T
error wasn’t something Erin expected later that afternoon when she was off work and hurried over to the private Pioneer Airport to fly Jack’s Cessna. She’d expected to feel good about flying such a light aircraft, to conquer her fear as she took it into the sky…
Instead, that familiar, smothering panic cycled up inside her as she stood outside the plane, regarding it as if it were the enemy waiting to swallow her up and take her to her death.
Wind whipped her hair around her face as she stood on the small runway, glancing from side to side to see if anyone was watching her. A machinist strolled across the pavement, but he seemed oblivious to her fears. She swallowed the knot in her throat, held her breath, and took a few steps closer to the plane.
Slowly, she climbed in, closed the door, and leaned back against the seat. Why, her mind railed, did it feel like she was offering herself up as a sacrifice to a cruel, ominous sky?
Her breath came in shallow gasps, and her hands trembled as she went through the short checklist that all pilots knew like their names or addresses or Social Security numbers. Controls, instruments, fuel were all as they should be. With trembling hands, she started the engine to check the ignition system, then sat still, listening to it rumble beneath her. It was simple, she told herself. So simple. She’d flown one of these as a teenager. It had been as easy as riding a bike. Why couldn’t she do it now?
I can do it,
she told herself.
I can. I’m not going to let it beat me.
She tried to pull herself together and checked the interior to make sure the doors and windows were closed and latched, then set her props into takeoff position.
The plane was ready. All she had to do was radio the small tower, to make sure she was clear for takeoff. All she had to do was go down that runway, launch into the sky, and use those wings that seemed to be mercilessly clipped.
I’m a pilot. A good one.
But the affirmation didn’t help. She was paralyzed with the engine running beneath her, the fumes rising in blurs from the concrete, the oxygen seeming to thin out in the cockpit. Terrorized, she hadn’t even moved an inch.
“Oh, God, I know you didn’t give me a spirit of fear!” she cried aloud as tears filled her eyes. “So where did this come from?”
She would have given everything she owned for a portion of the peace she knew was her inheritance. But it seemed so far out of reach that she feared she’d never know it again.
E
rin got out of the plane when she felt she could walk back into the small terminal without calling too much attention to her tear-stained face. She wiped her eyes, locked the plane, and gave it one last look. Sun glinted off the metallic surface and shimmered over the red stripe running from nose to tail. What was there to fear from this small plane? she asked herself.
Nothing
, her mind answered, but her heart concocted endless lists of irrational worries. “I’ll get you yet,” she told it, as if it were some animate force to be reckoned with. “I won’t be beaten.”
Sniffing back her misery, she walked to the terminal door, went inside, and stood frozen, suddenly realizing that Addison had been right when he’d had her grounded. He had saved her from more humiliation, or worse. If she had forced herself to go up, she might have frozen in the cockpit. He had known it. And he had done the right thing.
Wanting suddenly to talk to him and absorb some of the peace he had given her the other night, she looked around for a pay phone. Her hands shook as she searched her wallet for the phone number that Madeline had transcribed from the answering machine and stuck in her purse. Trying to control her breath to lessen the panicky waver in her voice, she inserted a coin and dialed.
Addison answered on the third ring. “Hello?”
His voice was quiet, his tone downbeat, and Erin almost hung up. But she was getting much too weary of running.
“Addison?”
His pause was eloquent, and finally he said, “Erin?”
“It’s me,” she said, swallowing hard. “Um, Addison, I owe you an apology. You did the right thing yesterday by not letting me fly. I wouldn’t have made it.”
She heard something rustling, as if he had shifted the phone to his other ear. “Erin, are you all right?” he asked.
“No…” She cleared her throat. “Yes. I just…wanted to apologize for all the things I said.”
His voice dropped to a more intimate pitch. “I owe you an apology, too. For losing my temper the way I did.”
