Broken Wings

by Terri Blackstock

  But the glory was short-lived. As he watched, she circled the plane and began descending back to the runway, as if she couldn’t get back to the earth fast enough.

  Addison’s heart plunged to his stomach. “No, Erin,” he whispered. But it was too late. Already she was following the runway back to where she’d started.

  The plane had scarcely stopped when Addison forgot his decision to leave her alone and burst through the doors, running toward the Cessna.

  Erin shut off the engine and slumped back in the seat, covering her distorted face with hands that shivered like leaves in an icy wind. Anguished wails ripped from her throat, and tears burned paths through her fingers. She had forced herself to take the plane up…but the fear that encompassed her once she was airborne was worse than she’d imagined. “Why, Mick?” she shouted in the small cockpit.

  A knock sounded on the window next to her before she could analyze just what she was blaming her dead friend for, and she jumped when she saw Addison standing there. Beneath the overhead lights, she saw the expression of compassion and understanding painted on his features. Erin felt as if God had sent him at exactly the right moment, and relief washed over her like a cleansing tide. She threw the door open and fell into his open arms.

  “I couldn’t do it!” she rasped, her sobs cracking her words. “I got up, but I could feel the panic coming on. I couldn’t do it, Addison!”

  “It’s okay,” he whispered, crushing her racking body against his. “It’s okay, babe. I know what you’re going through. I went through it myself.”

  “How did you get over it?” she cried.

  “I kept trying. I didn’t give up. You aren’t going to give up, either. I’m going to help you.”

  “No, you can’t help. I can’t escape it. The crash…”

  “You’re not going to crash.”

  Frustrated and still a victim of the jagged edge of panic, Erin pulled back from him. She shook her head wildly, begging him to see. “No, don’t you understand? It already happened, only I wasn’t there, and I should have been. It should have been me. It should have happened just as I keep seeing it, and you could have blamed me instead of Mick. No one would have been hurt if you’d blamed me. Not like Maureen and Jason.”

  The foolish idea destroyed Addison’s gentle mood. “Erin, you weren’t there! You should thank God for that instead of cursing yourself for being the one who lived!”

  Erin moved away from Addison, wind whipping through her hair and her blouse as she left the protective shelter of the airplane. Addison followed her. “You don’t understand, Addison. You think you do, but you don’t.”

  “I understand more than you think,” he said as she started toward the hangar. “And one thing that is blatantly clear is that you have to overcome your guilt before you can overcome your fear. You have to put it behind you, Erin, and realize that the plane might have crashed whether you were in it or not!”

  “How do you know?” she cried. “Maybe I could have thought more clearly than Mick. Maybe I could have kept him from making a mistake! He was used to flying with me! Maybe I could have pulled up when he panicked!”

  She caught her breath at the last words and covered her mouth, but too late realized she could never negate the hateful thought. And Addison hadn’t missed it. He stopped mid-stride and stared at her.

  “All this time,” he said in a neutral voice, “you fought me like a madwoman when I said it was Mick’s fault and that he panicked. All this time I’ve believed you were backed by your convictions. But that wasn’t it, was it, Erin? It wasn’t my conclusions you were fighting. It was your own. For a long time I wasn’t sure he’d made a mistake at all. But you were, weren’t you?”

  “No!” she shouted. “That isn’t what I meant!”

  “Yes, it is,” he said wearily. “And that guilt you’re feeling is more than either of us thought. You’re guilty for not being there, that’s obvious. But you’re also feeling guilty for blaming him, too. You’re as convinced as I am that it was pilot error, and you’re scared to death that if you fly again, you’ll make the same mistakes.”

  “You have no right to analyze me!” she shouted. “No right! And you’re dead wrong!”

  He reached for her, but she backed away. “Erin, I’m not condemning you. You just have to see the truth before you can get over the crash. I’ll help you.”

  “I don’t need your help!” she flared.

  He grabbed her arm and shook her, forcing her to hear him. “But, Erin, you can’t run from this. It won’t go away.”

