Author's note: Apparently no one writes fanfic for the show For All Mankind (on Apple+), so I had to actually have them add a new category on here. The show is really interesting - it's all about what might have happened to the U.S. space program if the Soviet Union beat America to the moon and the space race intensified. I do recommend watching season 2 before reading this (or being okay with spoilers about one of the crazy personal storylines on the show).
"There are these moments that shape your life, moments you have no control over...I always thought things happened for a reason. Good or bad, there's a design, a plan. But lately I wonder if we just say that to make ourselves feel better."
- Excerpt from Kelly Baldwin's college admission essay
When her dad came home and told her they had to move up the launch of Pathfinder, Kelly Baldwin was worried. There'd been so much in the news about tensions with the Soviets, both in Panama and space, that she had a pit in her stomach and knew this might not be a normal mission for her dad. Ed couldn't tell his daughter about the classified mission, but Kelly knew by the serious look on his face that it wasn't going to be the same test flight he'd been gearing up for.
So she asked him if he was going to be okay, and before he could respond with the comforting phrases she needed, her mom jumped in.
"No, he can't promise you that. He can't. You want to be in the Navy, Kelly? This is part of the gig."
Ever since she'd told her parents that she wanted to go to the Naval Academy in Annapolis and her dad had to eject from a flight over the Gulf, her mom kept trying to press into her how horrible Kelly's choice of career would be for everyone around her.
Kelly knew those intense reminders weren't just about her decision to follow her father's footsteps. They were also about the times Karen Baldwin spent waiting and worrying about her husband and about Shane's death.
Shane, the brother she'd never known, haunted the Baldwin family. Her parents didn't talk about him as much as she thought they probably should, but she could feel his presence sometimes in their offhand comments, fleeting looks in their eyes, and the room she lived in that used to be his.
"Sometimes you get deployed without any warning and the one thing you can never do is promise the people you leave behind that you're going to be okay," her mom continued frantically. "Because they will hang onto that promise like it's a lifeline. And it's not real, right Ed?"
It felt like her mom was losing it and Kelly didn't know why this time was a breaking point. Yes, it had been scary when they didn't know what had happened for hours after the engine failure on Ed Baldwin's flight to Florida, but Kelly thought her mom had gotten over it.
Now she wondered if her mom was trying to scare her into transferring colleges and force her dad into quitting the job he loved so none of them would live a life filled with risk.
There was no truly safe place on Earth either, though. Shane had died riding his bike.
All Kelly wanted was reassurance - however imperfect - and she finally got it when her dad cupped her cheek and looked her in the eyes.
"I can't promise that nothing's gonna happen, but I feel very confident, okay? Any luck, I'll be back the week after you start school."
That was what she wanted. Her dad's confident voice telling her that things were going to be okay.
He pulled her close for a hug and she hadn't realized how much she needed it until his arms were around her.
"I love you, dad."
"I love you too, kiddo. More than you'll ever know."
He kissed the top of her head before he released her and she felt better as she stepped back.
Kelly's stomach dropped again as she saw the look on her mom's face when her dad asked her to walk him out to the car.
Something was wrong and she felt like it might be more than just her dad returning to space earlier than expected.
Kelly didn't mean eavesdrop on their conversation. She walked over to the window and pulled the curtain aside.
Maybe it was childish, but she wanted to see her parents hug before her dad left. When they hugged, she would feel the same way she did when her dad had hugged her - like everything was going to be all right.
Unfortunately, Ed and Karen Baldwin weren't hugging. They were arguing.
She heard their voices filtering in from a nearby open window. Kelly's mom liked to open a window next to her when she smoked, and she'd been smoking a lot more lately.
"We made a pact," Kelly's dad said. "We don't keep any secrets from each other anymore."
Her parents had never told her outright, but she'd spent her life around astronaut families. She knew that her dad was referring to Shane and how everyone had kept Shane's death a secret from him while he was on the moon until a Soviet cosmonaut sent him a message of deepest sympathies.
"I'd never go out on some mission without knowing what was really going on back home. You need to tell me the truth." Ed Baldwin's voice grew desperate. "We don't keep any secrets. Just tell me. Tell me, Karen!"
"I slept with someone."
Kelly turned away from the window and sat down on the carpet, in shock. She didn't want to know that her mom had slept with someone else. This was so much worse than finding out that they had been separated before they decided to adopt her. Back during that conversation, Kelly worried that she'd been a band-aid to a failing marriage instead of a child who was actually wanted. Her mom had said that she was a heart transplant, not a band-aid. If that's what she'd been for the Baldwin family, the transplant had failed.
The voices got louder again, still seeping through the side window that had been left slightly ajar.
Kelly heard her mom unable to admit if she wanted to stay married or get divorced and then turn it around to attack her dad for wanting an answer.
