by R. D. Kardon
For a second Tris wondered whether he’d given her the right address. She reached into his pocket where his wallet half stuck out and checked his driver’s license. Right place.
“Larry, this is your house.”
Tris helped him up by taking both of his hands, then stood behind him and gently pushed the unsteady Ross to the front door. He didn’t try to touch her again. It took some doing, but she found the right key. The moment she stepped into his house, she couldn’t wait to leave.
Luckily, no alarm went off. Ross tripped over the threshold and stumbled to the brown leather couch in his living room and promptly passed out. Tris could hear him snoring as she clicked the front door shut behind her.
Eighteen
THE NEXT MORNING, Tris woke up early, despite being exhausted from the night before. She padded into her tidy kitchen to start the Mr. Coffee, sluggishly searching for the filters in the pantry.
When she opened the door, something rolled off the high shelf and fell to the floor. Still bleary-eyed and a bit startled, she couldn’t identify it at first and bent over to grab it.
She froze. It was Bron’s tiny flashlight, the one he used to check the airplane during night flights. He’d said he’d lost it on the road, but somehow it had migrated into her kitchen. The way things tend to do in a home.
After he died, Tris thought she’d packed up all of the items he’d left at her apartment. She didn’t want them popping up, bringing back painful memories.
Tris stared at the cylindrical reminder on the kitchen floor. She couldn’t pick it up and instead stepped over it to finish making coffee. She didn’t look at it once as the coffee brewed.
Tris hurried out of the kitchen with her steaming mug. She sat in a worn wing chair, one of the many things her mother made her take from her childhood home when she left Pittston. Exeter was only 100 miles away, but to her family, it could just as well have been on another continent.
“You’ll want this chair, honey,” her mother had said, “to remind you of home.”
As if she needed a chair to remember. Tris was anxious to leave her mother’s house and fought against taking anything with her. But, she secretly liked the chair.
Tris wished she could be like other people, warmed by memories of hearth and home. For thirteen years of her life, right up until the moment she decided to leave home and pointed her car north toward Exeter with the U-Haul attached, she’d listened to whispered conversations about the day her mother and step-father would have the tiny house in Pittston all to themselves. Tris hoped they had waited until she had gotten through the first stop sign before popping champagne.
But her mother was right about the chair, now tucked in the corner of her bedroom. She curled her feet up beneath her and realized she’d fallen asleep in the clothes she’d worn on the Asheville trip.
Tris was a mess. Slept in her clothes. Frightened by a mini-Maglite in her own kitchen. Marginalized by her training captain.
And Ross. She couldn’t begin to process his behavior. She wanted—no, desperately needed—to have a real conversation with him about Deter. But he drank so much so fast. And then, in the car, he’d transformed from the helpful co-worker who came to her defense with Deter into a lecherous drunk.
Bile rose in her throat when Tris remembered how Ross tried to grope her. She’d soon have a chance to see if he held it together better on the road. A lot of guys went overboard when their families were out of town. He was probably enjoying a rare family-free night. She just hoped she never had to shove him away again.
Deter was another problem entirely. Bottom line, Tris needed him. Her mentor Diana had told her horror stories about ex-military pilots she flew with at the freight carrier. But Diana had studied at the Air Force Academy for two years, so she was better acquainted with and equipped to handle their personalities. Tris wished Diana hadn’t moved to Brussels. She’d be the perfect person to talk to right now.
If she told Danny about yesterday, beginning with Deter and ending with driving drunk Ross home, he’d probably say, “I told you so.” He’d be right, too. “Corporate pilots,” he’d say, “are a different breed. ‘Kick the tires, light the fires.’” He’d laugh, using the old cliché to describe pilots who didn’t like following procedures. Bron would say the same.
Tris looked over at a picture of her and Bron on the beach in Nassau, still in its frame on the chipped bedside table. Would he have been proud of her, glad she drove Ross home? Afraid for her, being in the car with a man who could get violent and hurt her? Just pissed that Ross drank so much in the first place when he knew he had to drive?
