Tahoe Skydrop (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 16)

by Todd Borg

  “Of course, I had my doubts. So I got some of the baby’s saliva and a bit of Victoria’s hair and got a DNA test. It turned out that Jon really was our child.”

  I heard Vince take a deep breath.

  “We really struggled after that. She said that every problem was my fault because I wasn’t embracing being a dad. I told her other dads have nine months to prepare. I said she couldn’t just drop a kid in my lap and expect me to think it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me.

  “We were together until Jon’s first birthday. Then she left again. She said she wanted to have a real life, an exciting life. She wanted to travel and see other countries and explore her spiritual side. She said she couldn’t do any of that with a kid and husband dragging her down.

  “So I said, what about me? What about Jon? Where was our exciting life? And Victoria said I’d get used to it. That I was such a plain guy, I wouldn’t know how to pursue an exciting life even if it was handed to me. She said that Jon would manage living with me, and that he probably couldn’t keep up with her energy and her appetite for excitement, anyway. So she disappeared again, and didn’t show up this time for six years. And you know what her first words to me were when she came back? The words keep ringing in my ears. She said, ‘Sorry for taking a leave of absence, Vince, but I just couldn’t handle the whole diapering thing. Now Jon is old enough, we could get a sitter and go do fun stuff.’”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  After a minute, I said, “Speaking of your kid,” I said, “I should tell you what I heard when I was watching over the fence at the lodge. I don’t think I’m breaking a confidence.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The guard was commenting on your kid’s walk, saying it was a walk like that of a girl.”

  I heard Vince make a big sigh. “That again,” he said. His tone was part anger, part sadness.

  “Then your kid said, ‘I am a girl.’”

  Vince went silent as if holding his breath.

  “And when the guard used the name Jon, your kid said, ‘My name is Jonni.’ The guard said it was obvious your kid is a boy. But your kid said she only looked like a boy. That inside, she was a girl.”

  Vince said, “And now you’re calling Jon a she. I can’t stand it.”

  “When she said it, she sounded convincing, Vince. It’s clear she has no stake in convincing the guard one way or another. But her simple statement radiated honesty. It didn’t sound like an opinion or a trial. It sounded like a fact. At that very moment, she convinced me. That even though she was born looking like a boy, she is a girl.”

  After a long silence, Vince said, “Most of the time, I’ve tried hard to be a good dad. But I haven’t always been there for Jon. Sometimes, life has been too much, and I’ve taken an impromptu leave of absence from fatherhood. I’d call a sitter and go away for a few days. Later, Brie was the sitter. But I’ve been better the last couple of years.

  “But it still hurt Jon. At first, I thought this feminine thing was his way of punishing me for my failures. Then I realized that he didn’t mean bad. He didn’t want to hurt me. But I still thought my occasional absences from his life, my lack of time with him, the fact that I was often gone working, denied him of a strong male role model. So I blame myself for his confusion. I assume he’ll grow out of it.”

  “I saw my girlfriend Street yesterday evening after I’d seen Jonni at Stone Lodge. We were talking with a friend of hers who’s a psychologist. The woman has done work in this area. I think she referred to it as Gender Dysphoria. Without using any names, I asked about the situation.”

  “A gender shrink. Great. Just what I needed. Probably wonders if I was too focused when I was diapering him as a baby. Or not focused enough.”

  “No. What she did say is that gender identification isn’t a black-and-white issue. It’s more of a spectrum. And what’s interesting is, it appears that much about gender identification is hard wired. Apparently, those differences are independent of a child’s physical characteristics.”

  “Yeah, but that probably comes from their lifestyle choices. Kids are still born as boys or girls. Either or.”

  “This psychologist doesn’t think so. She said as soon as kids develop a clear sense of their gender, the ones whose perception of gender is different from their bodies sense that difference, too. And this developing awareness of gender happens at an early age, when the kids are too young to be thinking about it as a potential choice. The psychologist said that science is firmly behind the idea that people are born with a built-in sense of how they feel. They don’t choose to feel different from their physical characteristics. It’s part of their makeup.”

