The members opened a round of applause, finally agreeing on something. The rest of the meeting was taken up by nominations for the committee and a secret-ballot vote.
As the meeting broke up, Erin felt a sense of relief that she was no longer the source of whispering and gossip among them, though she couldn’t help worrying at the state of the pilots’ union and where their tempers would lead them.
She was on her way back to her car when Frank, her boss and assistant chief pilot, intercepted her in the corridor. “Erin!” he called in a no-nonsense tone that told her he wasn’t having a good day. “My office.”
“But I—”
“Now!” he ordered and hurried back to the terminal.
That familiar strangling feeling rose inside her as she followed him into his office, bracing herself for another lecture. He plopped into his chair, set his elbow on the armrest, and spread his fingers over his chin.
“I’m worried, Erin. Real worried. About this takeover, the pay cuts, the stress it’ll put on my pilots, the threat of Trans Western cutting down my payroll…all of it. But I’m especially worried about you. You’re deliberately staying away, and I’m warning you, you’re going to get lost in the shuffle. And when you do, there won’t be a single thing I can do about it.”
Erin shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “Frank, we’ve been all through this.”
“Not to my satisfaction, we haven’t. You were upset the other day. I let you off the hook so you could go home and pull yourself together. I’m not going to do that today.”
“Frank!”
Frank leaned forward, clasping his hands on his desk. “Erin, I want you to look me in the eye and tell me that you honestly don’t ever want to fly again. That you don’t ever intend to.”
Erin met his gray eyes, so crisp, so aware, and she knew he could see right through her. “It isn’t a question of wanting to, Frank. You know that.”
“What is it a question of, then?”
“Fear,” she said. Moisture welled in her throat.
“Fear,” he repeated. “Do you know how normal that is after a crash?
I’ll
probably be a little scared the next time I fly, because of that crash. But Erin, fear can be a good thing. It makes us more careful. Keeps us alert. It doesn’t debilitate us for the rest of our lives. Do you really want to do that to yourself?”
“No,” she whispered.
“What?” he asked, forcing her to say it louder, to hear it herself.
“I said,
no.”
“And do you think Mick would have quit if it had been you in the crash? Would you have wanted him to?”
She fought the tears welling in her eyes. “Of course not.”
“Then fly, Erin. Give me one less thing to worry about. I swear to you, as soon as you’re airborne, it’ll all fall into place. You’ll feel a lot better, and you’ll get over that fear.”
“And what if I don’t?”
“You will. I know you, Erin. I’m willing to take that chance. This block you have against flying is your way of grieving over Mick, of doing some sort of penance for not going down with that plane.”
Red heat warmed her cheeks. “Since when have you been practicing psychology?”
“I’m not practicing it,” he admitted. “I’ve talked to the staff psychologist about you. That’s his theory.”
Erin’s mouth dropped open, and her eyes caught fire. “You what? How could you do that?”
“It’s my job, Erin. I care about my pilots. I put my rear end on the line for you with the chief. You said you’d go for counseling, but you haven’t.”
“I haven’t had a chance! I’ve been busy. Nobody asked you to have someone psychoanalyze me secondhand. I resent that.”
“Resent it all you want,” Frank said, leaning back in his chair. “But I think he was right, and I think you can fly if you have to. And you do have to. I don’t want you to lose your job. I don’t want you to throw it away. Can you try again for me, Erin? For the guy who won’t give up on you?”
Erin stood up and raked her hand through her ruffled hair. Her mouth compressed as she paced across the room, but the turmoil inside her escalated. What choice did she have? Trans Western would see that she refused to fly when they read her file, and she would be the first to go. Frank was right. She didn’t want to throw away everything, but she wasn’t sure she could hold on to it with such terror inside her. Still, she had to try. She stopped in front of his desk, focusing on a paperweight of a DC-9. She’d have to fly with a new captain, probably one who would see his assignment with her as some sort of punishment. No one would be as patient—as tolerant of her—as Jack had been two days ago. And Jack would certainly avoid her in the future. Still, she couldn’t help embracing the hope that was the only light in this miserable tunnel she’d dug for herself.
“Can…can I fly with Jack? That is, if he’ll still have me after the last time?”
