As Far as the Stars

by Virginia MacGregor

  After we’ve eaten our burgers and fries from the McDonald’s at the rest stop, Christopher gets out his phone and starts reading, ‘Edward Ellis failed to realise that the autopilot had been switched off.’

  ‘I don’t understand…’

  He keeps reading.

  ‘The UKFlyer pilot received inconsistent readings which suggested that the plane’s speed sensors had become blocked.’

  ‘So it was a mechanical failure,’ I leap in. ‘It was out of your dad’s control.’

  Christopher’s eyes are still fixed on the screen. He keeps reading.

  ‘When Edward Ellis, a UKFlyer pilot with over fifteen years and hundreds of hours of flight experience, realised he was losing altitude, he raised the angle of the plane’s climb. The plane stalled three times and finally fell into the ocean…’ His fingers, holding the phone, are shaking. ‘The crash killed all on board.’

  The words hang between us.

  Very slowly, he puts down his phone.

  ‘It was Dad’s choice to tilt the plane upwards as a response to the plane losing altitude.’

  He pulls one of the napkins out of the dispenser and I think he’s going to start folding it but, instead, he smooths it out on the table.

  He bows his head. His knotty hair falls into the space between his eyes and his glasses.

  ‘It was Dad’s fault.’

  ‘You said the autopilot disengaged…?’

  ‘He should have realised that it had been switched off. It’s his job to notice that kind of thing.’

  ‘People can’t get things right every second of every day of their lives, Christopher.’ I swallow hard. ‘People make mistakes.’

  He looks up at me. ‘Is that what you’re going to tell your crew when you go up into space for the first time? That people make mistakes?’

  I think about what Christopher said about how his dad always got things right; how people trusted him because he made them feel safe.

  And I think about me. About how my place in my family has been defined by being the reliable one. The one who sorts out other people’s messes – Blake’s messes in particular. The one who, like Christopher’s dad, was never meant to get things wrong.

  But I got this wrong too. We both did.

  I look back at him. I can’t lie to him, not anymore.

  ‘No, it’s not what I’d say. I’d make my crew feel safe. I’d make them believe that we were going to make it. Because that’s what they’d need to hear.’

  ‘You’d say it even if it wasn’t true?’

  ‘I would believe that it was true. And that’s why I’d say it.’

  ‘But you couldn’t guarantee their safety.’

  ‘No one can guarantee anyone’s safety.’

  It’s the first time I admit this to myself. Maybe it’s the first time I believe it. That no matter how good we are – how experienced, how reliable – we make mistakes.

  Christopher’s eyes go far away.

  ‘There are jobs where you don’t get to make mistakes,’ he says. ‘Dad knew that. You know that.’

  ‘Your dad tried to do the right thing – by lifting the angle of the plane. It could have worked.’

  ‘But it didn’t work. And, it turned out, it wasn’t the right decision. It made the plane stall.’ He swallows hard. ‘Which caused the crash.’

  Christopher keeps smoothing the napkin down against the table.

  ‘If I ever get to talk to a crew before going into space,’ I say, ‘I wouldn’t talk to them about human error. Not at that moment. I’d inspire them. I’d tell them they could do it. That we were going to make history. That what they were doing was amazing. But they’d know it; that something could go wrong. That bad things happen – big things, life and death things – and that some things are out of our control.’ I take a breath. ‘And sometimes it’s our fault and we have to live with that knowledge no matter how hard it is.’

  ‘Dad said that there was no such thing as human error – only human negligence,’ Christopher says.

  ‘Well, he was wrong.’

  Christopher looks up at me.

  I keep going. ‘Getting things wrong is part of the deal – the cost. We all know that.’

  ‘The cost?’

  ‘Of doing stuff like this. Flying, taking off in rockets, doing things that I guess we were never really meant to do.’

  ‘Overreaching,’ he says.

  ‘Yeah, overreaching.’

