Freefall

by Jessica Barry

  “Allison, please! You’re not making any sense!” Liz’s voice was panicked now, and I could tell that I was scaring her.

  Ben’s footsteps were hushed on the plush carpet. “Baby? Are you here?”

  “I have to go,” I whispered. My heart thudded in my chest. “Please, just do what I said.”

  “But—”

  I ended the call and shoved my phone into the pocket of my robe. “I’ll be out in a minute!” I called. I gripped the sides of the sink with both hands and stared at my reflection in the mirror. My cheeks were flushed, eyes glassy, and I could see my pulse pecking at the base of my neck. My voice screamed inside my skull. You stupid, silly bitch. What were you thinking, calling her like that? How do you know they still won’t get to her? How do you know they won’t get to you first?

  No. I shut my eyes against myself and took a breath. You had to warn her. You did what you had to do. Now get your shit together.

  Ben smiled when I opened the bathroom door. “C’mere,” he said, opening his arms, and I walked into them, numb. “Your hair’s still wet,” he murmured, nuzzling his face in my neck. “Did you only just get out of the shower? Lazy girl.”

  I forced myself not to pull away. “I wasn’t expecting you home so soon,” I said. “I thought you were supposed to be at that seminar.”

  He shrugged. “I blew it off.” He leaned over and kissed me on the lips. “Come on, get ready and we’ll go get a drink.”

  I dressed carefully, choosing the little white dress I knew he liked. I slipped into the bathroom and rubbed lotion into my bare legs and put on my makeup and blow-dried my hair, all the time thinking about Liz and fighting off swells of panic. I wondered if she was on the phone to Paul right now, relaying what I’d said. I wondered if they would believe me. Please, let them believe me.

  I stepped into my shoes and walked back into the bedroom. Ben was sitting on the edge of the bed, my phone cradled in his hands. My stomach lurched again. “Liz called,” he said, tossing the phone toward me.

  “Oh.” My stomach bucked. I stared at the screen. No missed calls. Bile rose in my throat. “Did you answer it?”

  “I saw her name come up so I said hi.” He looked at me steadily. “That okay?”

  “Of course!” I picked my engagement ring up off the vanity and slid it onto my finger. The diamond sparkled in the low light. “What did you guys talk about?” I worked to keep my voice even but it sounded strangled to my ears.

  “Nothing interesting.” I glanced over at him, and for a split second, I was sure I saw a flash of anger cross his face, but when I looked again his features were carefully arranged in a smile. “Come here,” he said, his hands trailing up the skirt of my dress.

  “You’ll smudge my lipstick,” I said, but I let myself be pulled down onto the bed. He flipped me onto my back and pinned my arms above my head. I stared up at him. I knew every inch of his face, but in that moment, he was a stranger to me.

  “Fuck your lipstick,” he murmured, and then his mouth was on mine and his hands were sliding across my body, pressing, kneading, searching, before he pushed himself inside me. I wasn’t ready for him, and the pain of it made me gasp, but he didn’t seem to notice. I squeezed my eyes shut against it. I thought of the passport in my bag, and the plane ticket tucked inside. It will be over soon, I promised myself, and I’ll be far, far away.

  He came quickly and rolled off, breathless. I watched as he pulled on his trousers and straightened his cuffs and ran his fingers through his hair. “Hurry up,” he said, tossing a glance my way. “We’ll be late.”

  I made my way unsteadily to the bathroom, where I fixed my hair and reapplied my lipstick. I was used to him being rough sometimes, had even asked for it on occasion, but this had been something else. Something pointed and cruel and designed to hurt.

  I pried open the back of my cell phone with shaking hands, dislodged the chip, and slid it into the locket of my necklace.

  I stared at my reflection in the mirror. Somewhere in my eyes, behind the blond hair and the mask of makeup, I saw a flash of something familiar. She’s still inside me somewhere, the woman I used to know, and I’m going to save her.

  And I swear to God I will make him pay.

