Текст книги "Such a Rush"

Автор книги: Jennifer Echols

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

In the shadows of Mr. Simon’s hangar, Mark was sitting in the cockpit of the crop duster, watching me approach.

I put a little extra swing in my walk and stepped over the threshold into his hangar. Sliding up to the open door of the cockpit, I whispered into the darkness, “Did I hear you whistle at me?”

“Normally you’d have quite a ride to the farm of the day,” Mark said into his mike as we bumped along the tarmac toward the end of the runway. “We spray farms as far away as three hundred miles. But since we’re taking the Stearman and you’re getting your feet wet, we’ll just buzz the folks near the airport. Do you really want a rush?”

His voice sounded strange in my headphones, precisely because it didn’t sound strange at all. He spoke the same as always. He wasn’t imitating Chuck Yeager or making any effort to sound like a cool, collected pilot. That’s when I had second thoughts about going up with him. But I couldn’t ask him to stop, taxi back to the hangar, and let me out just because his voice didn’t sound right. Not when this was the only chance I had left at a job flying.

“Yes,” I said.

He stopped at the end of the runway and ran up the engines, like he was supposed to. But he didn’t touch each instrument in the panel with his finger. He didn’t work his feet to make sure the rudders moved the way they should. I’d always felt a little silly going through these motions so methodically, the way Mr. Hall had taught me, like the rudders were suddenly going to quit working. Then I heard Mr. Hall in my head, reminding me that if something went wrong in the air, I couldn’t pull over. Clearly Mark had never received this warning. Or he didn’t care.

Aren’t you going to test the rudders? kept forming on my lips, and I kept brushing it away like an annoying bug. I had a vision of myself trapped in the back of this crop duster like a sardine in a can while Mark slung us all over the sky. But I’d never seen how he flew on a job. He was probably perfectly safe. I tried to picture what Grayson would do in this situation. If he needed a job flying a crop duster, he wouldn’t second-guess Mark’s prep at the end of the runway.

Of course, he wouldn’t walk up to Mark in the hangar and ask whether Mark had whistled at him, either. But Grayson would never need a crop-dusting job. Grayson and I were so far apart that we had nothing to do with each other. Thirty years from now, if a rumor ran around the airport that we’d had a one-night stand, we would still be so far apart that nobody would believe it.

Mark announced our departure over the airport frequency in his usual lilting tone, laughing at the end. His voice sounded louder as he released that button and talked only to me. “Get ready for the ride of your life, Leah. Later tonight, that is. The flight will be fun too.”

My head jerked back against my seat as he accelerated suddenly. My stomach turned over and over as I processed what he meant: we would have sex later because he’d taken me flying. I wished I hadn’t marched straight from an argument with Grayson and Molly and Alec into Mark’s hangar. But what else was I going to do, go home?

The plane sped past the huge hangars on that end of the runway, past Mr. Simon’s hangar. Alec had joined Grayson and Molly at the upright poles in the middle of the field. Grayson and Alec shouted at each other. Alec shoved Grayson. Molly tried to separate them, her ridiculous heavy work gloves hovering between them. They all stopped and watched the Stearman take off.

Mark took his hand from the stick and waved to them. There was no cabin in the biplane. Goggles and a small windscreen were the only things separating us from the open air. So the boys might have heard Mark as he shouted, “I’ve got your girlfriend, fucker!”

And then we were in the sky, zooming upward at a banner-towing angle. When I piloted a tow plane, I needed to fly at this angle to get the banner off the ground quickly. There was no reason for Mark to be flying this way, unless—

“I wanted you to feel some G’s!” he said into the mike. “Now, step one. Survey the area for tractors, combines, cows. We don’t want to hit anything when we’re down near the ground. Cows will fuck you up. Take a look.”

I was surprised he wanted to give me this demonstration so close to the airport. Other planes would be taking off and landing. But this was what I’d wanted, right? To feel a rush? I sat straighter in my seat and craned my neck to see past the lower wings. Rows of cotton flashed beneath us fast as strobe lights, unbroken all the way to the forest. “I don’t see anything,” I said.

“Step two,” he said, “dive dive dive!”

My stomach stayed at five hundred feet as we plummeted toward the ground. I gripped the sides of my seat and was very glad he couldn’t see me in the seat directly behind him. I realized now that he’d asked me to look for obstacles just so I would be scared when I saw the ground rushing to meet us.

“The switch to release the chemicals will be here,” he said, pointing to the instrument panel with one hand. I wished he would keep both hands on the stick, at least while we were plummeting. “You’d flick it right about here, then pull up.”