  Vince didn’t reply.

  “If you think about it, maybe you can remember the early times when Jonni did or said things suggesting she wasn’t a standard-issue boy.”

  Vince was still quiet. Eventually, he said, “It’s true. It goes way back. Playing with dolls, obsessing over clothes, singing along with girl-group pop songs. And the makeup. I never knew where he got the stuff. Girlfriends at school, I guess. He was probably seven when I first saw him in lipstick and eyeshadow. He was so young! I tried to interest him in sports. Softball and such. But the only thing he really took to was rollerblading. I think his drive was to have a way to escape from the bullies who tormented him for acting feminine. He’d only bladed for about one summer when he could go as fast as me.”

  Vince stopped talking abruptly. After a minute, he continued. “In spite of all the talk about using his blades to escape the bullies, I thought he’d grow out of this nonsense. I guess that didn’t happen. But I still can’t accept it.”

  “What if your kid had been born a daughter? Physically a girl.”

  “Then I would have celebrated having a daughter. I mean, sure, I was glad I had a son. I’d always wanted a son to go camping with, fishing, skiing.”

  “If you’d had a daughter from the beginning, wouldn’t you have gone camping and skiing with her?”

  Vince made a short pause. “Yeah. But that would be different.”

  “Different than skiing with a boy? How?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just… I guess I’m old fashioned. I thought, I had a boy! It fit the picture in my head. How things are supposed to work. It’s not some Biblical picture. It’s just the way I was raised. Boys are boys, and girls are girls.”

  “What if you had a regular son and he turned out to be gay?”

  Vince made a little snort. “I’d have a hard time with that, too.” He paused. “You probably think I’m backward.”

  “I don’t judge. But I think you should allow yourself to appreciate your kid. Kids are complicated, and life is confusing. I think you should accept and try to love your kid as the daughter she believes she is.”

  “That’s a tall order,” he said.

  “Is it? You already said that if you’d had a daughter from the beginning, you would have loved her.”

  “Of course.”

  I’d made my point, so I said no more.

  Vince stood up, looked at the dark sky. “Feel that?”

  “Moving air,” I said. “A touch of a breeze. On my right cheek. Which would be out of the west.”

  “Right,” Vince said.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  I said, “This ski run points down to the south or even a bit to the southeast, right?”

  “Yeah. Let’s hope this little breeze out of the west swings around out of the south like the forecast predicted.”

  “What if it doesn’t?”

  “Can you see that line of trees to the west of us? The chairlift runs through those trees. And on the other side of those trees is another part of this run. A portion of it faces southwest. A westerly breeze would create an updraft over that run. If it’s a strong enough wind, we could use that to gain some altitude.”

  “But this run doesn’t face that way. So how would we launch?”

  “
Maybe I didn’t explain it thoroughly. A glider doesn’t need an updraft to simply glide downhill. If the breeze is out of the west and we have no updraft on this run, you and I could still get into the harness, inflate the glider by running downhill, and then take off. Our glide slope isn’t as steep as the ski slope. So we could glide out until we’re above the trees. When I think we can clear them, we could make a hard turn to the west, and try to get over the trees and chairlift and into the wind on the next ski run. With enough wind, we could start riding the updraft on that slope and begin climbing.”

  “Sounds a bit iffy,” I said.

  “It is. But I wouldn’t give it a go if I didn’t think there was a decent chance of success.”

  “What happens if it doesn’t work?”

  “We crash into the trees at the bottom. Or we clear the line of trees between the two ski runs, get over to the other run, and find there isn’t enough wind to create an updraft. If that happens, we land on that slope.”

  “Got it. So what do we do now?”

  “We’re still waiting.” As he said it, the breeze stopped, then picked up with just a bit more oomph.