  Maggie

  I stayed at the kitchen table for hours, searching for more information on Tony. He’d been married, that much had been true, and his wife had died of a heart attack the year before he was fired from the FDA. He’d worked there for almost twenty years, without so much as a single complaint until the whistle-blowing. His coworkers all said he’d never been a troublemaker. “A spotless record,” as one of the articles described it.

  I felt a tug in my stomach and realized I hadn’t eaten anything. I opened a cabinet door, pulled out a jar of peanut butter, and dug around the cutlery drawer for a spoon. My fingers curled around the Mickey Mouse teaspoon we’d brought home from Disney World nearly twenty-five years earlier. Ally had refused to eat with anything else for a year. Charles and I had once watched her try to eat a pork chop with that spoon and our eyes had met across the dinner table. “Should have sprung for the knife and fork,” he’d said, and Ally had scowled at her plate.

  I spooned peanut butter into my mouth and stared out at the backyard. In the moonlight, I could see the begonias I’d planted in June drooping heavily in their borders.

  I rubbed my eyes and looked up at the clock. It was past three already. My back ached from the hours spent sitting at the table staring at a screen. I poured a glass of water from the tap, gulping it down in a few greedy swallows, and headed into the darkened living room.

  I fell heavily into Charles’s chair and stared blankly into space. The sounds of the summer night were coming in through the screened windows, and the room was full of the muted sounds of crickets chirping and owls hooting and chipmunks and raccoons scurrying. There was a smell, too, of humid air and damp mulch and lingering heat.

  I was living in a world full of shadows.

  I felt a lump form in the hollow of my throat and waited for the tears to come. What was the use in trying to hold them back now? There was no one I was trying to be strong for. No reason for me to keep it together. Ally was still gone, and with Tony dead . . . I didn’t know how much more fight I had left in me. I felt old and tired and spent.

  I wished Charles were there. God, how I missed that man. His calm, sure voice, the glint in his eye when he was about to tell a joke, his cool palm resting on my hip as we slept. The smell of him in the morning. The rasp of his stubble against my cheek. The way we would look at each other when Ally was in the room, a mix of pride and awe.

  He would have known what to do. He would have taken my hand and squeezed it and told me not to worry, that we’d get to the bottom of all this, that it would be all right. He’d have been lying when he said it, but I’d have allowed myself to believe him, even if only for a minute. And that belief would have been a kind of grace.

  Maybe I should leave this place, I thought. Cut my losses and start fresh. Sell up, move to Florida, buy a little house or a condo near the ocean. Spend my days sitting in the sunshine with the other ghosts, waiting for our chance to be reunited with all the parts of ourselves we’d lost.

  I leaned back in the chair, closed my eyes, and listened to the crickets’ chorus in the grass until sleep pulled me down into its depths.

  172 Miles to Go

  Allison

  The radio stations keep switching in and out, country turning to rock turning back to country. It’s giving me a headache, so I snap the dial and roll down the window, letting the highway breeze cut through the stuffiness of the car. It’s a scorcher of a day, nearing ninety already, and I keep one eye on the temperature gauge. It holds steady, though, and I say a silent thanks to Chet for selling the car to me. I’m starting to think it’ll get me home after all.

  The car drove us through the city’s Sunday-deserted streets and deposited us at Midway airport in the early afternoon. Ben held my hand the entire ride,
occasionally glancing over to give me a wink. He knew I was a nervous flier, especially in the Mooney. It wasn’t that he was a bad pilot—the opposite, in fact—but it was rather the size of the tiny plane compared with the vast expanse of sky, like a toy suspended by some invisible child’s hand.

  We walked straight through the terminal and out onto the tarmac: security measures don’t apply to the rich. The plane was waiting for us, its propeller glinting in the unrelenting sun. The heat seemed to come from every direction, the air thick with fumes. Ben took my bag from me and swung it into the luggage compartment.

  “Come here,” he said, pulling me into him and kissing me hard. “I’m going to miss you, pretty girl.”

  I looked at him blankly. “What do you mean?”

  “Sam’s going to take you back to San Diego,” he said. “I’ve got a couple of things to take care of here.” I followed his eyes and watched as Sam strode across the tarmac to meet us, a leather bag slung across his shoulder. He raised a hand in greeting.