At the very last second before we tunneled into the dirt, he jerked the controls. The plane flattened its trajectory. We skimmed along five feet from the tops of the plants.

“Mark.” My voice sounded shaky in the mike.

He chuckled. “Yes, Leah.”

“Do I need to get this low,” I asked, “or is it just you?”

He laughed more loudly. Maybe it was the effect of the headphones, but he sounded a touch insane. “It’s not just me. You’ve got to stay near the crops so the chemicals don’t drift. It’s weird but when you spray herbicide on people, they call my uncle’s office to complain. And now you’re probably thinking I need to pull up again before I hit those trees.”

I was, in fact, thinking this as the dark forest rushed toward us.

“This takes practice, Leah. We’re going to die now, right? That was the last second we could have saved ourselves and we missed it, right? Count to three.”

“Onetwothree!” I shouted.

“You counted too fast.”

I kept my eyes open as the forest loomed. I didn’t want to die with my eyes shut.

“And now we pull up.”

I was in the midst of a reflex to cover my face with my arms to protect myself from the impact when he nosed the plane up, tracing the outline of an oak tree.

The plane soared in a circle over the forest. Broken pieces of his cackle came through the headphones as his voice triggered the mike to switch on and off. After he’d collected himself, he asked, “Sick yet?”

“Yes,” I said. “Mark, I’ve changed my mind. I’m really sorry but I don’t want a relationship with you. I just wanted to fly. And if I can’t have one without the other, please take me back and put me down.”

Static sounded in my headphones, then silence. Static, silence. He was breathing hard.

“Mark.”

“What did you say?” he asked, voice dripping sarcasm. “That you’re ready to go again? I heard you the first time.” He dropped the plane to zoom way too close along the highest branches of the trees.

I felt faint. All the warnings I’d heard about Mark over the past week rushed to my mind. That he was crazy. Dangerous. Used his plane as a weapon. Shouldn’t be trusted to fly with passengers. Had fallen in love with me and didn’t want to let me go.

“Mark, please,” I said, pilot voice cracking.

“I said we’d go again, Leah.” His words were so loud that I reached up to pull my headphones away and save my hearing. “Let me straighten her out and then—”

I was glad I didn’t get the headphones off. The next second, the front of the plane exploded, the noise earsplitting even through the headphones. I ducked under the debris coming at me: the top of a tree, part of the propeller. I heard it crash across the tail behind me.

We’d cleared the trees now, but the terrifying noise hadn’t stopped, only changed. With part of the propeller gone, the huge, heavy engine knocked around up front, threatening to tear the plane apart.

“Mark!”

He said nothing.

The plane was sinking fast.

“Mark!” I shouted. “My airplane!” Fists shaking, I pulled back on the stick, gaining as much height as possible so I’d have farther to fall. That way I’d have more choice about where I crash-landed.

I couldn’t move much because I didn’t dare take my hands off the controls, and I was unprotected in the open air. But I leaned as far forward and to one side as I could, twisting to look at what had happened to Mark. He was slumped over in the front seat—too far over. On the front instrument panel was a bright smear of blood.

I was on my own.

nineteen

“Mayday mayday mayday.” I announced over the radio that I was making an emergency landing. That was just a courtesy message telling other planes to get out of my way. Nobody answered, of course. There was no tower, no authority, no one to save us.

The engine vibrated dangerously. The controls were sluggish and the plane was hard to steer. I pointed the nose for the airport and hoped I would make it. All the while I was looking around for places to land—a field until we passed it, a straight stretch of two-lane road until we passed that. Puffy white clouds gathered over the ocean, a stereotypical heaven scene from a movie.

“Leah,” Grayson said over the radio. He recited the number of the channel Hall Aviation used.

I switched to that channel. “I’m here.”

“What are you doing?” We were both using the Chuck Yeager voice like his dad had taught us, but even through the radio, I could hear he was breathless.

“Mark hit a tree. He’s out cold. Controls are mushy. Part of the prop is gone and I’m about to shut the engine down. Call 911.”

The plane dipped suddenly before dashing up again. I fought the controls to steady it. Static sounded in my ears. I realized it was my own gasp, which had triggered the voice-activated radio as if I’d said something.

I turned the engine off so at least the controls would work better and I could fly the plane like a glider. The propeller came to an ominous stop. The silence in my trailer had never been as awful.

“Make a pass and let us see the damage before you try to land,” Grayson said.

“Negative,” I said. “I can’t stay up that long.”

