First Light

by Bill Rancic

  Phil stood up from the table as Kerry got up to go. There was a crease of consternation between her eyebrows. “Of course,” he said. “I’m sorry, Kerry. I didn’t mean to give you the impression that I—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Kerry said. “I shouldn’t have gone off on you. You didn’t do anything wrong; it was my fault.” She looked at Judy and said, “You got this?”

  “Go on. I’ll fill you in later.”

  She grabbed her coat and bag and headed out the door. Phil watched her go, listening to the blood rush through his ears. She’d never blown up at him like that before. He found the experience far more uncomfortable than he would have liked to admit.

  Now there were just the two of them left at the table in the diner. “She’s marrying someone else,” Judy said, stirring sweetener into her coffee and looking at the place where Kerry had gone. “You aren’t making things any easier on her. Or any of us.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Phil said, picking up his tablet once again, but the words were swimming before his eyes. “I don’t have any kind of a problem with Kerry. I never have.”

  “Of course you don’t,” Judy said, letting out a sigh. “Now, where were we again?”

  5

  Daniel had just hung up with Bob when his satellite phone rang again. “Babe?” Kerry asked. “What’s going on? I heard Bob call you.”

  Daniel put a hand on the wall to steady himself against the movement of the ship. Outside the bridge, the subs were just coming back up to the surface after a long night underwater. The waves were rolling underneath them, spray lashing the deck just outside the window, and Daniel could hear the voices of the sub crew over the conn as they maneuvered into position below the ship.

  “Well,” he said, his voice thick with exhaustion, “we got the leak fixed finally. Got the subs down to the bottom this morning and got the wellhead clamped. The guys are just coming back aboard.”

  “And everything’s okay there? No one’s hurt?”

  “It was a long night,” he said, though that was putting a nicer face on it than he would admit—just getting the subs in the water had been two hours of hell, and one of the ship’s crew was being treated for frostbite on his hands—“but it’s all fixed, and now the cleanup can start. Tell everyone we’re going home tomorrow. For real this time.”

  “And you?” she asked. “You’re okay?”

  “I will be, when I get warm and get some sleep,” he said.

  “I could kill Bob,” she said, “keeping you and those poor guys outside all night in those temperatures. He’s lucky you didn’t all freeze to death.”

  “I don’t want to think about Bob or even hear his name right now. I told him if he ever pulled a stunt like that again, I’d quit on the spot.”

  “No wonder he was so angry.”

  “I don’t really care if he was.” One large wave rolled the ship from side to side, met with shouting by the crew. “Meet me at the room later? I want to pick up where we left off last night.”

  He could practically hear her smiling. “You sure you have the energy for that?” she asked.

  “You better believe it.”

  She laughed. “See you in a few.”

  He hung up the phone, feeling every bone in his body ache, feeling exhaustion settle into his legs, the small of his back. In a couple of hours he’d be back at the hotel in Barrow in bed with the woman he loved. He’d make love to her and afterward they’d fall asleep together, and he had no intention of leaving his bed again until it was time to go home to Chicago.

  When Daniel arrived back at the hotel at last, Kerry was waiting for him. He opened the door to his room to find that she’d opened a bottle of wine, turned the heat all the way up and burrowed under the blankets, so that when Daniel dropped his wet, frozen clothes on the carpet and crawled under the covers beside her, the only thing he encountered was Kerry—naked, warm and ready to pick up where they’d left off the night before.

  “Well,” he said, his cold feet brushing against her leg, “looks like it’s your turn to warm me up for a change. You up for it?”

  She pulled him down to kiss her. “Of course,” she said. “Fair’s fair.”

  —

  At nine the following morning, the crisis-management team of Petrol, Inc., arrived in the terminal at Anchorage International Airport to catch their connecting flight back to Chicago. The hard part was over, Kerry thought—the flight from Barrow to Anchorage on the 737 had been rough in parts, the wind shuddering the wings at takeoff and landing, but nothing serious enough to do more than make her look up for a moment in surprise. There was a big storm coming inland from the Pacific—a giant typhoon moving up from the southwest—but the pilot had said the rough takeoff was par for the course for a flight over Alaska, so no one had panicked.

  Still, when Kerry saw the lights of Anchorage below them as the plane came in for its landing, she was immediately relieved. They were below the Arctic Circle again, and in a few hours they’d be home in Chicago, where even in the winter the sun came up for several good hours, and going outside didn’t require covering every inch of exposed skin. She was watching the monitors in the terminal as the weatherman reported seasonal temperatures of 29 degrees in Chicago, with a light wind off the lake bringing a few flurries to the city and south suburbs. After two weeks of bitter cold in Barrow, such a forecast sounded practically like summertime.

  Outside the windows she could see the clouds gathering, the weather moving northeast from the sea toward Anchorage. On the Departures board, a few West Coast flights had been canceled—Seattle, San Francisco, Portland—but so far the flights to places farther east were still listed as “on time.” She was eager to get going; the storm sounded bad enough that if they got grounded, they might be stuck in Alaska for several more days. Please, please, she thought. I just want to get home.

