Yours Since Yesterday

by Jennifer Bernard

  The stench of the smoke grew stronger the closer they came. Padric knew enough about fires to know that the consistency of the smoke depended on what was burning. Thick and black, like this smoke, meant that metal was involved instead of wood.

  At least the crash wasn’t lighting the forest on fire.

  “Did you hear that?” Zoe asked at one point.

  They paused, listening for sounds coming from the crash site. Was that a voice? The light wind snatched the sound away, lost to the wilderness.

  “Let’s go,” he said grimly. “If there are survivors, they might not have much time.

  He picked up the pace, ignoring the branches scratching at his face and the burn in his muscles. The world telescoped down to one step at a time. Hack away at the undergrowth. Listen to Zoe’s ragged breaths behind him. Fear that they wouldn’t get there in time.

  And then they burst through a grove of alders into a clearing that hadn’t existed before, because the smoldering, deformed broken hulk of a plane had created it. Still smoking, it lay on its side like a toy someone had thrown away. One wing pointed toward the sky and the other shattered on the ground.

  Scorched alder branches rimmed the perimeter of the crash site. The plane had ignited a fire, but it hadn’t spread far. Lucky—if that word could be used in this situation.

  “Over there!” shouted Zoe. She pointed to the far perimeter on the other side of the plane. “I see some people. Hello!”

  The wind was blowing the wrong way and they couldn’t hear her. They jogged around the plane, giving it a wide berth. Padric peered into the cockpit as they passed, but he didn’t see any movement inside. Had everyone managed to get themselves out? It was possible to survive small plane crashes, but quite often they were fatal. Every year in Alaska, dozens of people died in crashes just like this one.

  As they rounded the smoking tail of the plane, they spotted two men and a woman, all sitting or lying on the ground. Blood flowed from the woman’s head, while a man held a balled-up t-shirt against her wound. His left pant leg was rolled up to expose the purple, swelling mass of his lower leg.

  Definite fracture. Padric didn’t need to know much to figure that out.

  The third man lay unconscious on a jacket spread out on the ground.

  “Hey there!” Padric hailed them. “We saw you go down. Emergency rescue is headed your way.”

  The two survivors looked so dazed they barely reacted. “You’re not here to rescue us?” asked the woman. She was middle-aged, in a loose floral-print jacket and very white cross trainers.

  “We’re here to do whatever we can. Is everyone out of the plane?” Padric knelt next to the unconscious man and felt for a pulse. Very faint. Barely there.

  The man next to her, who had a salt-and-pepper brush cut—nodded. Sweat beaded his face; he must be in terrible pain from that leg.

  Zoe crouched down next to them. “My name’s Zoe. This is Padric.”

  “I’m Mary and this is my husband, Ronnie. That’s the pilot, his name is…”

  “Art. I know,” said Zoe. Padric glanced over at her. Her face had gone several shades paler. Of course she knew the pilot; she knew everyone in Lost Harbor. This had just gotten much more personal for her.

  “He’s alive,” he told her softly. “Barely. What happened?” He didn’t see that there was much he could do for Art, but he draped his jacket over him to keep him warm.

  “He said we lost an engine,” Ronnie explained. “He told us we were going down, but he did this thing where he tried to get the treetops to break the impact. It must have worked because we didn’t die. Blacked out for a minute, then my wife woke me up.”

  Zoe dug through her backpack. She pulled out her first-aid kit and opened it up. “How about some ibuprofen for that pain?”

  “Oh thank God,” the man groaned. “I’ll take anything right now. Hurts like a motherfucker.”

  His wife rolled her eyes as Zoe tore open a packet of the painkillers for him and handed him a bottle of water.

  “He’s been swearing since I woke him up.”

  Zoe took Ronnie’s place so he could deal with the ibuprofen. “Mind if I check out your wound?”

  The poor woman winced as she shook her head. “It hurt at first, but now it’s just numb.”

  Zoe lifted the t-shirt and examined the gash. Padric left Art’s side and hovered over her, ready to get her whatever she needed.