“Then skip the airport and go for the ocean.”

“Negative. Mark will drown before they get to him.” I couldn’t swim, either, but if I survived the crash, I could probably cling to a piece of the airplane until the Coast Guard rescued me. Mark would be lost.

“That fucking—” Grayson’s voice cut off suddenly as he remembered we were on a public frequency.

I knew what he meant. This was Mark’s fault. But it was my responsibility now. I reminded Grayson, “What matters most is other people, then me, then the airplane, then the banner.” I didn’t have a banner this time, but Mr. Hall’s rule still applied. No matter what Mark had done, he now fell in the category of “other people,” and I wasn’t going to lose him if I could help it.

I heard static in my headphones again as I breathed a sigh of relief. The runway had come into view, and the long row of hangars. Flying closer, I could see that people lined the tarmac—not as many as had watched the Chinook, because it was still so early in the morning, but I was the show of the day. In front of the Hall Aviation hangar, Molly folded her arms like she was cold. Alec’s hand was on Grayson’s back. Both Grayson’s hands were on his cowboy hat. I couldn’t see them well at that distance, but I knew them from what they wore and the way they stood.

Grayson put one hand to his mouth and spoke into Mr. Hall’s radio. “Leah, you’re missing your left gear.”

“Roger.” Looking over the side of the cockpit, I saw the left front wheel of the tricycle underneath the plane had been sheared off. That meant when I landed, the left side of the airplane would have nothing to touch down underneath it.

I’d better keep my wing tip up as long as I could, then, until I slowed down.

Static sounded in my ears. Then again. I wanted to move the microphone farther from my mouth so I couldn’t hear my own breathing, but I didn’t dare take my hands off the controls.

Underneath me, dark grass flashed past, then lighter gray pavement. I was over the runway, speeding just above the asphalt. Now that the broken engine and propeller weren’t throwing the plane off balance, I could have been landing an undamaged airplane. I held fast to that denial, because it kept me calm. Too late it occurred to me that I probably should have been praying.

The plane vibrated as the right landing gear touched down.

Way ahead of me in the grassy strip between the tarmac and the runway, Grayson and Alec and Molly were running. Grayson’s cowboy hat flew off. I wished they would stay away, because if the metal ground against the asphalt on landing and kicked up one spark that lit leaking gas, the plane would explode.

I pitched the left wing up a little to keep the plane level until we slowed, but the Stearman was old and heavy and it was no use. The wing kept sinking, astonished that the landing gear wasn’t there to support it, feeling for its place on the ground.

The wing screeched, screamed, skidded across the asphalt. Slammed to the ground and bounced violently upward.

Sparks and pieces of the wing flew over my head.

The plane veered sharply to the left. The trees loomed in front of us.

I gripped the controls. The trees came fast and I was about to slam into them. In my mind I was taking off again, in control of my airplane, sailing over the trees and over the ocean and into the clouds.

I let one sob escape. I heard it in my headphones.

I was close enough to the tree about to kill me that I could tell from the bark it was the same species of palm as the one outside my bedroom.

My stomach left me. Every atom in my body was forced forward and jerked back.

The plane stopped with a noise so loud that it sounded like nothing.

No, the noise was static in my headphones, and now my own screaming. My eardrums would burst. I reached up to push my headphones off.

Warm hands fumbled across my head and in my lap. Arms wrapped around my chest and pulled.

“Leah! Open your eyes.”

I blinked at Grayson. We were standing safe outside the mangled plane, under the trees at the edge of the runway. But I couldn’t catch my breath, gasping from screaming so long.

He tossed my headphones away. He took my goggles off. He put his hands on either side of my face and peered at me. My double reflection in his sunglass lenses was weird and convex, my dark curls wild, my eyes huge.

“Are you hurt?” he asked me.

“Is Mark dead?” I croaked.

“No. The treetop he plowed through got him in the head. His arm doesn’t look right either.” Grayson nodded toward the wreckage. The plane had come to rest against the trees, almost like I’d parked it there on purpose, except that the prop was mangled, the wings were torn, the tail was torn, the left gear was gone, and the whole thing listed to the side. Alec and Molly and the airport mechanic crowded around Mark in the front seat.

Grayson put his hands in my hair. “Your head okay?”

“Yes,” I breathed.

“Neck okay?” He slid his hands down to my shoulders. “Anything sore?”

“No.”

“Is she okay?” Molly shouted.

“She’s okay,” Grayson shouted back.

“Grayson!” Alec’s voice was strained. “A little help!”