  My mind felt sluggish, like it was working at half speed. I tried to read his eyes but they were hidden behind dark sunglasses, and all I could see was my own stunned reflection staring back. “But—it’s your plane. You’re the pilot.”

  “Sam got his license at the same time as me. Did I never tell you that? He’s a real ace, this guy. Aren’t you, buddy?” Ben reached out and clapped him on the back. “You’ll be in safe hands with him.” The two men exchanged a look, and I saw the corners of Sam’s mouth twitch. The terror pierced through, like so much ice water running through my core.

  “Please, baby,” I pleaded, grabbing for his hand. “I miss you so much when you’re away, you know that. The house is so quiet without you. I want— I just— Please—” Fear was making me incoherent. I took a breath. “I could stay with you, keep you company . . .”

  He shook his head. “I’ll just be working the whole time—it’ll be boring for you. Better to get you back to San Diego. Liz told me you were having lunch next week—you wouldn’t want to miss it.” Ben read the confusion on my face. “I talked to her last night—remember? When you were in the shower?” I nodded, uncertain. His face twisted into a rigid smile. “She told me something else, too—the craziest story about you warning her that Paul was in some kind of trouble.” My vision swam. He reached up and cradled my chin in his tented fingers. “I thought you loved me,” he said gently, shaking his head in disbelief.

  I opened my mouth but no words came. The shock of it split me in two, and I felt for a second like my head had been removed from my body in one clean strike. Liz had betrayed me. I had betrayed Ben. I was totally and utterly alone, and now I was going to die.

  He took off his sunglasses and his eyes bored into mine. There was nothing in them that I recognized now, no warmth, no love. They were the cold, dead eyes of a killer. “Ben . . .” I whispered, but my throat swallowed the rest. There were no words for us now.

  He squeezed my chin, too hard, and kissed me on the cheek. “You guys had better get going if you want to keep your slot.”

  The blood pounded in my ears as my eyes darted around the airfield. Was there someone I could shout to for help? No. Run. I have to run. The airport was a few hundred yards away—could I make it? I looked at the two of them standing there in front of me, Ben’s long, lean frame and Sam’s barrel-chested power. I’d never make it. Even if I did, what would I say when I got there? Liz was proof that I couldn’t trust anyone. Anthony had been right: when the time came, no one would be able to help me. I was on my own.

  Be ready, he’d said, but in the end I hadn’t been, and now I was trapped like an animal on its way to the slaughter.

  Sam took me roughly by the elbow and steered me toward the cabin door. “Wait!” I cried, wrenching myself away. I was tearful now, desperate. If I couldn’t run, I would beg. “Ben, please. This is all a misunderstanding.”

  He reached up and brushed a lock of hair from my face. “I understand perfectly,” he said, and then he reached down and kissed me hard on the mouth before pushing me toward Sam. The two of them had blocked me in. I had no choice but to board the plane. I made my way unsteadily up the stairs to the cabin, the metal frame swaying beneath my weight. I could feel Sam’s weight on the stairs, and the heat of his body as he climbed behind me.

  The door of the cabin clanged shut and the engine began to roar. I watched Ben stride away across the tarmac. That’s when I realized that there would be no last-minute rescue. I was not in a fairy tale. There would be no prince at the end of my story.

  I was on my own.

  Maggie

  The doorbell rang, startling me awake. It was morning—I’d fallen asleep in the living room. I pulled myself out of the armchair and walked stiffly to the front door. I tried to see who it was through the little window but all I could see was a man’s broad back and a head of dark hair. A salesman, probably.

  I opened the door. “Can I help you?”

  The man turned around and smiled. “Mrs. Carpenter,” he said, laying a hand across his chest. “It’s so nice to finally meet you.”

  Allison

  At first we were silent as the plane climbed into the sky. My insides had turned to liquid, hot and slick. Sam stared straight ahead, eyes fixed on the vast expanse of blue, hands tightly clutching the controls.

  As long as he was flying the plane, he couldn’t do anything. But as soon as we landed, I’d be dead.