The mention of what had happened between them twisted her heart, and she dropped her head against the phone. Her voice rose to a squeaky pitch. “Listen, are you busy? I mean, if you are…”
“No, not at all,” he said quickly. “I could come over if you want—”
“I’m not at home,” she cut in. “I’m…out. I thought maybe we could meet at Marty’s. Play a game of racquetball…or something.”
“I’ll be there,” he said without hesitation. “Twenty minutes all right?”
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll see you then, Addison.”
She hung up the phone and rubbed her face with a hand that hadn’t been steady in days. But Addison was coming, and somehow things didn’t seem quite as dismal as they had a few minutes ago.
A
ddison Lowe wasn’t sure how it had happened, but somehow he felt he’d been given a second chance. Erin didn’t hate him. Wasn’t avoiding him. Had even apologized!
He pulled his car into the parking lot at Marty’s and sat still for a moment before getting out. The thought of her weepy voice when she’d called twisted his heart. Had something happened?
Soberly, he got out of the car, pulling his duffel bag with him, and started inside. She was waiting beside the door for him, for he couldn’t come in unless he was accompanied by a member.
“Hi,” she said when he pushed through the glass doors.
He stopped and swept his gaze over her, over the windblown hair that he’d grown to love the way he loved her eyes and her smile. He saw the red stains beneath her eyes, evidence that she’d shed more than a few tears. Still, she looked more beautiful than he’d ever seen her. But then, he thought that every time he saw her.
“Hi,” he returned with a tentative smile. “I’m really glad you called.”
She dropped her eyes, reminding him of a wide-eyed, innocent doe, and he saw that she didn’t want to talk about their earlier conversation. He stood quietly as she signed him in, then led him to the court they’d been assigned.
Still quiet, they each warmed up in their own way, and finally Erin tossed him the ball. “You serve,” she suggested in a soft voice.
There was a change in her playing tonight, Addison thought, after the game had started. He was winning, for one thing, because there was no vengeance in her swings, only weariness and lethargy. It was as if she didn’t really want to play, but needed something to do because she didn’t want to talk, either.
When he’d defeated her, he decided that the game wasn’t a good idea, after all. It was a pretense for something much more important. “What’s the matter, Erin?” he asked. “I thought you wanted to play.”
“I did.” Her breath was shallow and rapid. She leaned back against the wall, letting her racquet hang from the band around her wrist. “I’m just a little tired, I guess.” She slid down the wall, put down her racquet, and hugged her knees to her chest.
Addison sat down beside her. “Talk to me, Erin,” he said, the room’s acoustics amplifying his voice. “This morning you hated me. Couldn’t even look me in the eye. What happened?”
He saw the tears in her eyes even as he asked the question. Her hands came up to shield her face, and her cheeks and neck went crimson as she attempted to control herself. Though he had vowed to keep his hands to himself, Addison couldn’t help pulling her against him. “Erin?” he asked, a little frightened at the strength of her emotions . .. and the ones they evoked in him.
“I probably shouldn’t have called you,” she said, the words coming out in a slow, shaken strain. “I don’t really know why I did.”
“I’m glad you did,” he whispered. Addison touched her hair gently, and when she moved her hands away from her face, he met her eyes.
“It’s just that I knew I’d been unfair yesterday. All the things I said…when you were right…” The words faded. “You
were
right, Addison. I would have gotten in that cockpit, maybe taxied down the runway, and frozen again. I would have, and you could see it.”
“I wasn’t being brutal, Erin. I care about you. I didn’t want to see you hurt.”
She stifled a sob and wiped at her red-blotched eyes. “Addison, what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I do it?”
“Because the crash turned your life and everything you believed about your profession and your friends, upside down. It’s shaken you up, and it seems like the nightmare will never end, but it will. I know, Erin. When it happened to me, I didn’t fly for six months.”
“But it’s my whole life,” she said in a squeaky voice. “I don’t have a purpose without it. I’m not cut out for a desk job. It’s the first time in my life that I have absolutely no control, and it scares me, Addison. I’m scared to death.”