Grayson pointed at the ground and told me, “Sit down.” He put his weight on my shoulders.

I didn’t have a choice. I sat where he put me, flattening the tall grass under me.

“Don’t move.” He ducked under a half-broken branch hanging onto a tree by a few splinters. He took his place beside the others to help pull Mark free.

Way off in the distance behind me, sirens wailed. Above them I could hear the rope clanging against the flagpole.

The paramedics kept me in the back of the ambulance for a long time, like they couldn’t believe there was nothing wrong with me. When the police wanted to question me, the paramedics left to help with Mark. The police left and the paramedics came back. Finally they helped me down from the ambulance, into the arms of Grayson, who had stood at the bumper the entire time, watching me.

When Alec saw I’d been set free, he walked over and hugged me under the trees. “Remember how my dad said ‘You have to be better than me’? You are.” He let me go.

Then Molly hugged me for a long time, squeezed me, and kissed me on the cheek. Below the lenses of her blinged-out sunglasses, her face was streaked with mascara and tears. “You scared the fuck out of me.”

Her hand stayed on my back until Grayson led me away, through the grass to the tarmac. Behind us, a tractor was already towing the wreckage of the beautiful Stearman out of the trees. The runway needed to be cleared quickly so the rest of the businesses at the airport could fly.

Grayson didn’t say a word until we reached my trailer. Neither did I. For some reason my mind was stuck on that last moment before the left wheel should have touched the runway, when I realized I’d been in denial. He held out his hand for my key, unlocked the door, and led me through the trailer, back to my bedroom. He sat me down on the edge of the bed and settled close to me, leaning over me, knee to knee with me.

He kissed my lips. “Are you really okay?”

“I will be.”

He kissed my cheek, moving along my cheekbone until he was whispering in my ear. “We forgot that whatever kind of drama we’ve got going on when we’re on the ground, we can’t let it affect what happens in the sky.” He kissed my earlobe, then backed away to look me in the eye. “I love you.”

I took a long breath, meeting his intense gaze. “I love you too.”

“I wanted to tell you on the radio,” he said. “But we don’t do that.”

“Your dad would kick your ass.”

Laughing, he pulled his phone from his pocket. “I’m leaving this here for you. Call Molly if you need anything.”

“O… kay,” I said. Crashing an airplane didn’t fix the fact that Molly had called me a liar. Or that I was one.

“She’s expecting you to call,” Grayson said. “You rest. I’ll be back to check on you.” Watching my eyes, he kissed my hands, and then he was gone. I could trace his path through the trees by the pitch of the pit bull’s bark.

I lay there for a while, but that moment in the airplane played over and over in my head. Thinking that the flight seemed normal, despite the fact that Grayson had told me the left wheel was gone. Setting the aircraft down on one wheel, feeling only by degrees that the other wheel was really missing.

Finally I got up, took a shower, and walked back to the airport. As I passed the office, Mr. Simon was coming out the door in his usual baseball cap and overalls, despite the heat. He waved me over. He hadn’t been around that morning for the crash. Now I suspected that’s why Mark had been willing to take me up: he really hadn’t been allowed, but his uncle hadn’t been there to say no.

I didn’t want Mr. Simon to yell at me, but I figured I owed him the opportunity since I had crashed his airplane. I walked into the shade of the porch.

He said, “I want to shake your hand, little lady.”

I didn’t have a lot of experience shaking hands. I probably hadn’t done it since I met Sofie, but I extended my hand to Mr. Simon. His grip was too strong at first, and suddenly so weak that I could hardly feel his hand at all, like he’d remembered he was shaking the hand of a girl. Little lady, he’d called me, so disrespectful even as he showed me respect by shaking my hand. Being a pilot had always been like this for me, and it always would.

He let me go and gestured to a rocking chair. I sat down. He eased into the rocking chair on the other side of the door, where Grayson had sat last Sunday when he tried to convince me to work for him in the first place.

“That was some fancy flying you did,” Mr. Simon said. “Saved my nephew.” He turned to gaze at the tree line, a few trunks showing bright scars where the crash had stripped them of bark. “Saved what’s left of my airplane.”

Saved myself, I thought.

“I’ve got contracts to fill,” he said. “Mark’s grounded. Permanently, as far as I’m concerned. I need a pilot.”

Mr. Simon hadn’t actually asked me to be his pilot. I knew that’s what he wanted. I also knew assuming too much and voicing this first would give him the advantage in the negotiation. I’d learned a lot by listening to men on this porch.