"Everything is complicated and nothing is simple," her mom's voice said into the dark night.
Kelly had learned a lot in the past several months about how complicated life could be, but it seemed to her that if her mom really wanted to stay married to her dad, she would have had an answer to that question.
She wondered if her parents were going to get divorced like Danny and Jimmy's parents.
Kelly heard the rumble of the engine on her dad's car and listened to him drive away. By the time her mom re-entered the house, Kelly was putting dinner on a plate. Karen re-entered the kitchen and Kelly almost didn't recognize the woman in front of her. She tried, but she couldn't see her mom anymore in that broken woman's face.
"I'm going to go eat in my room."
Karen Baldwin never let Kelly eat in her room. It was one of the rules of the Baldwin household. Rules didn't matter now, though, and Kelly's mom let her leave the kitchen with a distant nod and a wave of her hand.
In her room, Kelly turned on the radio and blasted the music loud while she sat on her bed and ate. She barely tasted the food and tried to listen to the music, hoping that the noise would crowd all of the thoughts from her head.
Her dad wasn't even getting back to Earth until after she was at school. Would she even have a home to come back to at Christmas? Would she have a family to come home to?
Would her mom hate her for joining the Navy as much as she apparently hated her dad?
Kelly had the brief, desperate thought that maybe she could just swap her family out for another one if things fell apart. Her half-sister, the waitress at the Little Saigon Diner, seemed really nice. Kelly didn't have the courage yet to tell her that they were related or to meet her biological father, but she could work up to it.
When Kelly brought the empty plate to the kitchen, her mom was nowhere to be seen. She washed the dish in the sink and dried it with a dish towel, carefully putting it away and pretending for one moment that her life was still normal.
The next day, as Kelly's dad prepared to return to space in a different state, her mom spent hours laying on the grass in the backyard, smoking pot.
Kelly spent the morning starting to pack for college and wondering if she should regret her decision to go to Annapolis or be glad that she wasn't going to be around to witness her parents' fractured relationship when her dad returned.
More than anything, she was worried about her dad's mindset. It had been years since he'd gone to space. Pathfinder was a one-of-a-kind shuttle with a powerful nuclear engine. It had never been flow in space before and they'd moved up the mission. Things could go wrong.
The doorbell rang around lunchtime and Kelly went to go answer it. She doubted her mom even heard the sound.
Kelly opened the door and automatically smiled.
She was always glad to see Danny Stevens and thought that maybe her day was starting to look up.
"Hi Danny, are you feeling better?"
He glanced around and Kelly got the feeling that Danny was trying to look in the doorway behind her.
"Uh, sure. Just a 24 hour bug."
They'd been shorthanded at the Outpost yesterday while Danny had been out.
"Are you going to be there tonight?"
Danny looked back at her and she could tell that something was troubling him.
"Hey, is your mom around?"
Kelly had spent years observing Danny Stevens and learning to read every minor expression.
She always thought that her ability to read him would come in handy one day.
Now she regretted that skill with everything she had. Kelly saw longing in his eyes. The type of longing he'd never turned in her direction.
"Oh god, Danny. What did you do?"
He straightened in reaction.
"Is your mom around?"
He was here to see her mom, who'd spent the entire day smoking up after admitting to her dad that that she slept with someone else.
Her mom hadn't admitted to her dad who she'd slept with, but Kelly could see the look in Danny's eyes and it reminded her of the way he used to look at Maggie Dawes.
She felt sick.
It was only the pure and utter shock that kept her standing in the doorway and her lunch in her stomach.
Kelly Baldwin had a crush on Danny Stevens for years. They grew up together and he was cute and fun and she used to think he was admirable.
That crush was extinguished immediately, as if it had never existed.
Now she knew that he was selfish and reckless and not even worthy of being her friend. Her house already had a shaky foundation and he poured gasoline on it and lit the match that was going to burn it to the ground.
"I can't believe you," Kelly spat out. "What the hell did you do?"
She wanted him to deny it, to provide evidence that all Kelly had was an overactive imagination and a mother who'd slept with a stranger.
"I have to talk to her," Danny insisted.
"No, you don't."
How could they have done it? She heard her mom explain last night that she'd made a clear-headed choice to cheat on her husband, without even alcohol or anything else to blame.
What kind of woman slept with a boy she'd taken care of as a child, who she knew her daughter had a crush on?
What kind of boy slept with a married woman who was the mother of one of his friends?
Her parents and Danny's parents had been close forever. If any of them found out, they would be shattered.
There was no way to fix this.
"I love her."
Kelly briefly thought she was having some sort of auditory hallucination. Danny couldn't possibly mean that, could he?
"No, you don't. You don't even know what that word means."
If he knew what love was, he wouldn't have made a choice that would hurt everyone around him that he claimed to care about. This would ruin their families. There was no coming back from this.
