“Do you want to get lunch?” Cora asked. “I thought we’d go out since it’s your first day.”
I brightened. “Yeah, let’s.”
We walked to a sandwich shop on the edge of a park. “There’s walking paths and boardwalks through there.” Cora nodded at the thickening woods as we took our sandwiches to a picnic table. “It used to be a pond or a bog or something.”
“Cool.” I took a bite of my pickle, savoring the briny flavor. “How did you end up on Nantucket? How long have you been here?”
“Nantucket has a whole history of astronomy. This is my second summer here—I’ve got the funding for one more, too.”
“Did you always want to be an astrophysicist?” I almost tripped over the consonants.
She didn’t laugh at me. “I was always interested in space. What about you? Do you know what you want to major in?”
From most people, I hated this question, but Cora seemed genuinely interested—and also, I was a bit in awe of her. “I dunno. Something with numbers.” There was a beauty to equations, the way they always worked out in the end, the way they could make sense of the world. I thought if we knew enough about math, we could explain life itself, the way we’d explained the tides and the planets and the seasons.
As we walked back into town after lunch, Dr. Bradley stumbled to a halt. I glanced over to see her gazing fixedly at a man walking toward us. “Let’s cross here,” she said, and sped across the road despite the lack of crosswalk.
I jogged after her. “Who was that?” I asked after a block. “Bad date?”
She grimaced apologetically. “Yeah, actually. Not in the mood for awkward small talk.”
“Relatable.”
So Cora was dating. Cora was a smart, ambitious woman, who dated men, and she was only a few years younger than Dad. Good to know.
We returned to the office, and the afternoon hours fell away. Cora showed me how to pull reports comparing her latest location-calculating algorithms with those of colleagues making similar efforts and how to check them over. This had to be done any time she made a change in her calculations, to make sure nothing had been thrown out of whack. We mostly worked in silence, but every so often Cora came across something she thought I ought to know and called me over to explain it. Twice, other researchers stopped by to chat.
As the afternoon wound down, Dad texted to see when I wanted to be picked up before we headed to Golden Doors for Shabbat. I glanced at Cora. “What time are you heading out?”
“Five-ish today,” she said. “And I know we talked about you being nine-to-five, but it’s fine if you ever have to come in late or leave early. I’m here until ten some days, so don’t try to keep to my schedule.”
“Okay,” I said. “But—today you’re leaving at five?”
“Yeah, on Fridays I like to pretend I have some work-life balance.”
Big goals.
It took some maneuvering to walk out at the same time as Cora, but I managed it, telling Dad I was running a few minutes late so I could wait for my boss to be ready. Outside, I pretended not to see Ethan’s Jeep waiting at the curb; pretended not to feel my phone buzzing in my pocket. Instead I kept Cora chatting until Dad climbed out of the passenger seat. “Jordan!”
“Dad, hi!” My gaze ran over him, evaluating. Worn jeans, blue T-shirt—faded, but luckily unstained by laundry bleach, and with minimal holes. His hair—what little you could see of it from underneath his once blue, now gray Red Sox hat—flew out horizontally.
Not precisely the outfit I’d have suggested wearing when meeting my hot, accomplished boss for the first time, but since he’d had no idea 1) he’d be meeting her, or 2) I now had an agenda regarding them, I’d give him a pass. He looked okay, even if he was wearing socks with his sandals. Sometimes you couldn’t save someone from themselves.
“This is my dad,” I said to Cora, making no move toward him, so he had to cross the road to us. He did, a fleeting, almost fearful look on his face. Ha. I smiled when he reached us. “Dad, this is my boss, Dr. Bradley.”
They shook hands. “I’m Cora.”
“Tony.”
“Cora’s mapping space debris,” I said. “My dad’s also doing research here. He’s working on a book.”
“Really. What’s the book about?”
“Uh—” Dad cleared his throat. “It’s about, uh—Each chapter focuses on a different individual who contributed, during the sixteenth through early twentieth century, to advancing the field of maritime navigation and cartography—”
Good lord. Dad was usually much better at his elevator pitch. “He wrote an article forThe Atlanticabout Benjamin Franklin and his Nantucket family members mapping the Gulf Stream,” I butted in. “It went viral.”
Dad hung his head; Cora’s face lit up. “I read that! You wrote it?”
