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“Oh, there’s a bunch available right now,” Red said. “You could move in tomorrow if you wanted.”

“Uh, we’re gonna want to talk about it first,” Cora asserted, giving Signy a look that said I promise I’m not pushing.

“Why are so many available?” Signy asked, surprised by the lack of wait time. She’d stayed in Cora’s bunk on enough occasions to know that a one-bedroom would be a huge improvement for anyone living here.

“Well, it’s a bigger cut out of your paycheck,” Red said, meeting Cora’s eye with a practical nod. “But really, the answer is a lot of pilots stay single. It’s hard on folks, with one of them being away so much.” His eyes went a little wide as he heard himself. “I mean, it—it can be hard. It doesn’t have to be hard. Obviously. Obviously people make it work. Lots of people.”

Lots of people was not a claim supported by good apartments standing empty, but Signy didn’t say anything further. She looked over the floor plan again, trying to conjure some enthusiasm. She could do this. It would be fine. She’d get to wake up with Cora most mornings and fall asleep next to her most nights, and wasn’t that the entire point of this? Wasn’t that worth the ferry and the pilot gossip and the weeks apart and all the rest? Why was she so hung up on the cons when the pros were infinitely more valuable? What was bothering her, exactly?

Cora reached over and took Signy’s hand. “Hey, Red, can you email this to me?” she said, gesturing at the monitor. Signy wasn’t sure what Cora had gleaned from her silence, but she received a small wink—affectionate, warm, and caring.

Yes, Signy thought. We’ll make it work.

“I think maybe we need to go have a chicory and—” Cora turned her head, glancing down toward Signy’s jacket pocket. “Is everything okay?”

Signy’s phone was buzzing, again. Ramona, again. Signy frowned. “I’m sorry, give me just a minute.” She squeezed Cora’s hand, got up, and answered the call as she began to walk toward the other side of the room. “Hello?”

“Oh! Oh, Signy, there you are,” Ramona cried. “I went straight to the shop, but it was closed, and I didn’t know where you were, but then I realized I could call you, but I think maybe I pressed the wrong button the first time because you didn’t pick up—”

“Ramona, slow down,” Signy said. “What do you need?”

“We need you here,” Ramona said. “It’s an emergency.”

Signy’s chest shrank in on itself. “What is it?”

“It’s Otto,” Ramona replied, her voice cracking. “It’s his heart.”

Chapter 43 Cora, Fortune

Okay,” Cora said to herself. (Or maybe not to herself. The plant shop didn’t have any other people in it right then, but could the plants hear her mumbling? Eh. Probably best to not think about it.) “You got this, you got this. Easy peasy.” She smoothed her to-do list flat in the middle of the shop counter, putting her hands to either side as she walked through it again. Open the till. Check the irrigation lines to make sure everything was running and nothing was leaking. Set the airlock to open. Do a visual inspection of all the shelves (Signy had said not to stress it, just to make note if any plants looked obviously sick). Ring people up. Give them Signy’s card if they had questions Cora couldn’t answer (which they definitely would). Olive would be coming by to pick up their meds sometime in the afternoon; these were packaged in a vitamin C bottle under the counter and were to be handed over in conjunction with three packets of kitchen herb seeds set alongside. Other than that, keep a list of everything that sold, and close up at six. Easy peasy.

Easy peasy, except that Cora really didn’t want to let Signy down. Cora had never worked a shop job in her life, and from the outside, sitting behind a counter didn’t look too hard. But this whole arrangement was meant to keep Signy’s head clear while she was with Otto and the gang at the hospital. Texting every five minutes with questions would defeat the whole purpose.

Cora nodded with determination and opened the till, mindfully. She checked the irrigation lines, mindfully. She opened the airlock to customers, mindfully. She assured herself that she didn’t need to be Signy, she just needed to keep the shop nominally running so that customer customers could come get their medicine. People would understand why the real shopkeeper was out. Everybody in the Berth understood hospitals.

Cora made herself a mug of hot chocolate with a packet of mix from the emergency stash, because you know what, this was an emergency. She was feeling a way about it, too.

The morning passed uneventfully. Three normal customers in total came in. Cora was on alert each time the airlock opened, eager to crew her post. One person bought cilantro and chives. Another had a question about plants that were good for air quality. Cora couldn’t answer that one, but they had a chummy chat anyway, and in a weird way, it was kind of nice. She could do fuck all to help Otto, but she could help Signy, and that was how it worked, when shit like this hit the fan. If this was her part, she could do it all day.

Cora was in the middle of adding some chives and baby spinach to a bowl of shelf-stable ramen—she figured she’d be forgiven for eating some of the merchandise, and also, seriously, how did Signy stay upright eating like this all day long—when a clunk and whir announced someone new entering the airlock. Cora set her food aside, brushed off her hands, and put on a smile as the inner door opened. A mask came off and—

“Twig!” Cora exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

Her sister glanced around as she unzipped her barrier jacket, taking the shop in. “You said in your text you were gonna be here, and I’m meeting a friend nearby, so I thought—I dunno, I thought I’d come say hey.” She bunched up her jacket and shoved it in a cubby, looking around. “This place is really cool.”

“It’s super cool,” Cora said, still processing the surprise of a very familiar face. “I can’t give you a tour like Signy can, but do you want a bad one?”

“Yeah, sure,” Twig said as she pulled off her barrier pants.

Cora went out onto the shop floor, buzzing with a different kind of excitement than the morning had brought. Twig and Signy had not made any progress with each other, but, hey—Twig thought the shop was cool! That could be a good sign, right? That could be something.

“All right, uh—let’s see.” Cora gestured at the shelves. “These are all kitchen plants. It’s pretty neat, actually, seeing what stuff looks like before it ends up on your plate. Like these—” She grabbed a tray of colorful starts. “These are gonna be chard, when they grow up.”

“What’s chard?” Twig asked.

“You’ve had chard before,” Cora said.

“Have I?”