  “It doesn’t exist!” she shouted, jerking away again. “You came up with all this yourself. You deal with it. I’m going home.”

  “Erin, please—”

  But before Addison could get the words out, Erin had fled through the hangar and out to her car, like a phantom frightened by its own shadow.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Erin realized she was growing better at running from herself, from Addison, even from Mick, and the idea shamed her. But as she pulled to a rough halt in her driveway—which was filled with cars she didn’t recognize—she realized that she couldn’t run from Jason Hammon.

  He sat on the front steps, idly examining a small model of a 727 he held, that solemn, older-than-his-years expression still on his features. Erin swallowed and leaned back in her seat before getting out of the car. She hadn’t seen him since he’d discovered she’d tricked him, hadn’t had to face those gray eyes, hadn’t had to own up to her own raging emotions. What would she say to him now?

  Wiping the teary evidence of turmoil from her face, Erin got out of the car and ambled slowly to the steps. “Why aren’t you in school?” she asked.

  “It’s summer,” he said.

  Erin nodded, acknowledging that, indeed, it was. She glanced around for Maureen, then turned back to the boy. “How’d you get here, Jason?” she asked.

  “Rode my bike,” he said, gesturing toward the small ten-speed leaning against the house. “I wanted to see you.”

  She sat down on the step next to him and braced her elbows on her knees. She wasn’t up to manufacturing a cheerful facade today. Instead, she tried just being herself and getting things out in the open. “Listen, I know I owe you an apology for what I did the other day. It was a dirty trick. I meant well, but I know—”

  “It’s okay,” he interrupted, staring at the model plane again. “I know why you did it, I think.”

  Erin sighed deeply, feeling that somehow this little boy had grown up way past her, that she had years of living to do before she would catch up to him. She let out a telling sigh and rubbed her eyes. “It’s all so complicated, Jason. Everything’s so…complicated.”

  She dropped her face in her palm and shook her head, willing back the new flood of tears threatening her.

  Jason seemed alarmed at her display of emotions. Tentatively, he reached out and set his hand on her back. It felt stiff, uncomfortable there, as though he didn’t know what to do with it once he had made the small gesture. “I’m not mad at you anymore, Erin,” he said.

  She looked up, tears glossing her weary eyes. A soft, sad smile tugged at her lips as she gazed at him. His gray eyes were wide with sincerity, and somehow the words did make things a little better. “Tell me something, Jase,” she said. “When did you grow up? I could have sworn that you were just a kid.”

  He shrugged and removed his hand, embarrassed. “I dunno.”

  Erin smiled and slipped her arms around his shoulders. Despite his awkward stiffness, she crushed him against her. “Yeah, well, I know.” She released him and pulled herself up. Holding out a hand, she said, “Come on in. I’ll see if I can scare up a snack for us. I’m kind of hungry.”

  Jason smiled wryly, and Erin felt relieved, for she’d almost been certain that his lips had become set in a permanent grim line. “I wouldn’t go in there if I were you,” Jason said. “Lois has a bunch of pilots in there, and they’re all yelling and fighting. She invited me in, but it sou
nded a little dangerous. Besides, she didn’t know when you’d be home.”

  Erin glanced at the front door where many of her coworkers were gathered, hashing out the latest demands and grievances on behalf of herself and the other pilots. If she walked in there now, with her eyes all red, the gossip would resume. Already speculation abounded about her relationship with the NTSB official, the enemy, the kind of person pilots respected but would not, under any circumstances, fall in love with.

  Defeated, she sank back down on the step. In love? Did it really come as a surprise to her now? And what good did it do her to know she was in love now, when the mere act of feeling only summoned up more emotions she couldn’t handle?

  “What’s the matter, Erin?” Jason asked softly, watching the string of fatigued reactions travel across her face.

  “Nothing,” she lied. “Guess I’m just tired.”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he leaned forward, studying the model in his hand. “Erin, I was wondering. Would you mind…I mean, would it be all right…?”