  She still hadn’t told Daniel about the pregnancy test she’d taken the day before. After leaving the diner, she’d gone straight to the pharmacy, bought the test and taken it back to her hotel room. When only one little pink line had appeared on the stick, she had been enormously relieved. When she looked again five minutes later and there were two little pink lines, she’d had to grip the edge of the sink to keep from falling over.

  She’d wanted to tell Daniel when he first came in. She’d thought about it, even had the pregnancy test on her nightstand all ready to show him. But he’d been so cold, so exhausted, that after they made love he’d fallen immediately asleep. She’d lain awake half the night, worrying about how to tell him. Then the morning came too early, and in the rush to pack up and get to the airport, they hadn’t really had time to talk.

  “Hey,” Daniel said, poking Kerry in the ribs. “You awake?”

  “Mostly,” she answered. “I was thinking about home. A lot on my mind right now.”

  “Me, too,” he said. “I was thinking about taking the rest of the day off. Maybe an early dinner. What do you think?”

  “Hmm,” she said, distracted. Taking the day off sounded nice, but it was hard to see how she’d manage it. She took out her phone and checked her e-mail: two messages to answer from reporters, and four voicemails, three of which were from her mother. Then she looked at her calendar: two meetings next week, a doctor’s appointment she might need to reschedule. In a few hours they’d be home, in their condo with the view of the lake. Kerry was thinking of the things she had to do: pick up the dry cleaning and the mail; call her sister about their mother’s upcoming birthday; e-mail the president of the condo association about a leaking water pipe. And those were just the non-work-related things she had to take care of. In the five hours it took to get home, she wondered, what might go wrong at the office? What if the White House decided to get involved in the company’s dispute with the Russians? What if that pushy reporter from Reuters decided to run that environmental-impact story she’d been da
ncing around all week? What if the company’s people in Barrow couldn’t get the leaked oil properly cleaned up?

  And what if Daniel wasn’t thrilled to find out he was going to be a father? What would she do then?

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe it would be nice just to stay home.”

  Daniel took the phone out of her hands and turned it off. “Why don’t you give the list a rest for a little while?” he asked, and handed it back to her. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  She tried to keep her voice steady and asked, “What’s that?”

  “The wedding.”

  That spring, he’d surprised Kerry on her birthday with a helicopter ride over the lake and a diamond ring he’d offered her with a view of the city below them. He’d held out the black velvet box with the glittering diamond inside, and it had taken her several seconds to realize what she was seeing, what Daniel was doing as he took her hand and slid the ring on it. Through the noise of the helicopter and the roaring in her ears, she barely heard him ask the question, barely heard herself saying, “What? Wait, what are you saying?” and making him repeat it again. She’d said yes, of course. Wholeheartedly yes. It was a wonderful surprise, she told him that night—she hadn’t suspected a thing.

  But since then they’d had trouble trying to figure out a date for the ceremony. Their work schedules were notoriously subject to last-minute changes and disruptions—crises by their nature being unpredictable—so to every request for a two-week window off sometime the following year, Bob had said no, no, I need you then, there’s too much to do, I can’t have you both gone at the same time.

  “It’s going to be a little difficult for us to get married otherwise,” Daniel said to him once.

  Bob had only laughed and said Kerry and Daniel should have a quickie ceremony at the courthouse one afternoon with a few friends and take their honeymoon sometime later, when they had some downtime. “That’s what I did,” he boasted. “And you don’t hear my wife complaining.”

  “Of course not,” Kerry had said later on, when Daniel told her what Bob had said. “Bob’s wife isn’t allowed to speak in public.”

  For a little while they had dropped the subject. There should be a lull in the fall, they’d thought at first—then the fall had been unexpectedly busy. Maybe a Christmas wedding, they’d thought, and then there was the trip to Alaska. Even if they started planning the minute they got back home, a spring wedding would still be difficult to arrange, with dates for churches and reception venues hard to come by, not to mention any number of disasters that might happen on any date of their choosing. They’d given up on the idea of a honeymoon right after the ceremony, even, but still Bob had refused to let the rest of the team handle things in Kerry and Daniel’s absence if something should come up. If they could manage without you, they wouldn’t be assistant directors, was what he’d told them, his shoulders shrugging inside his twelve-hundred-dollar suit.

  So no date had been set so far. In the last few weeks, Kerry had noticed Daniel getting restless about the subject, bringing it up more and more as a sore spot when talking about Bob—often as a joke, though Kerry could always sense the irritation behind the lighthearted words. In all the work they’d had to do over the Beaufort spill, she’d stopped worrying about it until Daniel brought it up while they sat in the airport terminal, waiting for their flight to be called.

  “What about the wedding?”

  “I think it’s time we get serious about setting a date.”

  “Oh,” she said, her head swimming. At the moment the wedding sounded like one more problem she was going to have to deal with. She didn’t really feel like digging into that hornet’s nest, along with everything else.

  “You sound surprised.”

  “I am,” she said. “Have you been talking to my mother again?”

  “She loves you,” he said, picking up her left hand and kissing the diamond on her third finger. Apparently he had been talking to her mother. “She’ll feel better when it’s official. I’ll feel better.”