Her mind drifted further. Bron always called her after he completed a trip, even if he just left a message. In the car with the radio on, they’d compete over what year a song came out. He always won. And he’d smile, his grin like a string of piano keys.
Thoughts of Bron overcame her if she wasn’t vigilant, and today she didn’t have the energy to resist. Pictures of him were sprinkled around the bedroom in frame after frame. In some he stood by her side; in others, he was at the airport, and one was taken in the very chair where Tris sat now with her knees pulled into her chest, arms tight against her body, folded into a ball. She felt his hand smooth her limp, brown hair against the curve of her neck in a way that always made her feel like Rapunzel. She allowed herself the luxury of imagining the sound of his key in the lock, the whoosh of the opening door. Bron coming home.
Reality cracked like a slap. He’d never be home—or anywhere—again. That wasn’t a problem she could ever solve.
Deter, however, had to be. He was a colossal asshole, but what else did she actually know about him? Something frustrated him, she was sure of that. She’d dismissed Ross’s inebriated take that it wasn’t personal, or specific to her. If not, then what was it?
Tris didn’t realize she’d gotten up and paced over to her kitchen, careful to avoid the memory on the floor. She’d opened all the cabinets at least twice but hadn’t touched anything in them. She opened the refrigerator door and stood there, cataloging the same items that had been in the exact same spot the last time she’d looked. Logically it was only a matter of time before things evened out at Tetrix, but right now the job fit like a pair of jeans she was trying to diet into.
Agitated, Tris stomped into her living room. She stood in front of her treasured book collection. Just the sight of them soothed her. They were mostly old, well-read paperbacks, yet Tris valued each volume. She’d kept every book she had ever bought, from Pulitzer Prize winners to the ‘brain candy’ she’d occasionally pick up to pass the time.
The first novel she remembered reading just for fun was Sidney Sheldon’s The Other Side of Midnight. It was also the only true romance novel she’d ever read, before the genre even existed, back when The Thorn Birds was only considered historical fiction. Both paperbacks sat like neighbors on her shelves.
Tris settled her gaze on a couple of copies of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening—the subject of her master’s thesis. Then, on the eye-level shelf, she spotted her worn copy of Lonesome Dove. It was still her favorite novel from the time she bought the paperback in 1986. Some of the pages were worn, with triangles missing from the corners where Tris had marked her place.
She flipped through the pages but only saw the names Deter and Ross as the characters. Ross would wake up with a headache. If he remembered his behavior, she hoped he’d have the grace to apologize. She could handle Deter, but luckily she had a few days off before their next scheduled training flight.
Tris reached for The Clan of the Cave Bear. She related to Jean Auel’s heroine, a woman who also struggled to belong. Today, Tris would draw strength from Ayla’s journey. She should probably study the Astral manual, but instead, she spent a few hours curled up in her mother’s chair with an old friend.
All while that little piece of Bron lay on the kitchen floor.
Nineteen
“WHAT’S THAT?” DETER asked his wife Gerri, who walked toward him
holding a tray filled with a chip-n-dip, glasses and a frosty pitcher. He relaxed on the loveseat in their new gazebo as the sun set.
“Margaritas!” Her wide-set blue eyes twinkled as she arranged the drinks, a basket of his favorite chips, and her delicious homemade guacamole on the patio set’s glass-top table. It was late October; Indian summer in the Midwest, and the temperature was still in the high 60’s at twilight.
“Thanks, hon.” Deter picked up a glass and moistened the rim with his index finger before he twisted it in the salt dish. He poured a drink for Gerri and then one for himself.
“Have you heard from Steven?” Their son had just returned from his honeymoon, but they hadn’t spoken to him since the wedding three weeks ago.
“He’ll be here this weekend. You’re not flying are you?” She tucked a strand of silver hair behind her ear.
