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It’s been twenty-seven years since Grace has had a breath of fresh air. When he lands back on Earth, he’s given a blissful ten seconds of crisp, chilled oxygen before he’s bombarded. He’s immediately forced into quarantine, where they perform so many tests and checks on him that he barely sleeps for three days. Once, he calls for the nurse that is on shift in his room, and he asks her about Eva Stratt. The pitying look he receives in return is strong enough that he can see it through her hazmat suit.
He figures he doesn’t want to know.
There’s a large chance that Stratt is dead by now, but that’s not a train of thought that Grace necessarily wants to entertain, so he just turns over in his medical bed and tries to get a short nap before he’s inevitably woken up for more tests.
—
It takes ten days of routine checks and various specialists practically studying him for Grace’s nurses and doctors to be cleared of their hazmat suits. Then, soon after, he is allowed visitors as long as they don’t cause him any distress, which rules out the majority of people who want to see him. Almost everyone who tries to visit Grace—world leaders, ambassadors, and researchers alike—are turned away. Grace refuses to meet with anyone, knowing the only people he wouldn’t hate seeing in this state are his colleagues who worked with him on the Hail Mary, and most of them were likely dead by now.
At least, he thinks so.
Despite repeated attempts to ask, no one will tell him anything about his old acquaintances, least of all Stratt. All the staff he asks seem to pause when he mentions her name, though they all recover quickly and shut down his questioning. It doesn’t give him a good feeling about what may have happened to her.
—
On the twelfth day, he hears her name from the nurse who's stationed to watch over him in his room. This nurse is gruff, and he’s leaning outside the door to his room, almost as if he’s calling to someone. Grace busies himself with the book he’s reading (he has a lot of Earth history to catch up on), because he’s positive that the nurse is not calling for Stratt. He’s nearly accepted the fact that she’s already dead; he can’t allow himself the hope.
Then he hears her voice.
It’s different now, softer and a little lighter, but he would recognize her voice anywhere. His heart starts beating so fast that it’s almost painful, and he’s silently thankful that his heart rate monitor shows its results in another room. He’s sure that he’ll die of embarrassment if it starts alerting the room of his elevated heart rate when Eva can see it. When he turns his attention back to the conversation outside of the door, he hears Eva tell someone to stay put. He hopes it’s Carl, honestly. He’s missed the guy.
The door swings open wider, and in the doorway stands an awestruck Eva Stratt. For a while, they both pause, and Grace takes the opportunity to catalog all of the changes in her appearance. She’s aged well; she’s just as ethereal as he remembered her, though in a slightly different way. Her hair is streaked with silver now, and her face is similar, though she has smile lines and slight wrinkles on her forehead. Grace grins softly; she’s beautiful.
Surprisingly, when she glances at his smile, Eva smiles back. It’s soft around the edges, and she’s not showing her teeth or anything, but it’s the biggest smile he’s ever seen from her. He feels tears prickling the corners of his eyes, but he refuses to let them fall. Instead, he reaches out a hand towards her. She makes her way to his bedside slowly, almost like she’s struggling to accept that this is real. Grace completely understands if that’s the case; he’s having the same problem. He’s just not the one doing the moving around.
Her warm hand slips into his, and she takes a shaky breath before she meets his gaze. There are tears silently streaming down her face, and that’s what finally breaks him. He pulls her into his chest, maneuvering so it’s slightly more comfortable despite their awkward position. He breathes into her neck, and he chokes out a sob as he smells the same perfume that she always wore before he left. It smells like Eva; it smells like home.
“I didn’t want to send you,” she whispers against his shoulder. She’s shaking, he notes faintly, and he tightens his arms around her waist.
“I know, Eva,” he replies equally as quiet, not wanting to break the quiet atmosphere. “I don’t blame you. I did, but I don’t anymore.”
She sobs into his hospital gown once, before she pulls herself together. Even after all this time, it’s still shocking for Grace to see how quickly she can regain her composure. She pulls back, rubbing his arm when he tenses and leaning forward to press her lips gently to the top of his head. She moves over to the chair on the other side of his bed, pulling it up to sit beside him. She sits down with a sigh.
“You’ll want to sit down for this,” Eva comments with a slight uptick of her lips, and… wait, was that a joke? Eva Stratt makes jokes now? Grace’s expression must reveal his surprise because she huffs a short laugh. He’s not sure how much more of this version of Eva that he can handle, but at least he’ll die a happy man. She sighs. “I need to sit down for this, too.”