Frank’s stern expression collapsed and softened. “He’s requested you for his next flight, Erin. Tomorrow to St. Louis. Can I schedule you?”
She stared at him for a long moment, weighing one action against another, groping for the courage to say yes and mean it. When she didn’t find it, she went forward without it. “Schedule me,” she said without inflection, “but I can’t make any promises.”
“That’s good enough for me,” Frank said, and smiled for the first time that day.
L
ois was already home when Erin got there, and Madeline, who had gotten back in while they were at the meeting, sat and watched as she wore a path in the rug pacing from one corner of the living room to the other. “You won’t believe this,” Lois said anxiously to Erin. “You just won’t believe this!”
Erin dropped her purse and leaned over to give Madeline a welcome-home hug, then regarded her agitated friend, thankful to be distracted from her flying by whatever catastrophe Lois was experiencing now. “Believe what?”
Lois stopped her pacing and punched her fists into her hips. “You know that committee of twenty the union voted on to hammer out grievances?”
“What about it?”
“They voted
me
on it,” Lois cried.
“Me!
Can you believe that?”
Erin tried not to smile. “Actually, I can, since I voted for you.”
Erin might as well have admitted to electing Lois for a suicide mission.
“How could you?” Lois asked, astounded. “Erin, I can’t be on that committee with nineteen angry men who think a woman’s opinion means nothing unless it has to do with recipes or needlework! What were you thinking?”
Erin went to the kitchen and retrieved a bottle of soda from the refrigerator. “The same thing as everyone else who voted for you, I guess. All I know is that if I have to let someone else do the fighting for me or my job, I’d want it to be you.”
“But George Vanderwall is on that committee, Erin! The most belligerent captain in the company. He treats women like pestering mosquitoes!”
“He is opinionated,” Erin agreed. “Which is why we need you to balance things.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Madeline said. “Lois, you’ll do great.”
Lois sat on the kitchen table, pleading with them both to understand, as though they could relieve her of her new responsibility. “Look, most of those committee members are dead set on striking. How am I going to convince them to compromise, when there isn’t a chance in the world of their listening to me! I’ll be like an invisible force who talks until I’m blue in the face, but no one will ever listen!”
“Madeline, did you check the answering machine?” Erin asked absently.
“See?” Lois shouted. “Right now, you aren’t listening to me.”
“I am,” Erin argued. “I just wanted Madeline to hear her messages before they’re erased. Lois, none of what you said is true. You underestimate yourself.”
“Underestimate?” Lois asked. “What about you?” Her eyes followed Madeline as she headed toward the answering machine, whose lights had been blinking since she’d been home. “I’ve told you the same thing.”
“About what?”
“About flying. About getting back up there where you belong. About not throwing everything away.”
Erin dropped her teasing, and her expression suddenly became serious. “I went to the meeting, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, after my threat to lead you there at gunpoint.”
Madeline chuckled as she began rewinding the messages on the tape.
“Well, you’ll be happy to know that I’m flying to St. Louis tomorrow.”
Madeline snapped around, and Lois’s mouth fell open, her eyes brightening at once. “Really, Erin? You’re not just trying to appease me?”
Erin dropped her gaze to the soda that suddenly seemed tasteless. Her hand was already trembling. “Really. And if it’s all right with you, I’d rather not talk about it.”
“All right,” Lois said, her tone softening. “Not a word.” She joined Madeline at the machine as she flicked the play button, then grinned over her shoulder in silent congratulations to her friend.
The beep sounded on the machine, followed by a distinctly masculine voice. “Erin, this is Addison. I’d like to see you later today, if it’s okay. That is, if you’re not mad at me for letting you win last night. Call me here at 555-3213.”
Both women spun around, wearing flabbergasted, but pleasantly surprised, expressions. “Addison? Last night? Is there something you’ve forgotten to mention?”
Erin avoided their eyes and pulled out a small canvas she’d stored under a cabinet. Ignoring Lois and Madeline’s unyielding scrutiny, she sat down at the table and began sketching. “Let me win,” she mumbled under her breath. “That’ll be the day.”
“Erin!” Madeline shouted. “Who is he?”