Addison cupped her wet chin, letting her tears slip through his fingers, and brought her face to his. His heart twisted with every new tear that dropped from her lashes, and at that moment he would have given her anything he possessed to make her stop crying. “I know that you’re a woman of faith, Erin. It’s strong enough that you give it to others. You should know that sometimes, when we have no control, that’s when we should let God have control.”
“I know that,” she whispered. “And I’m trying. I just don’t understand.”
“I’ll help you, Erin,” he whispered. “Let me help. Tell me what to do.”
“If I just knew…,” she said again, clenching her hand into a fist. “If I could just know what went on in that cockpit that day. Why did that plane fly straight into the ground? He had flown that approach a thousand times. Why this time? What happened?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” Addison assured her. “And when I do, I’ll tell you, Erin. I promise you, I’ll do my best to get to the truth.”
He could see that the promise wasn’t good enough, and he knew she feared that the truth wouldn’t be what she wanted to hear. She covered her face again, and Addison pulled her head against his chest.
“Promise me you’ll be fair, Addison,” she murmured. “Promise me you’ll give him a chance.”
“If you promise that whatever I find won’t make you hate me,” he whispered. “I don’t think I can stand that again.”
Erin gave a tentative nod, but Addison doubted it was a promise she could keep. If the truth didn’t give her peace, he hoped that he could heal her heart in some other way.
She brought her wide, glossy eyes to his. He stroked her face with his hands, making a half frame of that exposed expression that he never wanted to forget. Slowly, he bent over and closed his lips over the wet web of her lashes, allowing the dampness to paint his mouth. His breath left a warm, invisible mark of possession on her forehead, a mark that he hoped her heart read and approved.
She lifted her face and searched his eyes, poignantly touching some lonely place in his heart. When he bent to kiss her, she seemed to melt. He felt the world realigning, as if God was giving him a sign that he had not forsaken either of them. It felt so right, so good…
He broke the kiss and looked into her eyes. “It’s funny how one bright moment with you can make all the moments alone seem so dim. I’ve felt that gray loneliness a lot, Erin. I’ve gotten used to it. But it’s been a long time since I’ve known this brightness. I didn’t even know to pray for it. I thought it was gone to me forever.”
And as he let the words sink into the depths of her heart, Addison kissed her again.
A
ddison pushed the key into the lock of his front door and stepped inside, turning on the dim light that illuminated the small foyer.
He sank onto the sofa and leaned back, letting the feelings of peace and love linger in his heart. But unbidden, Amanda’s serene face formed in his mind, and his heart twisted. The love for her was still there, and along with that long-lingering love came murmurs of regret. There would never be another, he’d thought after her death. Never.
So he had clung to that love, that memory, for four long, empty years, and it had served him well enough. But now there was Erin.
The telephone rang, startling him from his reverie, and he picked it up, hoping it was Erin. She could lay his guilty thoughts to rest and remind him how good it felt to have someone in his life.
“Hello?”
“Don’t tell me,” his father-in-law barked out, his voice filled with blatant irritation. “You’ve been out questioning some friend of a friend of a cousin of the captain on a boat on the Gulf and couldn’t get back to shore until the middle of the night.”
Addison closed his eyes and told himself not to get his ire up. He could handle this. “I take it you’ve been trying to call.”
“For hours,” Sid said. “And don’t give me that song and dance about how you were out doing your job.”
“As a matter of fact,” Addison said through his teeth, “I wasn’t. Tonight was pleasure instead of business. I am allowed a little pleasure, aren’t I? Or has the NTSB added an amendment to my job description?”
A moment of thick quiet stretched over the line, and he could almost hear Sid seething. “You were with a woman, weren’t you?”
Addison breathed a half groan, but reminded himself that Sid felt, wrongly or not, that he had a stake in Addison’s love life. After all, he had been married to his only daughter. Gentling his tone, he answered the volatile question. “Yes, Sid. I was with a woman. I know that doesn’t sit well with you, and as much as I care for and respect you, I don’t think I owe you explanations about every detail of my private life.”