And I didn’t really care anymore, because I had my own agenda. “Mark told me a couple of weeks ago that you were willing to hire me even while he was still flying for you. Was that true?”

Mr. Simon’s eyebrows went up. He shook his head. “No. First I’ve heard of it. He told you that?”

I nodded, stomach twisting.

I didn’t show surprise.

And I waited him out, rocking slowly in my chair like I could sit here in the shade all day.

Finally he said, “I am sorry for it. His mama didn’t teach him right.”

My mama didn’t teach me right, either, I thought, and I don’t act that way. I kept rocking.

“But now I’ve got that opening,” Mr. Simon said. “And I’d like you to fill it. You’d need training, but it’s clear you’ve got the stuff.”

“Would you train me for free?” I asked.

He kept rocking too. “If that’s what it took, yeah.”

Now I should ask about the pay. Otherwise he might lower my salary to make up for the cost of crop-duster lessons. I’d learned a lot from Grayson this week too.

But there was no reason to keep playing this game. “I’ve got a job for the summer,” I said. “I’m going to keep flying for Hall.”

He turned to look at the Hall Aviation hangar. I followed his gaze. The red Piper was parked there, and Grayson walked toward us across the tarmac, carrying boxes.

“You think they’re going to stick around?” Mr. Simon asked me.

“I do,” I said, “at least for the summer. Next year I don’t know what I’ll be doing. Maybe you and I can talk again then.”

“Fair enough.” We both stood. He shook my hand again, this time covering it with his other hand. He looked straight into my eyes with watery blue eyes and said, “I do thank you.” He ambled off the porch and headed for the huge crop-duster hangar at the opposite end of the airport.

Grayson sat down in Mr. Simon’s chair, then set what he was carrying on the floor of the porch beside him: two eco-friendly recycled paper containers from Molly’s parents’ café, and an eco-friendly drink cup.

I could tell he had something important to say. Just as on the first day we’d talked here on the porch, I could feel the weight of it around us in the hot, humid air.

He stood and held out his hands to me. He tugged me up to standing. Wrapping his arms around me, he pulled me close for a long hug.

Slowly I relaxed. Despite a couple of hours in bed, staring at the ceiling of the trailer, I hadn’t known how tense my muscles still were from the crash until I melted, boneless, into Grayson’s embrace.

He relaxed too, his tight hug fading into a shoulder massage. Finally he held me at arm’s length and looked into my eyes. At least, I thought he did. We were both wearing aviator shades. Despite the fact that I couldn’t see his eyes, this time I knew he was sincerely concerned as he asked, “Are you okay?” His voice broke. He cleared his throat.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Are you okay?”

“Now I am. It took me a while. I was getting worried about you, though, and I was just coming to look for you. Sit down.”

I didn’t want him treating me like an invalid when I wasn’t hurt at all. But he’d been through a lot that day, so I didn’t argue with him. I sat down.

He sat beside me. Frowned at me. Reached over, took my chair by both armrests, and dragged it closer to his own chair. “There.” He put his hand on my knee.

We both looked toward the far end of the runway as the orange Piper revved up its engines for takeoff. That must be why my knee was tingling, then—the vibration from the plane. I had thought at first it was Grayson’s touch. But after the plane left Earth and angled into the air, its engines fading into a tinny buzz, I still felt the vibration up my thigh from Grayson’s hand on my knee. Then he squeezed my knee though he still watched the plane, as if he wanted to make sure I was still there.

“Who’s flying?” I asked. “That’s my plane. I guess you did fire me. You replaced me already?”

He groaned. “What was I thinking? Please come back. The Admiral’s only flying for me the rest of the day.”

“The Admiral!” I exclaimed. “Grayson, he’s not going to tow banners for you, is he? You shouldn’t have asked him! I don’t care how good a pilot he is. If he hasn’t been taught how to do it, he’ll kill himself.”

Grayson squeezed my knee again, this time to reassure me. “He volunteered so I could make my contracts and you wouldn’t have to fly. This is how he learned to fly in the first place, back when he was a young damn fool idiot. That’s what he said.”

I laughed. “That sounds like your dad talking.”

“There’s a reason they were friends.” Grayson tapped his finger on my knee. “Don’t tell the Admiral’s wife, though. That was a condition of his employment. He said she would shit a brick.”

“Get him down and send me up. I was just headed over to the hangar to tell you I’m ready to fly.”

“No,” Grayson said. “I was just headed to your trailer to bring you breakfast and lunch.” He gestured to the boxes from the café.