Erin finally looked up, and briefly considered telling them both that he was the NTSB investigator who had come to town to make her life miserable. But then they’d be on the subject of the crash again, and of her flying, and of her terror and grief. And she didn’t want to talk about any of it anymore. Not thinking about it was the only way she could cope until she had to fly. “He’s a guy I played racquetball with last night. No big deal.”
“What’s he look like?”
“What difference does it make?”
Lois turned off the machine and stooped down next to her friend. The grin on her face was tinged with delight. “Erin, you’re hedging.”
Erin’s lips curved at Lois’s curiosity. “No, I’m not. I suppose he’s nice-looking.”
“You suppose?” Lois stood up again and crossed her arms. “Erin, are you going to call him back or not?”
“Nope.”
“And why not?”
“Because I have plans this afternoon. It’s my day to work at the youth center. I promised I’d help the kids with the skyscraper mural today. They’re counting on me.”
“Well, you won’t be there forever. You could at least call him and set something up for later.”
Erin tried not to smile at her friend’s naiveté. “Lois, if I wanted to call him back, I would. Please stop mothering me.”
Lois clapped her hands on her sides. “See? Just like I said, you never listen to me. How can I expect to influence nineteen opinionated pilots, much less hundreds of our union members? Maybe I ought to just resign from the committee right now.”
Erin dropped her charcoal and shook her head in disbelief. “How can you see any similarity between your being on a committee and your advising me about men? It’s emotional blackmail, that’s what it is. You think I’ll feel guilty enough to call this guy back, just to prove that I do listen to you.”
“Did it work?” Lois asked, one eyebrow hiked expectantly.
“No.”
Lois sighed and Madeline grinned across the room at her. “Well, it never hurts to try, does it, Lois?”
“That’s right,” Erin said. “Lois, remember that when you meet with the committee.”
I
f there was one thing that Addison Lowe hated, it was waiting. And waiting for a woman to return his call just about made him crazy.
She’s not going to call,
he thought as he paced the hangar where he and his crew had stored the tagged wreckage. Maybe he should have made the call sound more authoritative.
Erin, this is Mr. Lowe, NTSB. I need to ask you a few more questions. Call me before three so we can set up an appointment.
Not that it would have done any good. And it wouldn’t have really been the truth. Oh, sure, he had scores of questions yet to ask her, but not until he’d done a little more homework first. The plain, simple truth today was that he couldn’t get her out of his mind since she’d walked out on him at the health club last night. He wanted to see her, heaven help him. And it was quite clear that she didn’t want to see him.
He checked his watch, saw that it was approaching five. Almost time for dinner. If he could just catch her before she ate, maybe he could talk her into having dinner with him. But then he was faced with the dilemma of whether to tell her the truth about why he wanted to see her, or pretend it was business. He wasn’t a good liar, never had been. The truth would be written all over his face. Besides, he didn’t like the idea of exploiting his work on the crash to get a date. That wasn’t his style.
“Hey, Addison, you want me to order us some sandwiches?” Hank, his flight-control specialist, asked across the building. Already, the rest of his team had left for dinner, since they had worked through lunch, but Hank had been too engrossed in the pieces of wreckage he was analyzing.
“No, not for me,” Addison said, walking around the pieces to reach him. “I’m going out. Don’t you need a break?”
“I’ll take one later,” Hank said. “I just don’t get this.”
“Get what?” Addison asked.
“Well, this whole crash. It looks like Hammon followed all the proper procedures before takeoff. Even if Hammon had passed out cold on his approach, there were a first officer and a flight engineer on the plane who could have taken over. Someone could have kept that plane from flying into the ground. It makes more sense that something went wrong with the plane’s computer system…maybe it was on automatic pilot and the system went haywire, but I can’t find any evidence of that. I’m trying to piece it all back together, but there isn’t a lot left of it.”
“Even if that was the case,” Addison said, “Hammon could have overridden the computer and straightened it out manually. A plane doesn’t nosedive without everyone on board knowing it. And the control tower has records that there were no problems before the final approach.”
“Still,” Hank said, “there’s got to be an explanation that makes sense.”
“Look, I don’t want it to be pilot error, either. If you have any hunches, we’ll follow them. And I don’t care what Sid or any of the brass in Washington say. We’re going to dig until we get to the truth—no matter what it is.”