  “I’m not a nurse, but I have first-aid training,” she told Mary. “I can bandage this up if you like.”

  Mary squinted at her. “Aren’t you the girl at the pizza shop?”

  “Yes. I’m the owner.”

  “Your mushroom gorgonzola pizza is amazing.”

  “Thank you.” Zoe lifted her eyebrows at Padric. He knew what she was thinking. Shock? Concussion?

  “Do you have any with you?”

  Definitely concussion.

  “No. No, I don’t. But we do have plenty of food, so if we’re here for a while, no one’s going to starve. Actually…” She shot another questioning glance at Padric and jerked her head toward her pack. He got it—she was asking about the baklava. Blood sugar was important, right? On the other hand, people in shock weren’t supposed to eat or drink anything.

  He shook his head no. Mary’s gaze swept in his direction, and stopped there. She frowned as Zoe carefully dabbed at the blood still seeping from her scalp.

  “I know you. I know your face. Who are you? You’re some kind of celebrity. Am I crazy? Am I seeing things?”

  “You may have seen me somewhere,” Padric reassured her. “But I wouldn’t say I’m a celebrity, just a singer.”

  “He’s too modest,” Zoe said. “That’s Padric Jeffers.”

  “Padric Jeffers? My daughter’s crazy about you! She loves your music. Can I take a selfie with you?”

  “Mary, don’t be ridiculous,” her husband said. His eyes were drifting shut—the effect of the ibuprofen, or was he going into shock? “We came here to get pictures of bears, not goddamn singers.”

  “Nan would kill me if I didn’t get one!” She was starting to get agitated, and Zoe put a hand on her shoulder to calm her.

  “How about you take a selfie at the hospital?” she suggested. “After you get cleaned up. Padric can sign something for your daughter.”

  “You bet,” Padric said. “Let’s focus on getting these wounds patched up. I need to save my phone battery. Ronnie, you’re not looking so great. How about you lie down and we keep you warm until the cavalry arrives?”

  Ronnie didn’t object, and Padric helped him lower himself into a prone position, with a rolled-up sweater under his head. Zoe offered up her jacket and he spread that over him.

  “When…are they coming?” The poor man’s voice came out strained and raw.

  “We called almost an hour ago, so it should be soon.“ He glanced up at the sky, but saw nothing but a mass of puffy clouds, innocent as cotton candy.

  “This is taking forever. Can we call again?” whimpered Mary. “What’s wrong with this place?”

  Padric exchanged a quick glance with Zoe; they had to get her to calm down. “Alaska has some of the best rescue crews in the country,” he told her. “I’m sure they’re coming as fast as they can.”

  “Well it’s not fast enough, is it?”

  “On the bright side,” Zoe dug into her first-aid kit for a large bandage, “you survived the worst part.”

  “All we wanted was a bear photo,” Mary moaned. “And now we’re stuck here with no one but a pizza waitress and…you. Oh my God. It’s you!”

  Padric looked up to find her glaring at him with the force of a million suns.

  “I know you! You should be ashamed of yourself!”

  Zoe paused in the midst of applying the bandage to her head. “Mary, I think you have a concussion, you’re not making any sense. Try not to move around too much.”

  “I am making sense!”

  “But you said your daughter was a fan of Padric, and
now you’re yelling at him.”

  “Yes, but I got it confused. He’s the other one.” Mary gripped her by the wrist. “PJ. My daughter went to a PJ party and nearly came back with one. She didn’t because she has more sense than that, but her friend did.”

  Padric felt frozen, rooted to the ground. He always dreaded meeting one of the “PJ parents,” people whose children had managed to sneak around their rules and get the brand. Whenever one wanted to meet with him, he did so. He felt it was the least he could do. But he’d never imagined running into one here, in the middle of the wilderness, at the site of a plane crash.

  “You much be hallucinating—” Zoe began. He cut her off.

  “It’s all right,” Padric said. “She’s not hallucinating. Let her talk.”

  “I would never take a selfie with you,” Mary spit at him. “Never. I take it back.”

  Zoe attached the bandage to her head and sat back on her haunches. “Lady, you have some nerve. We’re just trying to help you, and now you’re yelling at Padric and saying crazy things.”