  “My mother wants the big church wedding so all her friends can see us.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with a big church wedding.”

  “There will be if we can’t settle on a date. I’m just so tired of people asking us when we’re actually going to go through with it.” Not to mention the fact that now I’ll need to buy my wedding dress in the maternity section.

  “So,” she said, forcing a smile, “think Bob will relent on Memorial Day weekend, if we ask him now? Want to give it a shot while he’s still in a good mood?”

  Daniel looked over his shoulder toward the spot where Bob sat talking on the phone again. “I don’t think he’s ever going to let us plan ahead. He’s made that pretty clear.”

  “So, what, then? You want to elope? Head to Vegas and come back with the deed done already?”

  “No, I really want our families there.”

  “So what do you have in mind, then?” She looked around the terminal, full of her co-workers and friends. Home. I’ll tell him at home, when we can be alone. It’s just a few hours. I’ll feel better then. More calm.

  Daniel grinned at her, his teeth flashing white, the corner of his mouth turning up the way it did when he was pleased with himself for figuring out the answer to a sticky problem. “Let’s have a flash-mob wedding.”

  “A what?” Kerry asked. She didn’t quite understand what he was saying.

  “I saw some guy arrange it for his fiancée on YouTube. They showed up at a mall in L.A. and the groom had the whole thing set up for the bride as a surprise.”

  “A mall? That’s so romantic.”

  “We don’t have to do it in a mall. Look,” he said, rubbing her engagement ring with his thumb, “we can’t reserve a space because we can’t get Bob to give us time off. So let’s not take time off. Let’s just show up someplace where we’d love to get married and get married there. Have the guests show up, the florist, you and me in our wedding clothes, and get married wherever we like on whatever day we choose.”

  “If you’re kidding—”

  “I’m not,” he said, his face losing its usual look of barely restrained amusement and settling finally on the expression he’d worn the day he proposed to her—serious, adoring. “I want to marry you. I’m tired of waiting.”

  Kerry was picturing it now: their family and friends gathering in the lobby of the Field Museum, maybe, or maybe the observation deck of some massive skyscraper, everyone watching, a minister in hurry-up mode before they were all thrown out by security, their family and friends in on the planning, everyone laughing, everyone hoping they could pull it off in time. It could be fun. It could be a little bit precarious, a little bit dangerous—and if there was something Kerry lived for, it was rising to a challenge.

  Not to mention the wedding would take place well before the baby was born. Don’t get ahead of yourself, Kerry. One problem at a time.

  “What do you say?” Daniel asked. “Want to?”

  She laughed and leaned over to kiss him. “You’re crazy,” she said, “but I love it. Where should we do it?”

  It would have to be someplace a crowd of people could get into and out of, at least for twenty minutes or so, Daniel said. It would be winter in Chicago, so anyplace outdoors was off the table. Daniel suggested the Art Institute, which Kerry liked—they could get married in front of the enormous Seurat painting, maybe—but then she suggested the observation deck of the Hancock building, which Daniel liked even more. The views of the city below, the green curve of the lake, the lights of Navy Pier. “We can get married in front of the whole city,” he said. “I love it!”

  “I love you,” Kerry said. So it was decided. When they got home, she’d start making phone calls—but not to the condo association president. She’d need to send invitations, hire a florist, find a minister willing to do somet
hing this crazy . . .

  “What date should we pick?” she asked.

  “What do you say about January first?” Daniel said.

  “New Year’s.”

  Kerry was still feeling the blood rushing in her ears when the flight attendant came over the loudspeaker. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “In a moment we’ll begin boarding passengers for Flight 806 to Chicago . . .” Their flight was leaving on time after all; in just a matter of hours they’d be back in Chicago. Back home.

  Just for a second she pictured herself holding the baby, Daniel’s baby, and she nearly cried right there, in line for the flight home, hugging her arms around herself. Maybe it wasn’t planned, maybe it wasn’t the best possible timing, but surely if two people could make it work, they would.

  “So what do you think?” Daniel asked. “Should we go for it?”

  “I can’t wait,” said Kerry, pulling her carry-on behind her. “Let’s get going.”

  6

  By the time the plane was heading down the runway, the snow was falling fast and thick and the wind was rising, a low guttural lurch that shook the plane from side to side as the engines picked up speed, that shuddered the metal fuselage as the wheels left the tarmac. From his seat in the emergency-exit row, Daniel could see the clouds closing in as they climbed higher and higher in the sky above Anchorage.

  “Thank God,” Kerry said when they were airborne. “I was afraid they were going to ground us.”

  Daniel took out a magazine he’d bought at the airport. “We’re lucky. In a few minutes we’ll be up above the storm, and then we’ll be home.”

  “Good.” She seemed distracted, or maybe it was just tired. Daniel picked up her hand and kissed it.

  When the pilot did come on the intercom, he only said that although there might be a little chop ahead during the first hour of the flight due to the bad weather coming in from the Pacific, he expected the rest of the trip to be smooth sailing. “Still, please keep your seat belts fastened while you remain in your seats,” he said. “Wouldn’t want any of you to bump your heads if we experience some sudden turbulence, and enjoy the rest of the flight.”