Without meaning to, Addison held his breath as the line went silent again. Finally, the inevitable question came. “Who is she?” Sid asked. “Did you just pick her up in a bar, or did you know her before?”
The flames of wrath began to climb up Addison’s cheeks, and he stood, clutching the phone to his ear. “I don’t pick women up in bars!”
“I see.” The words were barely audible, and Addison sensed at once that Sid would have preferred that he did. Such an encounter might have been considered a one-night stand, written off to restlessness, and then forgotten. “Then you’re serious about this person?”
Addison began pacing in an arc across his floor. He had only kissed her, for pete’s sake! Why did he feel as if he’d been caught doing something disgraceful? Wasn’t this between him and his wife’s memory? Wasn’t it something that only he should deal with? “Sid, it doesn’t concern you. It has nothing to do with my job.”
Instantly, he hated himself for reducing Sid’s judgment to professional interest. Never would he forget the way he’d found Sid a few days after the funeral. He’d been sitting alone in a dark house, cluttered with half-eaten meals left to spoil on tables and windowsills, his television blaring mindless garbage. Sid himself had been staring into space, unchanged and unbathed since he’d buried his daughter. Ever since that day Addison had bonded with him in their common loss, and Sid had clung to him like he was his only living relative. Except for a few distant cousins across the country somewhere, he
was
the only family Sid had left. “It’s time I joined life again, Sid. It’s time you did, too.”
“Who is she?” Sid asked again, biting out the words.
Addison hesitated, then decided it was best to get it out, so that Sid could get used to the idea. “Her name is Erin Russell. She was Hammon’s first officer…”
“Then she
is
connected with the crash,” Sid cut in, as if he’d found the loophole he needed to convict him.
“Yes, to some extent.”
“Then there’s an obvious conflict of interest,” Sid went on, a note of relief softening his tone.
“How do you figure that?”
“Well, it’s obvious. Friends protect friends. She probably figures if she gets to you, she can change your mind about the cause of the crash. Is that what’s holding things up?”
Addison sank back into his chair, rubbing his face. “Sid, you’ve known me for years. You know how stubborn I am. I’m not easily influenced. Things are going slowly for the same reason they were the last time I spoke to you. I don’t have the tape, and I don’t have all of the test results—”
“If you’d been home or at the hangar instead of warming up to some woman, maybe you’d know that the tape was flown to you today!” Sid cut in.
“I didn’t get it,” Addison said. “Who’d you send it to?”
“You, who else? You
are
the senior member of this team, aren’t you? It came in a flight bag with some other mail from headquarters. I take it you haven’t looked at any of that yet, either.”
Addison glanced at the flight bag lying on the table. “Oh, that. I just got it tonight, right before I went out. I figured whatever it was, it could wait a few hours.”
“Well, it
won’t
wait!” Sid shouted. “I’m warning you, I’m getting sick and tired of you dragging your feet!”
“I’m not dragging my feet,” Addison stated, his ire rising again. “And let’s be honest. You’re not half as upset with my job performance as you are with my love life.”
Sid didn’t respond for a moment, and Addison could feel the turmoil he’d set in the man’s heart. It reached out to him in a strangling grip. “I thought you loved Amanda.”
The grip tightened, making him ache. “You know I did,” Addison said, the timbre of his voice raspy. “But Sid, it’s time I went on with my life.”
“And that means falling in love with every distraught lady pilot who comes along?”
“No,” Addison said through clenched teeth. “Just one.”
Addison felt little satisfaction at his frankness when Sid slammed the phone down. He heard a loud
click,
and fresh guilt surged through his heart.
Replacing the phone in its cradle, Addison went to a large window that looked out over the bay and pulled back the drapes. Blackness peppered with occasional clusters of light assaulted him, reminding him of the blackness he’d felt in the first months after Amanda’s death.
Is that what you want, Sid?
he wondered.
For me to live the rest of my life without loving again? Because I don’t think Amanda would have wanted that for me. She loved me.