“Nope.” Deter looked up at a bird resting on the branch of a sassafras tree. The Gulfstream left for Hawaii on Saturday for a one-week sit, Zorn and Ross the crew. It was an all-expense paid vacation for those guys; just the kind of trip he’d love to be on. “I’ll be home this weekend. All I have to fly this week are a couple of training flights with the new girl.”
“What’s her name again?”
“Patricia. Well, she goes by Tris. Kind of odd, right?”
Gerri smiled. “Well, Ed, have you asked her how she got her nickname? Is she so awful that you can’t have a conversation with her?”
“Of course not.” He took a long pull from his drink and munched on some chips dipped in guacamole. “She’s actually very intelligent. She reads a lot, like I do. No, it’s not her personally. It’s just the way this all came about…”
Gerri sat next to him on the loveseat, her knees bent and feet pulled up underneath her. “You have to get over that, hon. You said she could fly, right?”
“Oh yeah. I mean, for her experience level, she’s fine. But the Astral is a real challenge for her.”
“Oh well, what about you, Ed? What’s next for you? When is the Gulfstream coming around?”
Deter put his arm around his wife of twenty-nine years. “Not for a while yet, I guess. Damned if they’ll tell me. Can’t believe they put it off—again—because of…” he hesitated but simply couldn’t stop himself, “…some under-qualified girl.” He tensed, pulling his arm off of Gerri’s shoulder. She caught it and tugged it back around her.
Deter couldn’t shake how much this co-pilot hire bothered him. It was just like when he lost his first chance at command to whats-her-name…Carey? Casey? No, Cami.
Deter had few regrets about his time in the navy. But he made one huge, unrecoverable mistake: his grades in flight training. Everything about his naval aviation career came back to his grades. He wished he’d studied harder. That Cami was number one in her class and made the jet cut with ease. Deter was young, stupid; he partied more than he studied. He ended up in the C-2, delivering supplies to carriers instead of launching off of their decks to go fight.
This new girl, this Tris, even resembled Cami: slim, straight brown hair, average face. Looked him right in the eye all the time, too.
He cringed when Tris showed up for training sessions over-prepared. She always had the right answer. But she still didn’t have the experience—the gravitas—to ask the right questions. She wanted to know what it meant when some light came on, instead of how to maximize fuel burn and passenger comfort during those longer flights. The stuff that really mattered.
Deter slapped a mosquito that had already taken a bite of his forearm and fled the scene. “So, what time will the kids be here?”
“Sunday at noon. You gonna grill?” Gerri bent her head back to rest it on her husband’s chest.
“You bet.” He looked around their yard at the new steam room, hot tub, and flowerbeds and considered how lucky he was. After all those years in the navy, to live like this. “Steaks for everyone,” he announced as Gerri burrowed under his arm, looked up, and kissed him on the jaw.
Deter looked at his wife, his beloved Gerri. She kept up with the kids, the house, always had. Classic military wife, now reaping the rewards after all those difficult years; the constant moves, raising two kids practically alone as Deter swooped in for stretches of time between deployments. This is what Cami should have been doing—what Tris should be doing. Supporting a pilot instead of trying to be one.
Twenty
RAIN FELL LIKE machine gun fire and pelted the tin roof of the Tetrix hangar. Tris paced around the pilots’ cubicles. Just six weeks into the job, it was time for her qualification flight in the Astral. Deter would be in the left seat with Zorn observing from the jump seat.
Zorn and Deter were late. Figured. Tris dumped her flight bag on the Astral and wandered up to the front desk with black coffee for herself and one with a little cream and Sweet’N Low for Ann-Marie. They were building a work friendship one cup at a time.
The two women barely had time to say hello when Zorn breezed into the reception area from the private garage only he and Willett had access to. Everyone called it “executive parking.”
Zorn strode right up to Tris. “You can pre-flight when Deter gets here. I have some paperwork to do.” He turned toward his office. “And we’re going to Maxwell, by the way,” he called to her over his shoulder.
Tris smiled at Ann-Marie. This was good luck. She knew the procedures at Exeter and Maxwell practically by heart, so she’d be able to concentrate on the airplane and her audience.