  Erin looked up at him, her attentive eyes coaxing him to finish the question.

  “Well, I really want to learn to fly, and I know I’m old enough ’cause other kids have done it, and Dad promised to teach me, but now…” His voice trailed off. “Erin, would you teach me to fly? Dad said you had an instructor’s license, that it was how you made your living before you got on with Southeast…”

  Erin’s breath caught in her lungs, and she gaped at the boy. Could it be that she, an experienced pilot, could be so afraid of flying after Mick’s crash that she couldn’t get off the ground, when his son—a child, for heaven’s sake—wanted to follow his father’s path into the sky, completely unafraid of what waited in the airways?

  “Erin?” he asked, waiting for an answer.

  Erin searched for the right words. How could she tell him that she’d lost it, that his image of her was nothing more than illusion? “Jason, I wish I could teach you…I do. It’s just that…I’m probably the worst person you could ask right now.”

  “Why?” he asked, disappointment flattening his tone. “We’re still friends, aren’t we?”

  “Of course we are. It’s just that…”

  “The plane,” he said, anticipating her explanation. “You don’t have a plane. But don’t worry. Mom said she’d pay for the rental.”

  “Your mother agreed to this?” Erin asked, amazed.

  “Sure,” he said. “She’s not crazy about it, but she knows Dad already promised and that I mean to do it sooner or later. Dad always said you were one of the best pilots he knew. He would have wanted you to teach me. What do you say, Erin?”

  Erin’s breath came quicker, like a countdown to disaster, and she covered her mouth to hide her trembling lips. She shook her head idly, realizing that she would have to tell him. Only her mind refused to come up with the right words.

  “Is it because you aren’t flying now?” he asked. “Because you’re in scheduling or whatever? ’Cause, I mean, you could make an exception just for me, couldn’t you? No big deal. Just a few lessons.”

  “It isn’t that I don’t want to,” Erin said. “It isn’t that at all.”

  Jason’s eyes cut through to the truth, and a small frown formed between his brows. “Erin, you’re not scared to fly, are you? That’s not why you’ve quit, is it?”

  His perceptiveness was almost too much for her, but she shook her head in denial. “Of course not,” she lied. “It’s just that…”

  “Just what?” he asked impatiently. “You can tell me, Erin. We’re friends, remember?”

  “I have these dreams at night, Jason,” Erin whispered, offering the only explanation she was able to give. “They’ve shaken me up, and I don’t know what to do about them.”

  Jason paused, as if he didn’t know whether Erin had changed the subject or not. “Why do you have to do anything about them?” he asked. “If they’re just dreams and all.”

  “Because if I don’t do something about it,” she said, “I’ll never get my life straight again. And I’ll never be able to teach anyone—much less you—how to fly.”

  “Oh.” There was perfect acceptance in his calm voice.

  Erin thought a moment, then looked at the little boy who meant so much to her—Mick’s son, the symbol of life going on…If only she could borrow from his strength to recharge her own. If only he could be the catalyst to bring her back to life. After a moment, she touched his knee. “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “How would it be if I called your mom from a pay phone or something and asked her if you could come to Pioneer Airport with me?”

  His small face lit up like a lamp turned on after ages of darkness. “For a lesson? Today?”

  “No, no,” she clarified. “Not today. Later, maybe, after I’ve worked some things out. But not today.”

  “Then why do you want to go there?”

  She glanced down at a fingernail, studied its shape with too close attention, to lessen the gravity of what she was facing. “I have a bone to pick with a little Cessna that’s been getting the best of me. If I knew you were inside the building watching, I might be able to beat it yet.”

  Jason lifted his shoulders. “Sure. I’ll even go up with you.” He got up and dusted off his pants.

  “No,” she said quickly. “Not today, Jason. I just need you there…on the ground.”

  “Okay,” he said again. “Let’s go.”