The picture of his wife came into his mind, but it was faded and dim now, like an old photograph that couldn’t capture the spirit of the subject. Next to it, he saw Erin’s face, vivid and bright, forging a lighted path through the dim corridors of his heart.
I thought you loved Amanda.
His father-in-law’s words rang through his head, but not loudly enough to blur his image of Erin, or bring Amanda’s back to life.
Still, he couldn’t escape the guilt Sid had provoked. Betrayal, delay, neglect. He looked at the flight bag of mail lying on the table. In a way, Sid was right. Maybe he had neglected things tonight. He’d had every intention of opening the bag and seeing what headquarters had sent him, but Erin’s call had destroyed any thoughts of work that night. Now he had to open the mail, listen to the tape, and determine if it would be just another piece of a growing puzzle or the vital link he needed.
Trying to stop thinking of Erin and his wife, he tore into the large envelope. Addison pulled out a computer printout and the tape wrapped safely in a plastic box. Some answers would be there, answers that could set Erin’s mind to rest or send it into even more turbulent winds. Was Sid right about that, too? Was he letting her feelings sway him, even to the point of slowing him down?
Unable to find the answer, Addison opened the tape, stuck it into the small tape deck on his television, and sat down with a pencil and the computer printout that was a transcript of the cockpit conversation, coupled with the data from the flight data recorder. The tape began, and he strained to make out the normal conversation that wasn’t unusual in the cockpit. The uneventful takeoff on the return flight from Dallas International Airport, the checklists, the transmissions from the tower. Time passed slowly as he studied each line of dialogue for some hint that things were not as they should be…some mention of an instrument malfunction…a yawn from a fatigued captain…a report of bad weather, something he might have missed from approach control. But the flight was as ordinary as any he’d ever heard recorded.
Until the final approach.
He listened, fatigued, head aching with strain, as the first officer—who might have been Erin if not for the accident that Addison counted as a miracle—spoke to the approach controller about descending to the glide path, or the angle at which they could approach the runway. Nothing strange occurred, nothing unusual. Everything was as it should be.
He got up and turned the tape up, then went back to his seat and rubbed his eyes, straining to hear the first officer calling out the altitudes and airspeeds as they descended.
And suddenly came the words he’d been anticipating and dreading at the same time, their volume escalating with urgency. “You’re getting low on the glide path, Mick. Too low. Pull it up, pull it up!”
And then there was the sound of impact and silence, which Addison interpreted as a crash that still couldn’t be explained, and 151 deaths that affected hundreds more lives. All he knew for certain was that the tragedy was Mick’s fault. Neither the first officer nor the flight engineer had any indication earlier that anything was wrong. When the first officer warned Mick about the glide path, it wasn’t too late to correct their approach. Why hadn’t Mick righted the plane? Why had he let the nose drop that way?
There was only one answer that came to Addison’s mind. Mick had panicked. Maybe something had diverted his attention for a second—it wasn’t unusual to drop a little below the glide path—but when he’d realized he was low, he’d lost his head. And the panic that could have lasted a fraction of a second had driven the plane down and ended the lives of all those people.
Addison shut off the tape and went to the couch and lay down, massaging his temples.
God, why couldn’t there have been a better reason? Why couldn’t it have been instrument malfunction or a wind surge or lightning, or any number of things that could purge Mick of this blame? For Erin’s sake, why couldn’t you have let me find some other conclusion?
Because there was none, he thought dismally. And as much as he knew it would hurt Erin, he couldn’t compromise his report. He could, however, listen over and over until he made sure that he wasn’t missing something, and Sid and the rest of the Board didn’t have to like it. Then he would prepare Erin, and hope that she didn’t blame him for drawing the conclusions he must.
Wearily, he went back to the tape deck to rewind the tape and started playing it again. It would be a long night, he thought. But if he had to come up with a report he didn’t like, he was going to be as sure as feasibly possible that he wasn’t making a mistake.