  How much did they know? My fingers fumbled at the neck of my dress until I found the locket. Did they know what was inside it?

  I peered down at the mountain range stretched out below us like a crumpled sheet of paper. I thought of that invisible child’s hand, bobbing us up and down through the blue sky, and then of the long, weightless drop into nothing.

  A plan emerged from the terror-fog. I had watched Ben fly this plane dozens of times. If I could incapacitate Sam, I could try to land the plane myself and make a run for it. It probably wouldn’t work, but I had to risk it. And if I was going to die, I would at least take him with me.

  I could picture the self-defense instructor from college. “Eyes nose throat stomach groin feet,” she would chant, over and over. She would make us repeat the words, too, and I chanted them then in my head.

  Nose. He was a big man but he was slow. When I swung my elbow I felt the crunch of bone before he could raise his hands to stop me. “What the fuck?” he shouted, his words thick, his eyes stunned as they streamed. He held his hands to his face as blood poured out from between his fingers.

  Eyes. I shoved one of my fingers deep into a socket. He made a noise that didn’t sound human to my ears, a strangled sort of scream. He held one of his bloodied hands up to his blinded eye, cupping it like a wounded bird. Tears and snot were mixing with the blood now, and the effluvia ran down his forearms and onto his pristine white collared shirt.

  Fight. I seized the moment and grabbed hold of the abandoned controls. The plane was losing altitude. I pictured Ben’s hands on the controls. What would they do to correct this?

  Think. I reduced the throttle and pulled back on the column, and the plane groaned and shuddered as it climbed. Sam recovered and grabbed me by the throat. My hands slipped off the controls. His bloodied fingers clawed at me. His face was mottled, his nose already swollen, his bad eye streaming whitish pink. The engine stuttered and the power failed. I elbowed him away and tried to steady the column. An alarm began emitting a low wail.

  “What have you done?” I heard the panic in his voice, and then he was shaking me, hard, my head thudding against the dashboard. “What the fuck have you done?”

  Fight.

  And then the plane began to fall.

  He pulled me up and away by my arms and threw me against the side of the cabin. The alarms continued to blare. “Fuck!” He was panicked now, pressing buttons, pushing the throttle down, wrenching the rudder out from underneath his leg and trying to steer it straight, his one good eye skittering across the flashing control
panel. But it was too late. “You stupid bitch! What the fuck did you do? What did you do?” We were falling, falling. We were weightless.

  This was it. I was going to die.

  No.

  I’d read a story once in the newspaper about a girl surviving a plane crash. She was in a prop plane with her boyfriend and two friends. The plane lost altitude and crashed into the side of a mountain. The other three died on impact, but the girl emerged practically unscathed. She hiked down the mountain, flagged down a park ranger, and was taken to safety. When she was interviewed about her miraculous survival, she told the journalist that she’d lived because she’d stayed calm. She hadn’t succumbed to panic like the others.

  My mother’s voice in my head. Don’t panic, Ally. Breathe.

  I took a breath, filling my lungs with as much air as they could gather, and then exhaled. Sam was in his own world now, one of pain and terror and rage. He didn’t notice as I climbed back into my seat, clicked my seat belt into place, and folded myself into the brace position. His hands were pounding on the dashboard now as the alarm continued its mournful wail. Go limp, I told myself. Just go limp.

  As the mountain came nearer and the carpet of green pixilated into individual trees that waved in the breeze and heralded our arrival, I reached toward him. He was screaming now, a raw animal sound, his hands clawing at the windshield. He didn’t notice me unclasping his seat belt.

  Head down. Brace. Breathe.

  I clutched suddenly at my necklace, fingers fumbling with the clasp. I had to see their faces one last time. I clicked open the locket and gazed down at the photograph, my parents in miniature, pressed flat inside the gold disk. “I’m sorry,” I said, eyes blurring with tears. “I’m so, so sorry.” I clutched the locket in my fist and mouthed the words inscribed on the back: God protect him as he travels, by air or land or sea, keep him safe and guide him, wherever he may be.