Pushing the myriad other problems she faced out of her mind, Erin decided to brave the stares and speculation of the pilots and go into the house. After all, she couldn’t stay outside all day.
She pushed open the door and stepped into a room that was the battleground for a verbal war. The entire committee of twenty was present—not just the five on the bargaining committee.
“So what are we supposed to do?” one of the senior captains was bellowing, apparently addressing Lois. “They took away our sick days, for pete’s sake,” he shouted, his arms flailing wildly. “As if it wasn’t bad enough that we had a major airline crash just three weeks ago, they expect us to go up
sick
, too, and endanger the lives of our passengers?”
“Just think logically for a minute,” Lois suggested calmly to the nineteen men slumped in fatigued positions around the living room. “They think we’re abusing our sick leave, and let’s face it, some of us have! Besides, all we have to do is get a doctor’s certificate to prove we’re sick—”
“Forget the doctor’s certificate,” someone across the room said. “You don’t go to the doctor for a simple head cold. The other day Gary Bowman burst an eardrum when he was forced to fly with a cold and couldn’t clear his ears. Is that fair?”
“Of course not. I’m just saying that if we ask for something, we have to
give
something.”
“A third of our pay isn’t enough?” Ray Carter asked. “Half of our rest time isn’t enough? Suitable working conditions aren’t enough? Because they’ve taken all of those. If you want to give more, Lois, come up with something of your own to give. I’m fresh out of generosity.”
Erin slipped into her bedroom without saying a word, disturbed at the way the meeting was going. The first meeting with Zarkoff was tomorrow, and so far it looked as if the committee members were as far apart in their convictions as the owner was with his employees.
Beside her phone, Erin saw a message in Lois’s handwriting. “Addison called this many times.” Below the message, Lois had kept a stick count of the calls. They numbered seven.
Erin wadded the note, tossed it into a wastebasket, and stared after it a moment. Her heart told her to call him back, to tell him that he had been right…but something inside kept her from doing it. He’d probed too deeply into her soul today, finding her wounds and forcing her to see them. She wasn’t ready to be that vulnerable again. Not after she had flown today.
She freshened up and went back out into the combat zone of her living room. Tempers were hotter than when she’d left them.
“What do you guys want to do?” Lois was shouting. “Strike before we’ve even sat down at the bargaining table? Just give up? Do you really think that man would buckle under to
anything
if we did that? He has scores of pilots working for Trans Western, and he’s training hundreds more in Houston.”
“We’re going to negotiate,” a slower, softer-spoken captain assured her. “But his refusal to meet with a professional negotiator doesn’t say a lot for his willingness to bargain. We just want him to know that he can’t come in here and change things all around and expect us to give in easily.”
George Vanderwall, the bitterest man Lois had ever met, shook his head. “I say strike now,” he said harshly. “Hit him where his checkbook is and let him know that we mean business.”
“A strike would hurt him for a day or two, George. Then it would hit
our
checkbooks, not his,” Lois said.
“It’s a bad idea to take a woman in there with us on the negotiating team,” George informed the others. “It’ll be too easy for him to convince her of his terms.”
Erin glanced at Lois and saw the blood rush to flood her friend’s cheeks in scathing crimson. “Now, wait a minute,” Lois said through her teeth. “The membership elected me to this committee for a reason, and that was that I seem to be one of the only ones in this room who has a clear head and isn’t thinking with my ego! I’m just as loyal to Southeast as any one of you, and I won’t let you tough-talking jerks throw my job away for me just out of some macho sense of principle!”
Erin turned her head away from the others to hide the smile forming on her face. She wanted to cheer for Lois, but it wasn’t the time.
For today was a day for silent victories.
A
ddison lay on his couch in his drape-darkened living room, holding a small tape recorder in his hand. He would dictate his report today, he thought, lay the blame for the crash on Mick, and type it up when he had the energy. There was no use prolonging it anymore. Nothing was going to change.
Just like nothing would change between Erin and him. Their relationship just wasn’t meant to be. He closed his eyes and threw his wrist over his forehead. Whoever said it was better to have loved and lost…well, he’d never met Erin.
For so long his darkness had been for Amanda. When the drapes were closed and the lights were off and his thoughts were wrapped in intimacy, it had been she that he thought of.