  “Stop saying I’m crazy!” She rubbed at her face, where blood had dried next to her ear. “I’m furious, not crazy.”

  Zoe glanced at Padric, her expression one of utter confusion. He cleared his throat and told her in a low voice, “I’ll explain later. This isn’t the best thing to talk about right now.”

  “You know what you should do?” Mary tugged her jacket tighter around her and shivered. “You could stop writing your horrible songs, you devil. Just stop. For good.”

  Padric couldn’t think of a good response to that. His brain felt numb and slow, as if he was the one who’d been through a traumatic fall from the sky.

  “You leave him alone, you awful woman,” Zoe told her sternly.

  “What did you just say?” Mary drew away from her with an offended glare.

  “You heard me. You’re awful. What about all the people who love Padric’s music? He brings people joy with his songs. Who are you to tell him to stop?”

  “I was in a plane crash! You’re supposed to be nice to me!”

  “I already told you I’m not a nurse,” Zoe snapped. “I’m a pizza shop owner. I don’t have to be nice.”

  “Then I’ll leave you a bad review.”

  “Go for it. I’m too busy as it is.” Zoe rose to her feet. “The one thing I won’t stand for is anyone insulting Padric. He’s the kindest, most goodhearted person I’ve ever known. Stop saying that stuff.”

  Padric would have laughed if he wasn’t still struggling with the strangeness of this encounter. Zoe held the same fierce hands-on-hips posture as that time in fifth grade when a bully kept saying he smelled like fish bait.

  “It’s okay, Zoe. She can think or say whatever she wants.”

  “You should be ashamed—” Mary started up again.

  The drone of an oncoming helicopter interrupted her rant. Thank God. Padric had never been so grateful for a giant metallic mosquito to show up. He wanted to tell Zoe about the PJ parties in his own way.

  He jumped to his feet and shaded his eyes so he could watch the chopper hover overhead.

  “Wait!” called Mary.

  He looked down at the angry woman. “Yeah?”

  “Can I still get a selfie?”

  “Of course not—” Zoe began hotly.

  He shushed her with a gesture. “Rescue first, selfie later. Okay?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  It took over an hour for the rescue crew to get all three of the crash victims into the helicopter. Zoe forced herself to be pleasant to the horrible woman who’d yelled at Padric. What was she even talking about? What could cause that level of anger toward a songwriter? Zoe kept turning it over in her mind as the rescue crew strapped poor unconscious Art onto a gurney. She didn’t recognize the paramedics, so she filled them in on his information, yelling over the whir of the hovering helicopter.

  “This is Art Dinty, owner of Black Bear Flightseeing. He has a wife, Marge, so someone should call her.”

  “Will do, Miss. Now back away, we got this.”

  The paramedic signaled to the chopper pilot, who maneuvered the controls to hoist the gurney up. A third crew member crouched in the open hatch, waiting to receive the gurney.

  In the meantime, the paramedic got Ronnie ready for transport. He stabilized his leg with a brace, and when the gurney came back, he gestured to Padric to help him roll the man onto it. Apparently, Nate had relayed the fact that Padric was in the midst of volunteer firefighter training.

  The charming and oh-so-pleasant Mary went up last, since she was the least injured. She actually did manage to shoot a selfie with Padric just before the paramedic strapped her into the rescue harness.

  “You guys want to ride along, too?” The paramedic asked them before signaling to the pilot.

  Zoe had to admit the idea was tempting. They’d hiked a long way to get here, and that was under the influence of adrenaline. Getting back was going to be twice as difficult.

  “No, you’d better get these guys to the hospital,” Padric told them. “The pilot never regained consciousness, so he could be in bad shape.”

  Which was a very good point. Zoe suppressed her sigh. They watched the helicopter ascend, its blades batting the air, sending wind rushing past their faces.

  And then they were alone in a clearing with only a smoldering wreck of an airplane for company.

  And a bunch of unanswered questions.

  Padric stretched his arms wide. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you going to tell me what that was all about?”