The two women looked up at the clock simultaneously. It was 10:40 a.m. Deter still hadn’t arrived. Ann-Marie shook her head and grimaced. “Typical,” she said.
Tris grinned, nodded, and went to check the weather forecasts for Exeter and Maxwell. The animated color radar showed rain along their route, with stronger storms spread out at least a hundred miles from both locations. The worst weather was moving east at a brisk clip and might just be out of their way by the end of the flight.
Deter threw the interior door against its stop and kept walking as it slammed shut. He ignored Tris on his way to his desk as rain dripped off the top of his head, the tip of his nose, and the hem of his coat.
Fascinated, she watched as he danced his way out of his rain-coat—he slid the right sleeve completely down his arm, then grabbed his collar and swung the slicker around and pulled the left arm down and away from his body. Only when this elaborate ritual was complete did he speak.
“Where’s Zorn? Is he ready?”
“In his office.”
He walked in the general direction of the coffee machine.
Deter looked like he would rather swallow rusty nails than fly with her. She hoped he’d at least keep his cool in the cockpit with Zorn watching.
The door cracked open again. Ross walked in, tossed his umbrella to the side of the door, and shook off his raincoat. They hadn’t seen each other since O’Slattery’s almost four weeks ago. Tris had been joined at the hip with Deter for training, and Ross had been in and out flying the Gulfstream.
“Hey there,” he said brightly. “I was hoping to get here before you launched. Wanted to wish you good luck. Big flight today.”
Tris looked away. She hoped Ross wouldn’t want to talk about that night. Frankly, she would have preferred to avoid him altogether today. But here he was: a colleague being pleasant and friendly.
“Do you have a trip today?” Tris hadn’t seen anything on the schedule for the Gulfstream.
“Nope. Just came in to wish you luck.”
“Really? That’s nice. Thanks.”
“Where are you guys going? Maxwell?”
“Yup. How’d you know?”
“Oh, that’s where Zorn always likes to go for qualification flights. Lots of approaches, not that busy during the day, not that far away.” Ross was right: Maxwell’s air traffic consisted mostly of freight dogs—pilots who only flew in the dark.
Deter burst back into the pilot area and interrupted her conversation. “Let’s go,” he called and starte
d toward the hangar. He was severely bowlegged but still moved so fast Tris had to jog to catch up. She shot a glance toward the computer and realized she hadn’t printed the weather.
“I’ll get the weather and bring it out to you guys,” Ross said, as if reading her mind.
She smiled and caught up with Deter. He stood at the forward side of the entrance door and turned to Tris.
“Ok. Pre-flight,” he ordered.
“Sure. Do you want me to tell you what I’m doing, uh, looking at?”
“You’d better. Because if you don’t, I won’t know if you’re doing it right.”
Tris began at the airplane’s entrance door, as suggested in the manual. She closed and locked the door from the outside and opened it again. Check.
She worked her way toward the nose of the Astral, examining the probes poking out of the left side of the plane. They provided airspeed, altitude, and vertical speed information inside the cockpit by measuring the air pressure outside. They had to be clear. They were.
Walking a good ten feet in front of the aircraft, Tris lined up dead center with the nose, and looked at the Astral head on.
Deter didn’t even wait until she planted her feet. “What are you doing? This isn’t in the checklist.”
Tris felt a telltale tingling in her arms and hands—her internal early warning sign that Deter might erupt. She took a breath before responding. “Checking to see if the plane is level.” If the Astral sat low on one side, it could indicate a number of things, all of which were bad. She’d picked up this technique from Bron somewhere along the line.
Deter said nothing, so Tris continued along the right side of the fuselage. She saw some oil stains on the outside of the number two engine nacelle but didn’t make much of it. There were no drips on the ground.
Tris was about to check the oil level on number one, but the gauge position on the inside of the nacelle next to the fuselage made it hard to read from the ground. Tris lowered the left side baggage door and climbed up to get a better look.