  He nods and begins to lift up the sides of the napkin. A fold on each corner.

  ‘And even when we’re not overreaching,’ I add. ‘We make mistakes then too. Important mistakes.’

  Even when we’re just booking a plane ticket.

  My body slumps into itself.

  All I had to do was to get him to Nashville.

  Christopher keeps folding. The bits of tissue paper split and fan out. He’s making a flower.

  I look through the window at the new day. Neither of us thought that we’d be sitting here today, together, the day after the eclipse. Neither of us knew we’d ever see each other again.

  My gaze drifts to the sky and I try to picture Blake, sitting in the plane, shortly before the crash. Maybe he was asleep or watching a movie – or maybe he was composing a new song because he’d been inspired by the sky through the small oval window beside him. Did he feel it? The plane dropping? Did he know that something bad was happening – more than a little turbulence? That in a few minutes, his beautiful, blessed life would be over?

  He once said that he’d like to look death right in the eye. To have the experience of it so that he could write about it. Because between love and death there wasn’t much else. That that was all anyone ever really wrote about and sang about, he said. I didn’t take it seriously at the time. Blake’s always coming up with that weird, philosophical stuff. But I think about it now. Whether, as the plane was falling, he was inspired, whether the lines of a song started to come to him. Or whether he was scared, like everyone else.

  And then I think of Mom and Dad and Jude and Stephen, back at the hotel, trying to get their heads round the fact that Blake’s never coming back. And that I’m the one who put him on the wrong plane.

  I don’t know if I can ever go back to them. Whether I can bear looking into their eyes knowing that it’s because of me that Blake’s not coming back.

  Looking back at the paper model Christopher’s been making, I realise that it’s one of mum’s heirloom roses, from the wedding. He must have seen them when he came to the rooftop. I wonder whether one day he’ll get to meet her. Whether she’ll show him the roses she grows in our garden back in DC.

  ‘I could take one of those into space with me,’ I say.

  He looks up at me.

  ‘One of your paper models,’ I explain. ‘Put it in a time capsule or something. As a souvenir from earth.’

  He smiles. ‘I’d like that.’

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Atlanta, GA

  In the stretch between Chattanooga and Atlanta, we don’t really talk. I guess there’s not much more to say, now that we know what happened. Or know as much as we ever will.

  We’re tired. Too tired to go through all the emotions again.

  Christopher sleeps for a bit but his sleep’s so light that as soon as Leda barks or I go over a bump in the road, his eyes dart open.

  He’s nervous about seeing his mom; I can feel it coming off his body in waves.

  Leda shuffles onto his lap; she senses it too.

  By dawn, we’re pulling into Sandy Springs.

  We wait outside the house. It’s too early to ring the bell.

  There’s a white moon in the sky. It makes me think of the paper moons we made back in that Burger King outside Knoxville. How hard I found it to make some folds in a piece of paper.

  And I remember the strange, moonless sky the night before the eclipse. How that time we spent together, before we knew what was really happening, was kind of unreal.

  You’ve
come back, I say to myself.

  The sun sits under the horizon, lighting up the world from below.

  At around 7 a.m., a guy, about my dad’s age, comes out through the front door, wearing a green dressing gown. He’s followed by a golden lab who crouches on the lawn to relieve himself.

  Leda jumps up and down on the bench behind us and starts barking with excitement.

  Which makes the man look up.

  ‘Who’s the guy?’ I ask.

  ‘Mitch. My stepdad, I guess.’

  ‘You guess?’

  ‘I’ve never met him.’

  Mitch puts his hand over his brow to block out the sun, trying to work out where the barking’s coming from. The front door opens again, and a woman walks out.

  She slips her arm around Mitch’s waist and leans her head against his shoulder.

  And then she sees us.

  I guess it’s not every day that a Yellow 1973 Buick convertible parks in front of your house.

  And it’s not every day that the son she hasn’t talked to in years shows up with no more warning than an oblique phone call the day before.