  “Yes. I am. But I know you, Zoe. You’re going to want some food first.”

  She laughed, the sound echoing in the sudden absence of the helicopter’s roar. “Fine, you’re right. I’m starving, too.”

  They found a downwind spot at the very edge of the clearing, where they could barely smell the smoke. It had to be the weirdest picnic spot ever, but she knew they needed a break before they hiked up that mountain. Padric brushed away rocks and other debris to make a comfortable sitting spot, then spread out his jacket. She sank down on it with a sigh and gazed at the wreck of the plane while Padric rummaged through his pack.

  She’d seen that plane fly over the harbor at least a hundred times. And now it was nothing but a pile of twisted metal parts. Poor Art. He had three kids, at least one in college. Black Bear Flightseeing had an impeccable reputation, but a crash like this could destroy that.

  Her heart twisted as she thought of the way he’d lain unconscious on the ground. Those passengers—as annoying as they were—had saved his life.

  “Do you think Art’s going to be okay?”

  “He’s alive. I didn’t see any obvious injuries. But we’ll have to see what the doctors say. Pretty fucking lucky, all three of them.”

  “Do you think they know it? They didn’t exactly seem grateful for our help.” She looked up at the sky, where the helicopter was little more than a fast-disappearing dot.

  “They were in shock. Don’t hold it against them. Besides, it was sweet, the way you stood up for me without even knowing the situation.”

  She shrugged, since to her it was no big deal. “That’s what friends are for, right?”

  “Or maybe this is what friends are for.”

  She looked around—and gasped with pure joy. Padric had spread out a magnificent feast. All of her favorite picnic foods were laid out on a soft blanket—olive tapenade spread with crackers, chocolate-covered strawberries, onion rings from Tremaine’s food truck, a hunk of brie cheese, salted pistachios, an entire filet of smoked salmon, dark rye bread from the Sweet Harbor Bakery.

  Granted, many of the items looked like they’d had a rough day. The onion rings were soggy, the brie was squished nearly flat, half the crackers were broken. But none of that mattered. It all looked delicious. And it was incredibly thoughtful of Padric.

  “This is…amazing, Padric.” She crawl
ed across the few feet between them and gazed at the spread in awe. “This is my dream feast. How did you know?”

  “Monica and Alexis. I wonder how long I can play the guilt card. It’s really working for me.”

  She smiled, her mouth watering. “Milk it for all its worth. Those girls…honestly, I’m surprised they know my favorite foods. I didn’t know they were paying attention.”

  “Never underestimate a teenager.” He spread tapenade on a cracker and handed it to her. She snatched it from his hand and popped it into her mouth so quickly, he burst out laughing.

  “Oh my God,” she moaned through a mouthful of salty deliciousness. For a short period, the two of them concentrated on gorging themselves on all the treats he’d assembled. The tiny bit of baklava they’d eaten several hours ago hadn’t held them for long, and in the meantime, they’d hiked several miles and hacked their way down a mountain.

  Finally she took a break with a long, happy sigh. “Nothing has ever, in the history of the world, tasted this good.”

  “Really? Not even Last Chance pizza?”

  She shook her head and popped a chocolate-covered strawberry into her mouth. “Not even close.”

  “Not even baklava?”

  “Nope.” She bit down on the strawberry and tasted juice running down her tongue.

  “Not even a kiss spiked with baklava?” His eyes gleamed mischief at her, and she couldn’t resist.

  “I might have to run a comparison test,” she told him after she’d swallowed the last bit. “My memory’s a little foggy.”

  “Really? Mine’s perfectly clear.”

  Oh Lord, the look in his eyes. Direct, honest, straight from the heart. Or maybe from another part of him.

  Her belly filled up with butterflies. Was this really happening? Did the intense connection she and Padric had always shared still exist?

  Judging by the reaction of her body, which was going haywire, it did. Her nipples hardened as their gazes held, and her lower belly clenched.

  “Zoe,” he said again. “About the things that Mary said…”

  She reached across the blanket to touch his hand. “Does it really matter? I know you, Padric. You’re not the way she made you sound.”