  “Why not launch right now?” I asked.

  “The wind is probably strong enough on the other side of the tree windbreak. But I want to wait five minutes to judge whether or not there’s any constancy to the airflow.” Now that we were no longer talking about Jonni, Vince’s voice was stronger and more confident. The insecurities of being a father were replaced by the confidence of a paraglider pilot who knew his expertise was solid.

  “I just remembered that I forgot helmets and goggles,” Vince said.

  “No sweat. If we crash, we’ll try to keep from bouncing our heads on the rocks.”

  “I know you’re just saying that. But thanks.”

  Less than one minute later, the breeze had picked up a bit more.

  “Let’s get into the harness,” Vince said. “This wind system may be fast-growing.”

  There was a small burst of air. The glider canopy blew across the ground to the side. Some of the lines drew tight and pulled the harness sideways a few feet.

  “Hurry!” Vince grabbed the harness. He held out the leg loops on the front part of the harness. “Legs in the loops!” he shouted.

  I trotted through the dark. Got my right leg through the loop.

  “Wrong leg!”

  I jerked my leg out, losing my balance, hopping on the uneven ground. Got the left leg through. Turned. Got my right leg through. I was trying to pull the cinch straps to snug the loops on my thighs when Vince shouted.

  “Shoulder straps! Hurry! The wind is rising.”

  I fumbled the shoulder straps over my arms.

  “The canopy is blowing to the other side of the run. Quick, run with me to the right, toward the wind. We can’t let the canopy get snared on those other trees.”

  He had a grip on his portion of the harness. As the lines tugged the harness farther to the left, I leaned to the right. Vince also pulled to the right. There was a snap of fabric, and I felt the canopy rise up above us, pulling us hard toward the trees to the left.

  “Harder!” Vince shouted. “Pull to the right!”

  I didn’t dare take my eyes off the ground. I focused on foot placement, struggling to take steps to the west in an effort to keep the canopy from blowing into the trees to the east.

  We’d made just a little bit of progress when Vince stopped pulling and turned toward the canopy.

  “Keep pulling into the wind. I’m going to dump air from part of the canopy and try to get it steered away from the trees. When I say go, start running down the ski run. You’ll feel the canopy pull you to the left, but resist that and keep running. Ready? Go!”

  I took fast steps down the slope, my feet pounding on grassy dirt and rocks. On the fourth step, the harness lifted me up and my foot hit nothing.

  We were airborne.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  The wind in my face grew. I felt Vince’s presence behind me. He was pulling on the lines, steering the glider, trying to keep us from hitting the trees on either side of the ski run. We were facing toward the trees on the right side of the ski run. But that was our flight into the wind. Our actual motion relative to the run was down the slope, what pilots call crabbing, or moving partially sideways into the wind so the overall motion stays straight. Our drop in altitude was faster than I expected. But I was used to planes with engines and propellers pulling up into the sky.

  Even as we dropped, I could tell in the dark that the slope dropped at a steeper angle. Because of the steep slope, we gradually became higher above the ground. The treetops were still above us. There was no easy escape from the tunnel of the ski slope lined with trees.

  Vince was making grunting noises. Probably it was from stress more than physical effort. I sensed the chairlift base station in the dark at the bottom of the ski run. We were dropping toward it fast. Like any pilot, I was running through worst-case scenarios. Potential landing spots. Potential crash-landing spots.

  “Prepare for a tight turn to starboard,” Vince said from behind me.

  The treetops to our right had dropped down below us, but only by about 30 feet. If we lost altitude in the turn, we’d hit them. It seemed we weren’t high enough. But it wasn’t my call.

  I understood the risk-taking scenario. Make the turn, you might get over the trees and into an updraft. But you might crash.

  If you don’t make the turn, you might find a last-ditch landing spot and put down without any broken bones. You might also crash. In both those scenarios, you lose any chance of completing your mission because it would take too long to repack the glider and hike back up the mountain. By the time we were ready to take off again, it would be too late because it would be dawn before we could get to the target.