“I’m fine.”

“No.”

“I want to fly.”

He pulled his hand off my knee. “Leah, no. You crash-landed an airplane this morning. I’m not sending you back up the same day. If you feel okay tomorrow, you can fly tomorrow and Sunday.”

“I need to get back on the horse now.” I said this lightly like I was kidding, but I meant it. I wasn’t scared. I knew what had happened that morning hadn’t been my fault. But I didn’t want to get scared because I’d waited too long and had too much time to think. “I’m embarrassed.”

“Of what?”

“Screaming.”

His left eyebrow lifted clear of his shades. “You think you should have crashed with more flair?”

“More composure.”

He smiled. “After I crashed the Piper last year, I went into the woods and threw up, as you know. I got over it. You’ll get over this too. You can get over it tomorrow. It would be irresponsible of me as your employer if I let you go back up today. End of discussion.” He sliced his hand across his neck.

I frowned at him and sliced my hand across my own neck. “We use that too much.”

“We need it,” he said. “Neither of us knows when to shut up.” He took both my hands in his. “You’re about to tell me to shut up. I have something to say to you, and something to ask you.”

“Okay.” I should have been used to Grayson planning things out, but years of knowing him died hard, and it seemed odd that he’d thought ahead to a confession, and a question.

He rubbed my hands with his thumbs, steeling himself.

“Wow!” I exclaimed. “What could be so awful, Grayson?” I took off my shades and set them in my lap, then reached forward and took off his shades.

His eyes surprised me as always, because I seldom saw them: his irises a strange light gray, his lashes blond and long. Usually when I’d seen his eyes, he’d narrowed them at me. Now they were big and worried, and he bit his lip.

“Tell me,” I said.

“I should have told you earlier, but I was busy blackmailing you. I have to tell you but I don’t want you to break up with me.”

“Tell me.” I didn’t want to know. It was too soon for us to be over. But I couldn’t stand being in the dark.

“My dad left you the Cessna.”

I gasped. “The Cessna?” The white four-seater that Mr. Hall had used to give lessons. The first plane I’d ever flown. “Why didn’t somebody tell me in the last two months?”

“My dad, in his infinite wisdom, made Jake the executor of his will. Since Jake’s gone, the will is tied up in court. But I’m sure you’ll be getting a call in the next few weeks. Or you would, if you had a phone.”

I gaped at him. I couldn’t believe it. Mr. Hall had left me the Cessna.

Grayson shifted uncomfortably. “See, it didn’t make sense to me that he would will an airplane to a flight student, unless you were a lot closer than he’d admitted. That’s why I was… unkind to you at first this week. It wasn’t until that night we ate at Molly’s café, when you talked about flying, that I began to understand. You might never have come out and told my dad how you felt about flying like you told us, but he saw that in you. He knew. And then, as you and I talked and… did more than that… I got it. I felt guilty for suspecting you. It’s just that there was this airplane!” He spread his hands, indicating the thirty-six-foot wingspan, twenty-seven feet propeller to tail, and thousands upon thousands of dollars.

I owned a Cessna. I still couldn’t believe it. “Has Alec known about this the whole time?”

“No. I was the one who talked to the lawyers. I just told Alec about it this morning.”

“But he was going to find out,” I said, “and you knew that. How could you go ahead with this plan to get him and me together?”

He held out his hand. “I didn’t care about him finding out,” he said as he touched his thumb. “Or you finding out.” He touched his pointer. “Or him being mad.” He touched his middle finger. “Or you being mad.” He touched his ring finger. “All I cared about was keeping him alive.”

I nodded. I understood that.

I still couldn’t believe I owned a Cessna.

“I can’t accept it,” I said.

“I figured you’d say that. You think you don’t deserve it. But Dad gave it to you because he loved you. Love isn’t something you have to deserve.”

He sounded like he was reading a cue card. I looked at him, puzzled.

He grinned. “I learned that recently.” His grin faded. “At least, I hope it’s true.” He looked toward the Hall Aviation hangar. We couldn’t see the white Cessna inside, but we knew it was there. “I was thinking you could sell the plane and use the money to live on and pay tuition until you graduate from college, if you’re careful. Of course, then you wouldn’t have a plane, and knowing you, you’d rather have a plane to fly than a place to live.”

I laughed, because it was true.

“Some people sell shares of their airplanes,” he went on. “A retired doctor around here would love to buy half an airplane that my dad kept up the maintenance on.” In his voice I heard his pride in his dad. “You could still fly it half the time and pocket the profits for the other half.”