Flight Patterns

The Color of Light

Learning to Breathe

Pieces of the Heart

The Memory of Water

The Lost Hours

On Folly Beach

Falling Home

The Beach Trees

Sea Change

After the Rain

The Time Between

A Long Time Gone

The Sound of Glass

The Tradd Street Series

The House on Tradd Street

The Girl on Legare Street

The Strangers on Montagu Street

Return to Tradd Street

NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

Published by New American Library,

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This book is an original publication of New American Library.

Copyright © Harley House Books, LLC, 2016

Readers Guide copyright © Penguin Random House LLC, 2016

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LIBRARY O
F CONGRESS CATALOGIN
G-IN-PUBLICATION DAT
A:

Names: White, Karen (Karen S.), author. Title: Flight patterns/Karen White. Description: New York City: New American Library, [2016] Identifiers: LCCN 2015047815 (print) | LCCN 2016001086 (ebook) | ISBN 9780451470911 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780698165861 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Families—Fiction. | Homecoming—Fiction. | Self-realization in women—Fiction. | Self-actualization (Psychology) in women—Fiction. | Domestic fiction. | BISAC: FICTION/Family Life. | FICTION/Contemporary Women. Classification: LCC PS3623.H5776 F58 2016 (print) | LCC PS3623.H5776 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015047815

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To my mother, Catherine Ann Sconiers,
who instilled in me a love of fine
china.

One of the best things about writing a novel, besides sharing my stories with readers, is the lovely people I meet along the way who are so incredibly generous with their time and knowledge. I learned so much while writing
Flight
Patterns
, and I'd like to thank those who helped me with everything I didn't know, and who made the learning a real joy for me.

Thank you to the lovely people of Apalachicola for your warm kindness and generosity in sharing your love for your beautiful hometown—especially Caty Greene at the Apalachicola Municipal Library and Susan Clementson, both of whom allowed me to borrow their names for the book. Thanks, too, to Kathie Bennett of the Magic Time Literary Agency, who introduced me to both of these fabulous women.

Thanks also to beekeeper James Rish for teaching me everything I needed to know about harvesting tupelo honey in the Florida swamps, and to Florence Love for your patience with all my endless questions and for allowing me to invade your backyard for several hours while you showed me your bees and how it all works. I appreciate your lending me your name and your dangling bee earrings for the beekeeper character in the book.

Since I don't speak French, I owe a great deal of gratitude to the French-speaking friends who agreed to translate for me—Luke McCracken, Alicia Kelly, and Nicky and Mathieu Limousi. Any mistakes are completely my own.

And, of course, a huge thanks to my amazing team at NAL/Berkley and Writer's House for the incredible support you give to me and my books.

Last, but by no means least, thanks to my sister-in-law and “research buddy,” Claire White Kobylt, who tagged along with me on my first visit to Apalachicola and happily jotted down notes as we drove through the tree-shaded streets studying the architecture and learning the history of this incredible town. And to my first readers, talented writers, and BFFs, Wendy Wax and Susan Crandall, for reining me in and keeping me far from the ledge.

“The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams.”

Henry David Thoreau

—NED BLOODWORTH'S BEEKEEPER'S JOURNAL

SEPTEMBER 1943

PROVENCE, FRANCE

D
ead bees fell from the bruised dusk sky, their papery bodies somersaulting in the air, ricocheting like spent shells off the azure-painted roof of the hive. Giles straightened, breathing in the heavy scents of lavender and honey, of summer grasses and his own sweat. And something else, too. Something chemical and out of place in his fields of purple and gold. Something that made sense out of the bees lying like carrion for the swarming swallows above.

“Ah! Vous dirais-je, maman,”
sang his three-year-old daughter with her clear, perfect voice from her perch on an upturned bucket, unaware of the sky or the bees or the tremor of fear that shook the breath from his lungs.

“Colette,
calme-toi,”
he said, putting his finger to his lips.

The little girl stopped singing and stared up at her father with a question in her dark eyes. He had never asked her to stop before.

Keeping his finger to his lips, Giles closed his eyes, listening. A low
hum escaped from inside the hive, quieter now, a volume dial turned low on a radio. A sign to any beekeeper that something was wrong. The queen had died, perhaps. Or any of the dreaded parasites—mites or beetles, even—had invaded the hive, taking over an entire population and killing them.

Or the entire colony had become aware, even before Giles, that the one thing he'd hoped and prayed would never happen was now waiting with open arms on his doorstep. And the bees had chosen a sudden death instead of a long, lingering passing.

He strained to listen, wanting to hear beyond the sound of the bees and the circling birds and his own breathing. There. There it was. The gurgle and thrum of multiple engines. Not cars. Trucks. Large trucks to transport as many people as possible, a slow convoy climbing its way through the small farms and vibrant fields of Provence.

It was inevitable, he supposed. As soon as the Germans had invaded the free zone in southern France the previous November, there was nobody to protect them. Not even a puppet government. His chest expanded and contracted as a cloud of dust and cut hay churned up by the trucks' tires drifted over the winding dirt road in the far distance like poison descending on the valley.