Hank leaned back in his folding chair and looked at his friend. “So what has that woman said about his pilot skills? You know, the first officer who missed the flight?”
Addison wondered if Hank could read his feelings. “I haven’t been able to get much out of her. I’m hoping to catch up with her tonight. But generally, she seems convinced that it wasn’t pilot error.”
“They always are.”
Addison looked pensively down at the pieces of wreckage, wondering what they were missing. “Tell you what. When the guys get back, start piecing together the elevator system all the way from the controls in the cockpit, through the cables, to the hydraulic actuators. If the plane malfunctioned, we should see something wrong there.”
“Will do,” Hank said.
The phone rang, startling Addison, and he dove for it. “Addison Lowe.”
But it wasn’t Erin. It was someone in Washington with some information Hank had requested. He surrendered the phone, then ambled to the front window of the hangar, wondering if he should wait any longer for her call.
Okay, he thought finally. This didn’t have to be a big deal. He would drive over to her house. Ask her to dinner. Explain that it was pleasure, not business. Beg a little. Use the I-hate-to-eat-alone line that bore more truth than he liked to admit.
And if that didn’t work, he’d kidnap her and hold her captive until she liked him.
He chuckled lightly. Maybe that would be the only way with Erin.
The drive to Erin’s house was short, and as he got out of the car and walked to her door, he found himself tensing up like a teenager asking for his first date. This was ridiculous. He was thirty-nine years old. She was just a woman. A woman with sad hazel eyes and hair that never did what it was told and a soul so deep a man could drown in it…
He knocked, and Madeline opened the door quickly, her arms full of sketches. Her eyes brightened at the sight of him.
“Yes?”
“Uh…I was looking for Erin…” He extended his hand, then withdrew it, realizing that shaking hands would make her drop her armload. “Are you her roommate?”
“Yes…one of them.” Madeline gave him a quick once-over, then grinned as if she approved. “You must be Addison.”
He hesitated for a moment, and his heart accelerated. Had Erin mentioned him? “Yes. How did you…?”
“I heard your message,” she explained, nodding her head back toward the machine. “Erin’s not here.” She glanced down at the stack in her arms, decided to set them down, and realized she had ink on her blouse. “Oh, great,” she said. “Look at me. I’ll have to go change. Come on in.”
“No, I can see you’re on your way out. I’ll just call Erin later.”
Madeline looked up at him. “I’ll tell you where you can find her. She’s at the youth center, painting those murals.” With a wry grin, she added, “I’m sure she’d love to see you.”
Addison’s heart rate climbed again. “Youth center, huh? Okay. Give me directions, and I’ll go try to find her.”
Madeline jotted down the directions, and Addison headed out to find her.
A
ddison saw her before he’d even come through the glass doors—Erin on a ladder, painting a mural of skyscrapers in primary colors. She turned to the side, shouted something to one of the teenagers working on the street at the bottom of the wall, and laughed like she hadn’t a care in the world. He watched as a dollop of red paint dropped from her brush onto her bare knee, and she pulled at her paint-smudged sweatshirt and wiped at it, smearing it across her leg. Stretching back up to reach the top of the building she painted, she revealed the baggy denim cutoff shorts, also smeared with paint, tucked beneath the baggy sweatshirt.
He pushed through the doors and heard the babbling sound of busy teenagers and children, all painting at various levels on the wall. Erin babbled right along with them. “How’s that look?” she asked anyone who would answer as she gave the red skyscraper a final touch.
“You ain’t finished, are ya?” a tough-looking kid asked.
“Well, yeah…I thought so.”
“What about the antennas? How can the people who live there get cable TV if there ain’t no antennas?”
“We aren’t going for reality here, Zeke. I don’t want antennas cluttering up this building.”
“Well, what good is art if it ain’t like the real thing?”
Erin laughed and climbed down from the ladder. “If it bothers you, go up there and paint antennas.”
“You got it.”
Erin wiped her hands on the back of her shorts and checked out the progress of a child of nine or ten diligently working on a car traveling down the mural’s street. The girl looked up and laughed at her. “You have red paint on your nose.”
Erin laughed again, setting Addison’s heart dancing. “That’s the only place you
don’t
have it. We’re a mess, aren’t we?”