Eva’s eyebrows furrow slightly, one of her tells that she’s thinking—or plotting, which is usually the more accurate description. A sudden wave of anxiety washes over Grace. Whatever is troubling her, it must be serious. Grace only sees her thinking on her face so openly when she’s stressed. She looks at him, and he holds her gaze, even through his nerves. Her hand slips into his, and she squeezes once. He’s terrified now, but he keeps his eyes on her and waits for her to talk. She relents.
“It was a hard decision to send you on the Hail Mary, and one I had hoped I would never have to make. I was distraught, naturally, but there was nothing I could do. The Earth needed a saving grace, and it had to be you. There was no other choice, or I would have taken it. I hope you understand that, Ryland.”
Grace flinches. Even when he had started calling Eva by her first name in private, she had only dropped his title. She never called him Ryland. This is the first time he’s ever heard her call him his first name. It feels good, but wrong. Grace can feel the tension; he knows that the other shoe is going to drop. He just doesn’t know what’s wrong.
“There was an unexpected discovery, maybe a month after the Hail Mary had launched. It was the second hardest thing that had ever happened to me. I find myself struggling to even talk about it to this day, but… I found out I was pregnant."
Grace’s blood runs cold. There are only a few directions that this story can branch into, and he mulls over all of them in his head and decides he dreads all of them. Deep down, though, he thinks he knows how this will end. He exhales shakily, opens his mouth once, twice to talk, but he can’t bring himself to ask the question. He clears his throat and tries one more time.
“It was mine, wasn’t it?” Grace asks, fearing that he already knows the answer. It has to be his. Her meek nod sends him into another round of tears, and she grasps his hand harder, letting him cry for a while before she continues.
“Yes. And I know you have a follow up question, but you’re smart. You already know that I didn’t terminate the pregnancy. I’m sorry that you have to find out like this, I really am. We never thought that you were coming back. I would have done things differently if I had known that you would survive. I don’t have many regrets about my time with Project Hail Mary, but that is the biggest.
“We have a beautiful daughter, Ryland. She’s smart, she took after her father and became a scientist. Not microbiology, though—she’s a lead researcher in post-astrophage environmental science. She’s twenty-five years old now, but her birthday is coming up. She’s nearing the end of her Ph.D. program as well.
“Ryland, I’m so sorry that you didn’t get to watch her grow up. I wish there was a way to change the way things happened, but there isn’t. I love you, and I love her. You can choose whether or not you want to be in our lives—it’s the least I could do. You have autonomy now. Take your time.”
Grace is practically inconsolable by the end of Eva’s short speech. He cries harder than he thinks he ever has before, countless overwhelming thoughts and emotions flooding through him. He pulls on Eva’s wrist until she stands, and he forces her to lay down next to him in the bed so that he can bury his head in her neck and cry. She runs her hands up and down his back soothingly, humming a song that probably came out in the time that he was gone. They both lay there for quite a long time. Grace offhandedly thinks that it’s odd that no one has barged in to check on his vitals and probably kick Eva out for upsetting him, but then he remembers the looks on the staff’s faces when he asked for her, and it clicks.
Eventually, after what was probably at least half an hour, Grace lifts his head. He presses his forehead to Eva’s and leaves a quick peck on her mouth, before he pulls back enough to really look at her.
“Can I see a picture of her?” Grace asks. He’s already guessed that his daughter is the one outside the door, the one that Eva told to wait, but he’s not sure if he’s ready to meet her yet. Luckily, Eva reads between the lines and nods, pulling a phone out of her pocket and turning it on. She takes a moment to scroll on it, then she turns it toward him.
Eva is right. His daughter is beautiful. She looks so much like her mother, though he can see bits of himself peeking through. She has ginger hair like Eva, but its texture resembles his more. She has most of her mother’s features, but Grace proudly notes that she has his smile. Emotions swirl in his chest as he looks at her, but it solidifies his resolve in the fact that he wants to be part of her life.
“Can I meet her?” Grace asks, almost timidly. He’s almost positive that this is the most nervous that he has ever been, and he was quite literally the first human to meet an intelligent alien.
He wishes Rocky had come with him; he would have loved to meet Grace’s daughter. Maybe they’ll have contact in her lifetime. For now, though, he watches Eva walk out of the room. She says something in Dutch, and suddenly Eva returns, with their daughter behind her. Eva smiles, and it’s a bittersweet thing.
“Ryland, meet our daughter, Rie Grace.”