All the previous day, Brenda Redmond had waited, wondering when she’d hear anything further from Autumn Belfontaine, but not wanting to ask. As alarmed as Autumn had been about Drew’s news, it did not sound like a good idea to say or do anything that might draw attention to their private meeting.
Equally, she wasn’t sure if it was wise to try to contact Drew to find out if he’d learned anything further. The more she thought about it, the more she could see that satisfying her curiosity wasn’t worth the risk. Especially given that he was stationed over at Slayton Field, and Grissom City was under the command of a man who regarded Captain Waite as being out of line.
The worst problem was how the kids picked up on her tension. She was trying to act as if everything was completely ordinary — as if there’d been such a thing as an ordinary day since this whole mess started — but they’d kept peppering her with a bazillion questions. Not quite what’s going on? but stuff like when they’d get to see Daddy again and why couldn’t they pull up their favorite TV program any more, all stuff they’d asked dozens of times.The answers weren’t changing, and she knew that they weren’t getting any more satisfying for children so young that next week was an eternity away.
Just getting them to bed and quiet had been hard enough that she was exhausted by the time she got to sleep. At least they slept through the night, so she didn’t have to go through endless repetitions of the process.
But all the same, she was glad now that she had dropped them off at their classes and gotten to work. Being a DJ was a high-energy job, but at least it was an adult job, which involved talking to grown-ups at a grown-up level.
And in her case, there was also the chance that Autumn might just have some new information for her. Except she couldn’t be too obvious about hoping. Even when Autumn came in to deliver the morning news reports, Brenda had to act as if everything were normal and unremarkable.
Midway through her air shift, Brenda put up a long set so she could get out for a little stretch. As she was walking down the corridor past the station offices, she heard the programming director talking on the phone. “…can bring it by any time. As long as we’re broadcasting on the location rig, we should be able to install and test without any disruption.”
Dad’s got the new main board finished. It’ll be so good to have it back again.
Except she also knew she couldn’t let on that she had overheard. Heck, she’d probably better show some surprise if her father came over here to supervise the installation.