Aurora(27)

Thom went first to the kitchen, to check on food and other supplies, which had been laid in exactly as discussed and signed off on. All was in readiness there. He could hear Ann-Sophie in the master bedroom, putting things away, and he took a deep breath and wandered over to take her emotional temperature once more.

He stopped in the doorway, watching as she unpacked. The closets were already reasonably full, doubles of all her favorite things that were appropriate to the desert climate had been bought, laundered, and hung up, the spaces opened and aired regularly. There really wasn’t much, if anything, for her to do.

Or for Thom, for that matter, and for the first time all day he wasn’t sure what to do with himself. Prepping was more than a hobby. It had been his avocation, and a competitive game for he and his fellow billionaire friends. Who had anticipated the most? Who had actually implemented their plans, and how sturdy were they? But now the prep was over, the game strategies had been put into motion, and there wasn’t anything left to do except watch things play out and see who had the most chips when it was over.

Ann-Sophie stood between the bed and the closet, holding a plum-colored cashmere cardigan in one hand and a bottle of coconut water in the other. She had her back to the door, and Thom could see her head moving from the sweater to the water bottle, wondering to herself how on earth she’d ended up with them, why those two items, above all others, and what was she supposed to do with them now? She backed up, felt the edge of the bed with the back of her knee, and sagged down onto it.

“I wonder—”

She turned, startled. She hadn’t heard him in the doorway. Two-foot-thick walls, twelve-inch soundproof glass, and carpet-over-wood-over-concrete floors made the place as quiet as a recording studio. You could snap your fingers and practically feel it evaporate in the air around you.

Thom gestured, sorry, and tried to continue. “I wonder if maybe this isn’t a good chance.”

“For what?”

“For us. To start over.”

He took a step into the room and closed the door behind him. Immediately, she got up from the bed, sensing an implication.

He sighed. “That isn’t what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

“Come on. It’s been shitty, right?”

“Yes. It has.”

“Well, I’ve apologized. Several times. Now the world is going to fall apart. We’re all we’ve got.”

She looked at him. She wondered when she might ever be able to watch him undress again. She wondered, if that day ever came, if the sight of his overworked abdominal muscles would arouse the same revulsion in her that she felt right now. She wondered if she could ever see him naked and aroused again, and she wondered how long, exactly, would persist the image of his stupid fucking abs, tensed and sweaty, while he stood in the middle of their home gym, his head down, one hand caressing the dark hair atop his trainer’s head as she took him in her—

Never. That’s when she’d watch him undress. Never ever. It was the sheer corniness of his behavior that enraged her the most, the wild, over-the-top clichéness of it all. Your trainer? Are you joking? The rest was just going to be the sorting-out. The kids would love Stockholm. She was sure of that, as sure as she was that he wouldn’t even try to fight her.

“What do you want?” he asked. She didn’t answer. “Darling. What do you want?”

Still no answer. He turned and walked out of the room.

Ann-Sophie, who loathed conflict and had spent most of her adult life managing to avoid it, walked in the opposite direction. She stopped at the window and looked out, not at the spectacular view but at Marques, Beth, and Kearie, who were now playing with Anya and Lukas. The little ones were racing up the grassy hill, then flopping onto the ground to roll right back down it, giggling delightedly, leaping to their feet and drunk-walking back to the top, bragging about who was dizzier.

Marques and Beth tried a roll too, ended up going mostly sideways, and crashed into each other halfway down, laughing.

Ann-Sophie watched them. Now that’s what a family looks like, she thought.

Beyond, the sun slipped beneath the mountains.





10.





Aurora

10:37 p.m.

The power still hadn’t gone out. Scott kept watching the TV reports, but Aubrey grew tired of the expanding deadline, the horizon that never seemed to be met, the confusing explanations about solar weather, and why this death blow’s travel time was impossible to estimate. Four hours became seven hours because nine hours became maybe-we-were-wrong-about-this-whole-thing, which led to more shouting, blaming, and finger-pointing on the TV. Sometime after midnight, Aubrey went upstairs, took a long hot shower, got in bed, and turned out the light.

Every three or four minutes until she finally fell asleep, at 2 a.m., she’d open her sleepless eyes, feel for the switch on the bedside light, and flick it on, just to see. Every time, the bulb would blaze to light. She wondered if everybody was just . . . wrong.

They were not.

When the CME erupted from the sun’s surface and entered interplanetary space, it created an enormous magnetic cloud containing counter-streaming beams of electrons, flowing in opposite directions. The massive, billowing cloud made first contact with the earth’s magnetopause, the outer limit of the magnetosphere, at thirty-seven minutes past 3 a.m., Central Daylight Time.