  A tense knot of apprehension tightened in her chest as they started back to her car, but Erin knew that Mick’s son might be just the one to give her the courage she needed. For he seemed to have more than enough for both of them.

  Erin forced the plane forward, not allowing herself a chance to divert down any of the paths of thought that had kept her from flying until now. Jason was inside the terminal, watching without a clue as to the turbulent emotions raging in her now. He probably thought it was perfectly natural to see Erin fly. After all, she was the woman who would teach him.

  And so she kept the plane moving, contacting the tower when it was necessary, ignoring the skeptical tone in the controller’s voice. He had cleared her for takeoff to no avail too many other times. She would not let Jason know that his father’s crash had crippled her. If he could summon enough courage to fly at only nine years old, then she certainly could at twenty-nine.

  She would do it for Jason. And for Mick. And for Addison, to prove that he was wrong—dead wrong—about her blaming Mick without realizing it. The crash wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t.

  She waited for clearance to take off, then began her taxi down the runway, picking up speed as she went. Like a manacle, fear threatened to choke her, but she didn’t allow herself to succumb to its intimidation. Jason was watching.

  She held her breath as her wheels left the ground, and she wrestled the overwhelming urge to put the plane back down, as she had done earlier. Perspiration beaded on her temples and lips, and her heart hammered at life-threatening speed. But still she climbed, because Jason was watching.

  “You shouldn’t have done it, Mick!” she shouted again as her hands trembled at the controls. “You shouldn’t have crashed!”

  And on the heels of her soul-deep cry came Addison’s words that morning. You’re blaming him, too…scared to death you’ll make the same mistakes…

  Shaking her head in fierce denial, she reached the outer limits of the airport traffic area, staying away from the busy airways, and skirted out over the Gulf. Her hands trembled at the instruments, and tears came to her eyes.

  “You’re wrong, Addison!” she shouted furiously.

  You have to see the truth before you can get over the crash, echoed his words of that morning. You can’t run away.

  Anger seethed, and she ground her teeth, determined to prove him wrong. But one problem loomed up before her like another aircraft on a collision course.

  Addison was right…again.

  She would have to face the truth soon. But not now.

  Tha
t’s enough, she told herself. I don’t have to put myself through this. I’ve gotten up, stayed up, so now I can get back down before it’s too late. But her declaration had more to do with her battle with her emotions than it had to do with flying, and that became more clear to her the more distance she flew.

  Jason was watching, so she made herself stay up a little longer, disciplined herself to face the realizations flying at her like an ocean wind. Keeping her altitude low, she followed a circular path around the city. More tears carved paths down her face, while truth, like a surgical instrument, carved at her heart.

  “I’m sorry, Mick,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  Sorry. Sorry that you’ve gone. Sorry for your son. Sorry for the anger. Sorry for the blame…

  “Oh, my Lord. Is it true?” she whispered. “The blame…the blame…”

  She did blame him, she finally admitted. The horror and disloyalty of that particular truth gripped her, along with the acknowledgment that she was afraid she’d make the same mistakes, crash the plane, kill not only herself but countless others. But a memory from years ago surfaced in her mind. A memory of Mick sitting beside her, his calm, gentle voice admonishing her to depend on herself more than on him. You’re as good a pilot as anybody I know, Erin. Trust yourself…trust yourself.

  And Jason was watching.

  The sound of the engine purring beneath her seemed to calm her terror a bit, just as confronting the truth seemed to anesthetize her a little, though it still unsettled her. The airconditioning system began to cool the compartment, making her feel more at ease. Erin glanced out the window, half-expecting a brand-new attack of panic to assault her. She scanned the city stretching beneath her like an enlarged map, and found herself marveling at the beauty of the land, the bayous threading beneath her, the majestic, tree-lined lake. She flew over Promised Land, where Madeline worked, its looming rides and fancy hotels spread out like tiny toys beneath her.

  Erin hadn’t gone more than twenty miles when the thought struck her full force. She had come as close as she’d come in weeks to feeling complete peace. It was in her grasp.