But not anymore. Now Erin loomed higher in his thoughts, in his heart, in his soul, and he couldn’t help wondering if, for the rest of his life, he’d think of her when he was down.
Swallowing the emotion in his throat, he heaved a great sigh and clicked on the tape recorder with his thumb.
“On August 7, Southeast Airlines Flight 94, a scheduled flight from Washington’s Dulles Airport to Shreveport…,” he began.
But it was a poor beginning, for it was the beginning of the end.
E
rin spent most of the next day flying the Cessna, restoring her faith in herself and her abilities. Now, when she thought of flying the 727 again, she didn’t panic. The thought actually seemed pleasant. Her tears and trembling had stopped, and life wasn’t a plague anymore.
The next step, she decided finally, was to get her suspension lifted and get back to work. But there was only one way to go about that. She would have to call Addison.
She sat inside Pioneer Airport, sipping a cup of coffee, and stared at the pay telephone on the wall. Addison had called continuously yesterday, but Erin hadn’t returned his calls. She had called Madeline at home an hour ago, however, and found that his calls had stopped. Addison had given up on her, Erin admitted with dread, and she deserved it.
She leaned her head back on the vinyl sofa facing the runway and closed her eyes. Why couldn’t she admit to him that he had been right, that she
had
blamed Mick, and that it took his pointing it out for her to see it?
She’d been busy flying, she rationalized. She would have called him sooner or later, when she gave herself a moment to think. But deep in her heart she knew that she hadn’t called because it was so easy
not
to think about the relationship that had been rocky from the first moment they’d met. She wanted to savor the peace that flying had restored to her. Addison had a way of opening her Pandora’s box of emotions—and Erin wanted it left closed.
But it was time to call him now, she decided, setting down her coffee with a resolute sigh and standing up. Would he answer? Would he even be home? She went to the phone and, with a shaky hand, dialed his number.
She almost hung up after the third ring, but suddenly he answered.
“Hello?”
She cleared her throat. “Uh, Addison?”
Silence stretched over the line.
“It’s me, Erin,” she went on. “I…I was wondering if you could meet me.”
Another pause seemed to last a lifetime, but finally he spoke. “Sure. Where are you?”
She blinked back the mist in her eyes and turned to the window, where she could see Jack’s Cessna, positioned and ready to fly. “I’m at Pioneer Airport,” she said. “I’ve been flying.”
“You have?” She recognized the hope in his voice, hope that her mounting such a big obstacle meant she was ready to mount others.
“Yes,” she said. “I want you to go up with me, so I can prove to you that I’m over my fear. Addison, I want to go back to work. I want you to get my suspension lifted.”
“I see.” The words lost the tentative hope of moments before, as though he saw in her request no personal need, no reaching out to him. Only business. Only necessary communication between a commercial pilot and an NTSB official. “Well, I guess I’ll be right over, then. No point in dragging this thing out.”
The
click
in her ear surprised her, and she held the phone away from her face, as if she could imagine the dial tone cutting her off from Addison’s support. Strictly business. Wasn’t that how she had wanted it?
She waited inside the terminal until Addison came, sifting through her feelings. What
did
she want from him? A nice pat on the back? A good report to her chief pilot? No. She wanted to share this little bit of joy with him, wanted an excuse to see him without saying it, wanted a hint of his affection, though she wasn’t quite sure where she wanted to take the relationship from there. She’d been so angry yesterday, and anger wasn’t something that went away just because she discovered it wasn’t justified. She knew she was clinging to her ire like armor, but she wasn’t sure why she needed that kind of protection from Addison.
When he walked through the doors of the terminal, she felt her defenses drop. He was wearing the same shirt he’d been wearing on that first day he’d come to her door and taken her to the lake and sat out there beside her, asking questions in his gentle, painstaking way. If she hadn’t fallen in love with him on that day, she had certainly come to like him against her will. Addison was a hard man to dislike. Even when she tried.
He stood before her, face expressionless, hands hidden in the pockets of his jeans, and he shrugged. “I’m here. You ready?”
She nodded, chagrined by his detachment. “I guess so, if you’re in a hurry.”
“No hurry,” he said coolly.
