the chair, linked his hands behind his head. He was beginning to think she should burn the photo.