  ‘Mom! Dad!’

  A little girl skips out of the house. I’d say she was about five or six. The same tangled blonde hair as Christopher, only longer. The same grey eyes. They both look like their mom.

  ‘You didn’t say you had a sister.’

  And then I realise, from how he’s staring at her, that he didn’t know.

  His leg starts jiggling up and down.

  You’d think that what I’ve done was harder: standing up in front of all those guests at my sister’s wedding – in front of my family – and singing the song that my brother was meant to sing. And then telling the people I love most in the world, right there, at the wedding, that Blake was in a plane crash. That he wasn’t coming back. And that it was my fault. You’d think that was harder than just driving to your mom’s house. But you’d be wrong.

  It’s the quiet that makes this so hard.

  And the fact that it’s just another ordinary Tuesday morning.

  And that they’re going about their normal lives: letting the dog out, giving each other a morning hug, looking out onto the street.

  If it hadn’t been for us, they’d have gone back inside and had breakfast and showered and got ready for work and taken the little girl to kindergarten. Like any other day.

  And Christopher’s going to have to break it, the quiet, happy, everydayness of all this. And somehow, their lives will never be the same again either.

  I grab his hand.

  ‘You can do this,’ I whisper. ‘I’m not going anywhere. I’ll wait for you in the car.’

  He keeps staring out at Mitch and his mom and the little girl.

  Leda starts barking again.

  ‘And take Leda with you.’

  He looks at me, confused.

  ‘She adores you.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘You should have her. For good.’

  I haven’t planned this. Hadn’t even had the thought until it popped into my head a second ago, but I know that it’s the right thing. Leda should be with Christopher.

  ‘You’ll take better care of her than I will. And it’ll be one person in your camp.’

  ‘In my camp?’

  ‘So you don’t have to face your family alone.’

  The yellow lab bounds across the lawn towards our car.

  ‘And it looks like she might have a friend.’

  Christopher leans over and kisses me lightly on the cheek. I feel it in my whole body, the way his lips brush against my skin.

  ‘Thank you,’ Christopher says.

  The little girl follows the golden lab, the hem of her night-dress brushing the sprinkler-wet grass.

  ‘Come back!’ she yells after him.

  Her mom and dad follow her.

  Christopher gets out of the car, pulling Leda behind him and walks towards his mom.

  ‘Who’s that?’ The little girl points at Christopher and then looks back at her parents.

  Christopher’s mom stares at him for a second, and then steps forward. ‘This is your brother, Christopher.’

  The girl tilts her head to one side. ‘The one from the photo?’

  Christopher looks at his mom. My body floods with relief: so she’d told the little girl about him. That must count for something.

  ‘Yes, the one from the photo.’

  They’re too wrapped up in each other to see me. Which is a relief. I don’t have the energy to face anyone right now.

  I scoot down in my seat and watch them all walk back into the house, Leda and the golden lab tumbling over each other like they’ve known each other for a lifetime. Maybe Leda’s been waiting to find her true home too. Maybe she was only with Blake – and with me – for the ride.

  Tiredness sweeps over me. A thick, heavy tiredness like I could sleep for a million years.

  Before he goes through the front door, Christopher turns one last time to look at me.

  ‘You can do it,’ I whisper to him.

  And then he gives me a small nod and turns to go inside.

  I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I know, the sun’s beating down on me and there’s the little girl – Christopher’s sister – staring at me through the car window. She’s on tiptoes. And she’s grinning.

  When she notices that I’ve spotted her, she takes a step back.

  Behind her, Leda and the golden lab are tumbling over each other on the lawn.

  ‘Don’t tell Mom I woke you,’ the girl says quickly.

  I rub my eyes. ‘Okay…’

  ‘She told me to let you sleep. We came out to check on you a few times but Mom said you seemed really tired and Christopher said you’d been driving for days and so we thought it was better to leave you.’ The girl takes a strand of her long, tangled hair and chews the end.