He thought of the family now huddled in his barn, in the small room he'd created beneath the hidden trapdoor covered with bales of hay. A mother and father and three small children, the woman's belly swollen with a fourth. He hadn't even asked their names. These families came and went so frequently that he'd stopped asking. It was easier that way, later. When he'd learn that some hadn't made it over the mountains to safety it was better that he hadn't known their names.

Giles cursed under his breath. Three days before, when the cobbler had sent his new assistant, he'd known. He'd seen the way the young man's eyes had darted about the barn, taking in the tidy table and bench pushed against the wall. The way the cobwebs had been swept out of the corners of the rafters. The neatly stacked tools, carefully placed. All signs of a woman's touch, yet Giles's wife had been dead for three years. Yes, Giles had known even then. And the bees had known, too.

Half an hour.
That's all he had before the trucks reached his farm, saw the brightly painted beehives and the stone house where his family had lived for almost two hundred years in the shadow of the château. Before they reached the barn and started moving the hay. His nostrils flared as the exhaust fumes overtook the sweet scents of his beloved fields, and he turned abruptly to Colette.

“C'est le temps.”
He picked her up, her warm breath on his neck, and began to run.

She started to cry before they'd even reached the barn, her sobs already hiccups by the time the family had crawled from their hiding place and begun their escape across the lavender fields, their shadows chasing them through the rows of purple.

In the kitchen at the back of the farmhouse he removed the small leather suitcase that had been Colette's mother's, packed the same day he'd decided he could no longer be a bystander. Carefully he took the teapot from the hutch, where it had been nestled between its matching cups and plates, the feel of the china fragile beneath his rough hands, as he remembered his dead wife and how she'd loved beautiful things, how she'd loved to set the table and eat from the delicate plates. The china set had been a wedding gift from the château to his grandparents, a thank-you for his family's years of service.

He wrapped it in a small towel and tucked it carefully amid Colette's clothing inside the case, then lifted the little girl into his arms again, pressing his forehead to hers. “It will be all right,
ma petite chérie.
Madame Bosco has promised to look after you until I return.” He lifted the suitcase and began walking swiftly from the house toward the neighboring farm. The Boscos were a large Italian-French family with seven children of their own and had not asked him why he might need to leave his daughter for an unspecified amount of time. It was better they did not know.

“Non, Papa.”
Colette's bottom lip quivered, but he dared not slow or look behind him.

He pressed her blond head against his chest as he walked faster, seeing the lights of the stone farmhouse, white sheets flapping on the
clothesline like a warning. The door opened before he reached it. Madame Bosco's large, round form filled the doorway, the light illuminating her. A young girl, dark haired like her mother but slender as a reed, peered out from behind madame.

“Go back inside,” the woman said to the girl. “Keep your brothers and sisters away from the door.” She waited until her daughter had left, the girl stealing a glance over her shoulder only once. Madame Bosco turned back to Giles. “It is time?” she asked, her voice low.

Giles nodded, holding Colette even tighter, knowing what a terrible thing he was asking the child to do. And how this very scene must be playing out again and again all over the burning fields of Europe. A chorus of children's cries and parents' despair that fell on parched earth and thick air that smelled of burning things. The wailing might be heard, but no one was listening.

He touched his lips to Colette's sweat-soaked forehead and tearstained cheek, breathing in the scent of her one last time. “You are my heart,
ma chérie
,” he said, holding her small fist tightly in his own larger one, replaying something they did every night. “And only you can set it free.” He opened his hand and wiggled his fingers like petals on a sunflower. Even in her misery, the little girl remembered her part and opened her own hand, the small fingers slow and heavy.

“Remember this,” Giles whispered in her ear, the folds and curves as delicate as a flower. “Remember you are my heart.”

Before he could change his mind, he handed Colette to the welcoming arms of Madame Bosco. There were tears in her eyes as she held the sobbing child. “We will keep her safe until you return. We have already instructed the children.”

Giles nodded, remembering her mother, as he stroked Colette's blond curls. He slid a postcard from his pocket and handed it to madame, his thumb obscuring the foreign stamps. The edges were torn and frayed from having been held and read so many times, the image of the beach with impossibly white sand engraved in his memory. “If something happens, let my friend know. His name and address are on
here. If I can't find you, I will go to him.” He paused for a moment. “Keep it hidden. It will be safer for you that way. No questions.”

Madame Bosco nodded and he felt the trembling in her hand as she took the postcard. “I will pray that I will put this back in your hands along with Colette when this is all over.”

He gave her a solemn stare. “I hope God listens to your prayers. He hasn't listened to mine in a very long time.” Lifting the suitcase, he set it inside the kitchen door. “Be careful with this. I have wrapped something precious inside, something of her home and family. Please keep them both safe.”

One last time Giles pressed his lips against Colette's soft curls. “
Au revoir, ma chérie.
I will come back for you; I promise. However long it takes.”

The little girl looked up at him with her mother's eyes, large and dark. She reached for him. “
Ne va pas, Papa!
Don't leave me!” She struggled to release herself from the woman's grasp, her legs kicking frantically.

“Be safe,” madame said, her own eyes damp. “Until we meet again.”

He touched her arm and pressed it, grief like cement filling his throat. With one last glance back, he turned in the opposite direction from his farm and began to run. He heard his daughter sobbing as the sky cast out the light, and imagined he could hear the sound of dead bees hitting the parched earth, lamenting the passing of all that was
good.