"You destroyed everything."
"Kelly, I -"
"You could have had anyone else."
Danny Stevens had always been popular. Girls were always flirting with him. Her mom shouldn't even have been an option.
Kelly had been excited that she'd have a friend there when she went to Annapolis. She'd even - foolishly - had dreams about spending time with Danny in Maryland. She hoped he would finally see her as something more than a friend.
What an idiot she'd been.
Kelly thought of all the times over the summer when she had dinner with Danny and her mom in the back room of the Outpost.
Sometimes she let her imagination run amok and wondered what those dinners would be like if she and Danny started dating. Kelly had been glad that her parents liked Danny. Her mom liked him a lot, and at the time Kelly thought that was a good sign. It meant things would work out well in the future if anything did happen between her and Danny.
Kelly Baldwin never would have guessed that her mom liked Danny Stevens too much.
"I don't want anyone else," Danny said, voice low.
His statement hurt more than it should have, for reasons she didn't want to think about any more.
All Kelly and Danny had ever had between them was some minor flirting. She could live with the loss of that possibility.
She wasn't sure if she could deal with the destruction of her parents' marriage the night before her dad went on a dangerous mission to space on a brand-new shuttle.
"If my father dies," she told Danny, "it will be your fault. Both of yours."
He laughed nervously. "He won't die. He's gone up there tons of times."
Kelly used to think that because Danny was older than her and cooler than her, that he was grown up. She'd been wrong. Danny Stevens was a child.
"He's never gone up during a possible war in space a few hours after finding out my mom slept with someone else. You know how important concentration is during spaceflight. Both of your parents are astronauts - you know how quickly things can go wrong!"
Danny shifted, but she still didn't see nearly enough guilt in his expression.
"Your dad is one of the best there is. And, I mean, he doesn't…"
Danny trailed off, not even brave enough to manage the question.
"He doesn't know it was you. Not yet."
Kelly wasn't sure if she would ever tell him. She didn't even know if she had it in her to confront her mom about it. All she knew was that however long it took, secrets like this couldn't stay hidden forever.
"I can't change how I feel, Kelly."
She didn't care how Danny felt.
"My mom doesn't want to see you," Kelly said firmly. "None of us ever want to see you ever again."
Kelly never told her mom that Danny stopped by.
Karen Baldwin didn't show up at the Outpost that night and neither did Danny. Jimmy Stevens stopped by for a burger, though, and told her that Danny was leaving for Annapolis early. It made her feel a whole lot better that he was leaving town. Hopefully, she would hardly see him at the academy.
When Kelly arrived at work the following day, the Outpost was closed. Her mom was there and looking more put-together than she had for a while. It turned out that she'd sold the place, without telling Kelly. She wondered if her dad knew.
Maybe selling the Outpost would be good for them. Her own feelings for the bar were mixed now that all of her memories of hanging out here with her mom and Danny were tainted.
They drank some champagne to celebrate. Her mom actually seemed happy for the first time in a long time and Kelly started to relax.
She started to relax right up until she realized that her mom was talking about going to college in another state.
Kelly jumped down from the bar counter, faced her mom, and flat out asked if her parents were getting a divorce.
She was offended when her mom tried to act like the question was a surprise.
"I saw you guys fighting in the driveway, and William & Mary is in Virginia. And you're talking about all these plans, and none of them seem to involve Dad."
A bitter, jaded thought crossed Kelly's mind...that William & Mary would be a perfect place for her mom to go if she was into college guys now.
A siren went off and that pit was back in Kelly's stomach. Everything in her life was going wrong. If it was really an air raid siren...if her dad's mission had been moved up because of everything going on in Panama...if something happened and her dad died because he lost focus...
"Everything's going to be okay, all right?"
Kelly nodded, but couldn't help thinking about how her mom wouldn't let her dad make the same promise.
Down in the fallout shelter, she did her best to pretend that she'd never found out about her mom and Danny. To distract herself, she talked about how she'd tracked down her biological father. In that conversation she saw flashes of her mom the way she used to be: supportive, caring, and the type of woman who would put her family first.
A wave of nostalgia ran through her and she decided to give into it.
There were so many things that Kelly didn't have control over. She couldn't do anything about the fact that her mom had cheated on her dad with Danny Stevens. She couldn't control that her dad might be in danger. She couldn't do anything about the fact that recent events ruined the vision she had for her college experience. She had no control over whether her parents stayed together or got a divorce.
She could only control her own actions and reactions.
For now, Kelly Baldwin would pretend that it was all going to be okay, the way that her mom promised her and her dad wanted to promise her.
She would pretend that those promises could be kept.
And in a week, she would leave this all behind and start fresh in a new state and at a new school, where the only promises she had to worry about were the ones she made to herself.