  ‘But…’ she starts.

  ‘But?’

  ‘I wanted to see what you looked like with your eyes open.’

  ‘Oh…’

  ‘You look pretty.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I think I might cut my hair short too…It must be nice not to get tangles all the time.’

  ‘Yeah, it is. But your hair’s nice –’ I think about how it reminds me of Christopher’s hair. How it made me realise, straight away, that she must be his sister.

  I glance at the clock on the dashboard. It’s gone noon. I must have been asleep for hours.

  ‘Do you want to come inside?’ the girl asks.

  ‘Um…’

  ‘We’re going to have lunch. Mom’s not going in to work today and she’s given me a home day because I told her it wasn’t fair that she got to stay home with my brother while I had to go to school.’

  The word brother startles me. I guess it must have startled Christopher too. It’s amazing how small children adopt complete strangers into their lives. Or maybe Christopher’s mom had prepared her in some way. Maybe they’ve been waiting for him. I hope so.

  My brother…

  And then it comes flooding back to me. How I had a brother too. And how now, he’s gone. I press my eyes shut.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ the girl asks.

  I push the heels of my hands into my eyes, take a breath and then turn back to face her. ‘I’m just really tired,’ I say.

  ‘Mom told me to play outside while she was talking to Christopher.’ She lets out a small sigh. ‘They’ve been talking for ages.’

  That’s a good sign, I think.

  ‘So, will you come in?’

  ‘Nina!’ Christopher’s mom is standing at the front door. She’s got dressed: she’s wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and sneakers. She looks younger than Mom but more worn out somehow.

  She comes up to the car.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says to me. ‘We told her to leave you alone.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I say.

  ‘Air’s going to come inside and have lunch with us,’ Nina announces
.

  She knows my name. I wonder how much Christopher has told her about me: how he’s explained the fact that he showed up with a girl in a yellow Buick rather than on a Greyhound bus.

  ‘Well…’ I start.

  ‘If you’d like to come in, you’d be most welcome,’ Christopher’s mom says. ‘You could probably do with some food. And you can take a shower or a bath and maybe rest a bit…’

  I notice Christopher coming out through the front door. I try to read his body language: to work out how he’s feeling – whether he’s surviving all this; meeting the mom who walked out on him when he was a baby. But he just looks kind of blank, like he hasn’t processed it yet. I guess it’s a lot to take in. At least he doesn’t look upset. And if things had gone really badly, he’d have come back to the car and woken me up and said he wanted to leave. He’s still here. That’s a start.

  I’m torn between getting on the road and heading to Nashville to be with Mom, Dad and Jude, and staying here. I’m exhausted. And I could do with a wash. And some food. And I want to make sure Christopher is okay before I leave him.

  ‘It’s your decision, of course, but the offer’s there if you’d like it,’ Christopher’s mom says.

  ‘I’d like to come in,’ I say.

  Nina jumps up and down with excitement and as I step out of the car Leda runs towards me and licks my hand like she approves of my decision.

  ‘Wonderful,’ Christopher’s mom says. ‘I’m Amy by the way. And I’m so pleased that I got to meet you.’

  ‘Me too,’ I say.

  When I walk towards Christopher, still standing at the front door, I suddenly worry that this is a bad idea – me gatecrashing his big family reunion. Maybe he wants to be with them alone. But when I get to him, his face relaxes and he smiles and, as we walk into the house, he catches the back of my hand and whispers, ‘Thanks.’

  The afternoon slips away from us. We have some sandwiches sitting in the garden and then I soak in the bath for ages, letting the hot water numb my body. It’s good to let go for a bit. Christopher’s mom lends me some of her clothes – she says I can keep them when I go: a pair of leggings and an old sweater. They’re soft and they smell of laundry detergent and make me feel comfortable for the first time in days. And then Mitch comes back from work and grills some burgers and hot dogs in the back yard and before I know it, it’s getting dark.