  “Here we go,” Vince said, his voice crisp.

  I looked up at the canopy. I saw the right tip bend down under Vince’s pull on the lines. A sizable portion of the glider wing seemed to dump air. The opposite tip was still fully inflated. The imbalance in lift made the left tip of the glider wing rise up. Vince and I were swinging out to the left as the glider made a strong banking turn to the right.

  As we turned, we slowed down.

  Most aircraft lose overall lift in a steep bank. So the aircraft either loses altitude or the pilot compensates by increasing the throttle. But a paraglider doesn’t have that option. So we dropped, losing altitude fast. Vince needed no input from me. I watched silently as we swooped around and down, on a likely collision course with the treetops. I was about to speak as Vince said the words I would have uttered.

  “We better straighten our legs and lift our feet.” He used the unflappable tone that pilots cultivate. The graver the situation, the calmer you sound.

  Vince performed a maneuver pilots call a flair, changing the angle of the glider so it temporarily goes up even as it’s about to stall. It’s a universal technique designed to slow descent just before touching the wheels to the ground. The downside is that the coming stall can kill you if you are up in the air because the wing loses lift in a stall. So you stop dropping for a moment only to drop very fast afterward. Survival depends on being very close to the ground.

  Vince’s flair worked. But as we cleared most of the trees and were approaching the other ski run, our feet crashed through some high branches. A taller dead branch snagged in one of the glider lines above our heads and then broke off from the tree, tangled in the line. The blow made the glider lurch. As I looked up in the dark, I could see the broken branch hooked on the line just above our heads. The branch was about four feet long.

  The drag from our feet striking the treetops slowed us further, pitching the glider forward. As we glided into a bit of clear airspace, our forward-leaning position made us pick up some speed and prevented us from dropping straight to the ground. But the glider was wobbling from the effect of the branch stuck in the line. The branch waved in the wind, bouncing off the adjacent glider line
s. Vince reached up and tried to grab it, but it was just out of reach. So he pulled down on the line that held the branch and grabbed the branch with his other hand to pull it free. But the line was lodged in a fork of the branch. Vince tugged, but it wouldn’t come free.

  Because we had pitched forward, the glider was in a steep descent. The chairlift was below us, and we were heading toward one of the lift towers. It seemed our downward trajectory was made worse by the branch pulling on the line, deforming the canopy.

  I looked back and saw Vince reach up again. There was a glint in one of his hands. His knife. Using his other hand, he once again pulled down on the line that held the branch, made a swipe with his knife, and cut the line above the branch. The loose line flopped free. Vince swiped the knife through the lower part of the same line, cutting it cleanly. He threw the branch and its section of line down to the side.

  When I looked up, it seemed totally dark. The moon had set. But I could sense in the starlight a deformation in the canopy above the cut line.

  And we were still plunging toward the lift tower.

  I anticipated Vince’s intentions even as I didn’t think it would work.

  Just before we were about to crash into the lift tower at serious speed, Vince did another flair, more dramatic than the last. The glider pitched up. The breeze on this other side of the trees made a gust. Vince rode the gust. We cleared the lift tower. Vince banked the glider to the left and down the next ski run. But this time was different. As we regained our glide path and headed down this run, we rose faster relative to the trees. We had sailed into a powerful updraft created by the wind being driven up the slope of the land. We quickly gained altitude. While we were still over the ski slope, Vince turned across the slope and glided sideways to the wind, still riding the updraft. After several hundred yards, the mountain changed shape, which might have eliminated our updraft. So Vince did a tight-banking 180-degree turn and came back through the updraft, climbing well. Although the canopy was slightly compromised by the severed line and probably suffered reduced performance, it still seemed to fly well. As long as the loose line didn’t tangle with the other lines, we’d probably be okay.