He turned and looked at her seriously. “You didn’t… when Jonny died.”
She hooked her arm through his and laid her head against his shoulder. “On the same day I lost Jonny, I found you again. And you’ve been for me what Mike was for you.” She paused, debating briefly whether to say more. She was talking again before she knew she’d made up her mind. “And even though I’ve had you this last week, I still lost control in my own way.”
“When?”
“Today, in the office, in front of Hugh.”
“What happened?”
“I began to cry. I couldn’t stop. That’s not like me. I was out of control.”
“Over Jonny?”
“No. Well, partly,” she said. “But not just Jonny.”
“Then what?”
“It’s complicated. Too complicated to go through now. I’m not even sure I understand it. What it boils down to, I guess, is maybe I’m too rigid. That’s what Hugh said. That I work never to let myself feel too much pain, so I have no yardstick by which to measure joy.”
“That’s pretty heavy.”
“But it’s true, I think. I try to be too much like my dad, and I consider myself a failure at times like these, when I can’t be that strong.”
“Hmm. Or maybe you’re trying to be too much like you think your dad is.”
Now it was her turn to be confounded. “A riddle?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “You’ve always described your father as totally focused, a man who had little time to stray from the path he laid for himself. I saw some of that toughness the night I met him at your house.”
“True,” she said.
“Even that night, he didn’t grieve, and then he wouldn’t hear of you hanging around Boston to grieve after Jonny’s funeral.”
“Or when Joey died. Or Mom.”
“That’s what you saw… what he wanted you to see. How do you know what it was like for him when he was alone?”
She looked up at him, astonished. “I don’t know,” she conceded. “I don’t have any reason to think he was any different when he was alone.”
“But you don’t know.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Well, no, I don’t. I… I certainly can’t ask him.”
“No need to,” he said. “But a man as caring and loving and devoted as your father doesn’t lose a family member without pain. Consider the possibility that he chose to hide it from you—maybe as a way of easing your own anguish. He probably lets himself go when the children aren’t around to see it. I don’t believe he’d think any less of you for feeling the pain once in a while, too.”
“I feel like I’ve been psychoanalyzed,” she said.
“Me, too,” he replied. “And I feel better for it.”
“So do I,” she acknowledged. “Maybe we should do this for each other more often.”
He took the chance. “It would be easier if you lived here,” he suggested. “Sister Mary Margaret be damned.”
“Yes,” she said. “It would.”
The TransAmerica technicians had been all over the Sexton 811 carrying the registration number NTA2464. It was the aircraft’s first major inspection since she went into service, and everything appeared nominal. Neither the crews that flew her nor the mechanics who serviced her reported anything out of the ordinary. But given the nature of the questions being asked about the Converse engines, the technicians were paying particular attention.
“Man, I never get over the size of these things,” said an apprentice named Jason Mack as he handed a diagnostic tool to his partner, whose upper body had disappeared to the waist inside the left engine, where several cowling plates had been removed. The mechanic, whose name was Alan Gleason, was eyeballing engine components under the glare of a high-intensity light he held in his left hand. When he needed an instrument, he shouted his order back to Mack and held his right hand out behind him so Mack could slap the article into his palm. Mack had a full complement of tools and diagnostic equipment in a cherry-picker nuzzled up to the huge power plant.
“Watcha lookin’ for? Anything in particular?” Mack asked Gleason.
Gleason eased himself out of the engine compartment and turned to the younger man, who was trying to learn the trade. It irritated him that Mack wasn’t grasping concepts.
“You know what happened to the Sexton at Dulles?” he asked.
“Sure,” Mack replied defensively. “She crashed.”
“You remember why?”
Mack’s brow furrowed. “She took in a bird, I think.”
“And one of the turbine disks fractured.”
“Yeah.”
“That shuddn’tuv happened.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Gleason explained, “these babies are designed to take that kinda lickin’ and keep on tickin’.”
Mack shrugged.
“You read anything about the Sexton out in Seattle?” Gleason asked. “She was ours.”
“Inna newspapers or in company paperwork?”
“Both.”
“No.”
Gleason closed his eyes and shook his head. “Jesus,” he said. “You ever think about goin’ into auto mechanics?”
“Nope.”
“Too bad. Coupla months ago, we had a turbine-disk fracture on one of ours. Nothin’ bad came of it, but what do the combination of those things tell us?”
“Maybe,” Mack said hopefully, “these babies should be grounded ’til somebody finds the problem.”
Gleason laughed, reluctantly acknowledging his assistant had a point. “But until that happens,” he said, “we need to check the disks every time these planes come in for inspection. Understand?”
“Gotcha,” Mack said. “You find anything wrong with these?”
“Not yet,” Gleason replied, gingerly diving back into the Number One pod.
What he was looking for was there, but the only visible manifestation of the spreading fracture was on the side of the disk Gleason couldn’t see.
Five hours later, NTA2464 would be sent back into service with a clean bill of health.
20
Steve Pace made the long drive out to Dulles Airport for what he hoped would be the last time on this story. Mitch Gabriel called before 7:00 A.M. to say Vernon Lund would hold one final press briefing at 10:00. Pace couldn’t fathom what more Lund had to say, and Gabriel professed not to know.
The trip took fifty minutes, time he spent thinking about his evening with Kathy. The night that began in a misery of soul-searching concluded with the realization that they were something special and they owed it to themselves to be together. They promised each other they wouldn’t let their schedules come between them again. They even toyed with the notion of throwing over both their careers and heading south to Islamorada in the Florida Keys to run a bed-and-breakfast and a charter fishing service. “Our Hemingway thing,” Kathy called it. “He lived in Key West,” Pace reminded her. “Picky, picky,” she said.
When she left for her townhouse before midnight, she promised to return the next evening with enough personal belongings to move in at least for a trial period, long enough to be certain that what brought them together again was more than temporary mutual need. She would be a resident when Melissa arrived for spring break on Sunday.
They discussed the impact on Sissy of finding the two of them living together, but Pace insisted nothing be kept from her. It would be a deception for Kathy to wait to move in until Sissy returned to the West Coast. They wanted to be together. Why play games?