She tossed her empty coffee cup into the wastebasket and stood up. “Well, like you said. No point in dragging it out.”
He followed her to the plane, got in, and didn’t say a word. The quiet was like a chilling arctic wind. Silence filled the cockpit as she followed her checklist, preparing for takeoff. Her hands began to shake again.
Finally, Addison had to break the silence. “You said you’d already taken her up?”
“Yes,” she said. “Most of yesterday and all day today.”
“Yesterday?” he asked, surprised. “What did you do? Come back after you left me here?”
The distinct choice of words took her aback for a moment, but she recovered and answered the question as coldly as it had been delivered. “Yes.”
She turned on the engine and continued checking the instruments.
“Well, at least I’m good for something. I can make you so mad that you forget how scared you are. Should I try it again? I’m sure I can come up with something. It’s been coming so easy lately.”
Erin hated the sarcasm in his voice and refused to take the bait. “No need,” she said. “I’m not afraid anymore. You’ll see.”
“If you aren’t afraid, why are you still shaking?”
Erin looked at him, furious in spite of herself. “I’m shaking because your new attitude is making me nervous, that’s why. I don’t know how to act around you.”
He bit his lip, as if in contemplation, and nodded. “Well, I can see your problem. One minute you’re leaning on me and letting me comfort you, and the next you won’t even return my calls. Does sort of leave one not knowing how to act.”
Erin’s face stung with unexpressed rage, but she refused to give in to the fight he was trying to provoke. She radioed the tower and began taxiing down the runway, defiance dictating her expression. “I’m going to fly this plane, Addison, and no matter what kind of intimidation you use, you aren’t going to stop me.”
“I wasn’t trying to intimidate you,” he said quietly. He looked out the window, rubbing his stubbled chin as his face softened. “I’m sorry.”
Erin didn’t acknowledge the apology. Instead, she concentrated on her orders from the tower, acquired permission to take off, and began working toward the speed that would lift them into the air.
Addison didn’t say a word once they were up. Instead, he watched her carefully. She savored the quiet and took them over the lake, letting the familiar calm seep into her soul again.
“You’re really doing it,” he whispered after ten minutes or more, when he could see that she was in complete control. “I can’t believe it.”
She wet her lips, which had suddenly gone dry, and cut through a misty cloud hanging low over the water. “I told you.”
“Tell me this,” he said, all traces of bitterness in his voice gone. “Was it really your anger at me that provoked you into flying?”
She could hear the pain in his voice, as if he hoped she would say no, that his influence was only positive. “Yesterday, when I left you, I felt like my life had gone totally berserk and that I had lost control of every aspect of it. I thought I was going insane.”
“And what happened?” he asked quietly.
“Jason asked me to teach him to fly,” she said. “And I thought that if a nine-year-old boy could still want to fly after his father had crashed, then why couldn’t I?”
She kept her voice low and steady, her emotions as firmly under her control as her aircraft. “So I brought him to the airport. I forced myself up to prove to myself, and him…and, yes, you…that I could do it. And I did.”
“Yes, you did,” he whispered. “I’m convinced. I’ll make sure your suspension is lifted immediately.”
“Thank you,” she said, but somehow there was no joy in her heart. Removing this obstacle only severed one of the ties that had bound them. It meant that there might very well be nothing left between them.
She landed the plane without a word, then pulled it back into position. Neither made a move to get out.
“Why didn’t you return my calls?” His question cut through the silence.
“I told you, I’ve been flying.”
“There’s a phone here,” he said. “You could have called.”
She sighed and propped her elbow on the door.
“Why did you run out on me yesterday?”
“The things you said…,” she began. “I didn’t want to hear them.”
He shifted in his seat in order to face her. “I wasn’t being malicious. Don’t you understand that? I was just trying to make you see yourself. Make you face some important things.”
“Well, it worked,” she said wearily, turning back to him. “Are you satisfied? You made me face those things. That I blamed Mick, just like everybody else did. That all the years he’d proven himself to me didn’t matter, that a handful of circumstantial evidence could change my mind. You made me face the kind of friend I am, Addison, and I resent it.”
“Erin, you’re the best friend anybody could ever have. You fought like a Trojan for Mick. If
anybody
could have changed my mind about him, it would have been you.”
She peered out the window, seeing far beyond the runway.
“But how could I change your mind when I wasn’t convinced?” she asked without inflection.
“You couldn’t have changed my mind regardless of how you felt,” he said. “Erin, don’t you know by now how stubborn I am?”
Erin continued gazing out the window. “You tear me to pieces,” she whispered after a moment. “One moment with you I’m flying, the next I’m sifting through my own wreckage. I don’t know how to live like that, Addison. I need some peace.”
“The wreckage is almost behind us,” he whispered.
She nodded and turned her sad, resigned eyes to him.
He pulled her into his embrace, holding her as though some monster might come at any moment and rip her out of his arms again.
No monster came. Just the sweet spirit of love that had almost been discarded, only to be rediscovered at the last moment.
A
ddison’s first professional task at the airport that day was to talk to Bill Jackson, Erin’s chief pilot, about lifting her suspension. When that was taken care of, he went back to the hangar, where his crew was already hard at work combing through the disassembled pieces of the wreckage for the second time. Hank, Addison’s flight-control specialist, was absorbed in his work, piecing together the complex elevator system, the section that acted as a steering mechanism for the plane.
Everyone but Hank looked up when they heard Addison’s footsteps on the concrete. He scuffed toward where most of them worked, his head hung low. “I guess I don’t have to ask if any of you has found anything,” he said.
Murmured negatives followed from each of the men. Hank, however, seemed too engrossed in the elevator to answer.
“Hank, come on over here. Let’s talk.”
Hank still didn’t look up. “Give me a minute, Addison. I’m trying to figure something out.”
Addison gave a questioning look to the others. “Has he found something?”
“There isn’t anything to find, Addison,” one of the crew members maintained. “Our first conclusion was the right one.”
Addison paced slowly to the instruments displayed on the counter, touching one of them. “I’m beginning to think you’re right. Maybe it’s time to file the report.”
“And go home,” Horace added anxiously.
“Yeah,” Addison muttered. “Home.”
The men watched him with steadfast interest, waiting for his “maybe” to become something more definite, something they could tell their families. Suddenly, Hank spoke up again.
“Uh, Addison, come here a minute. You might want to take a look at this.”
Addison stepped over several pieces of seared metal until he was beside Hank. “Whatcha got?”
Hank frowned and gestured toward the reassembled pieces. “I don’t know. Maybe something, maybe nothing. Just like you said, we’ve been trying to piece together the elevator system…And take a look at this.”
Addison looked where Hank was pointing, saw that two pieces were broken apart at what should have been their attachment point. Hank pried out a bolt about four inches long, broken in two pieces. “I found this. It was easy to overlook before.”
Addison took the bolt, his frown cutting deep fissures in his forehead. “The problem,” Addison said as he studied the pieces, “is determining whether the bolt broke as a result of the crash or before it.”
“If it broke before it, we’ve got a case,” Hank said.
“That’s right,” Addison said, excitement filling his eyes. “A broken bolt in the elevator system could affect the steering. It could very well have caused the crash.” Addison stood up and took the bolt to a table where microscopes lay under stronger light. “This bolt is sheered,” he said. “And it’s chalky at the break.” He held it under a magnifying glass and examined it closely as his heart began to pound harder. “There’s some corrosion inside…a little rust…”
“Sounds like a fatigue break,” Hank said. “A stress break brought on by the crash would be shiny and stretched. But if it’s corroded inside, it’s probably been ready to break for a while.”
“You’re right,” Addison agreed, leaning back from the microscope with a smile on his face. The other team members gathered around the table, intent on seeing the bolt for themselves. “If it broke
before
the crash, and the push rod broke loose, Mick Hammon had absolutely no control over the elevator. Right up until the last minute, he would have thought he was pulling the plane up. But the elevator wouldn’t have connected. If that was the case, there wouldn’t have been one blasted thing he could have done to save the aircraft.”
“So he would be completely exonerated,” Hank added. “If that’s, indeed, what happened.”
Addison peered into the microscope again, then backed up to allow each team member to see for himself. “Man,” said Horace, who’d done the most complaining in the four weeks they’d been there, as he examined the broken bolt. “We almost made the poor guy look negligent.”