Flight 19

by Grant Finnegan

  “A friend of his from work, well, his wife was the one to contact me.”

  They heard Todd and Emily’s voices getting just a bit louder, and knew this conversation might have to end at any moment.

  Kylie leaned forward and said it all in one hit.

  “Todd’s been searching for Andrew’s killer through the databases at work. Without authorization, for weeks. They’re deeply concerned about it.”

  She closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “They’re worried he might try to track him down and hurt him.” She opened her eyes and looked straight at Dave, scared. “Or worse—kill him.”

  Dave leaned back in his chair for a second, digesting the news. He’d rather have had dessert.

  She met his eyes again, and the awkwardness peaked as Todd and Emily stood silently in the doorway, watching their parents’ silent conference with curiosity.

  At that moment, Dave saw, in Kylie’s eyes, that there was more to this than Kylie was letting on.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Tammy Hourigan had been waiting for this moment for what seemed like her whole life. It would be the first time she saw her two young children in the flesh since returning from the nightmare of Flight 19 and the heartache of losing her third child at birth.

  She felt as if she were dealing with so much, from so many angles.

  To Tammy, it seemed that practically everyone around her, apart from her best friend, Lee, had taken turns at sticking a set of large steak knives in her back.

  For as long as she could remember, she’d always had an acrimonious relationship with her sister. As the only two daughters of her bible-worshipping parents, Annie and Tammy had waged a daily competition to get their mom and dad’s attention. Once Tammy reached adulthood, her mother would often tell her that she had two husbands. One was the guy she’d slept with at least twice (but probably not much more than that, Tammy believed) to create the two girls.

  The other was Jesus Christ.

  Her father didn’t seem to mind; he was too busy in his shed, on the golf course, or tending his garden. Either way, Tammy often surmised that a comprehensive search of his shed would uncover a secret stash of magazines, as he would often lock the shed door when he was inside, for some strange reason.

  Tammy didn’t know why, but she always seemed to be on the outer in her family. Her sister was never helpful unless she wanted something. And her parents were so caught up in their own weird lives that they didn’t notice the deep-seated issues Annie seemed to have with her. If Tammy tried to get them to make Annie change her behavior, they blew her off. They treated Annie as if she could do no wrong, even though she often did.

  Tammy recalled how the conversation had gone with Lee the other night, over more glasses of wine, after she’d gotten over the initial shock of learning Annie had made a move on her husband as soon as the plane vanished. One of them had remembered the nickname they gave Annie back in their late teens.

  Teflon Fanny.

  Shit just wouldn’t stick to her, and given the way she behaved, Tammy and Lee also thought that fanny must have been what Annie used to get what she wanted.

  Although she wouldn’t get the chance to confront her sister that day, Tammy knew Annie’s time would come soon enough.

  Teflon Fanny wouldn’t be able to avoid her sister forever.

  The positive thing about Annie not coming to the meeting was that it would give her a chance for a quiet one-on-one with someone else she keen to talk to.

  Brandon Hourigan.

  Her once husband.

  Now her ex-husband.

  Now, in fact, her brother-in-law. Oh, my.

  She agreed to meet Brandon and the children on the steps of the St. Louis Art Museum in Forest Park, at 10am sharp.

  She arrived early and sat on the top step, trying to take in the morning air and process her overwhelming guilt at having abandoned her kids.

  Lee had told her, the other night, that none of this was her fault.

  But try telling that to a parent who knows their children haven’t seen them for five years.

  Tammy, from her vantage point at the top of the dozen stairs leading into the St. Louis Art Museum, had a decent view of the access road and extensive parklands that surrounded it. As if she were an eagle perched high on a mountaintop, her eyes caught sight of any movement below.

  Her watch told her it was now 10am, and her heart began to race. Despite the morning chill, her hands were clammy, and she wiped them on her jeans incessantly. They were Lee’s jeans, actually; Tammy had thrown out virtually all of the clothes that had been in her suitcase on the flight, as every piece of clothing seemed to remind her of the hell her life had become. She’d even thrown out the suitcase itself.

  At ten past ten, she still sat alone, and anxiety began to overwhelm her. She took a deep breath, stood, and tried to shake off the awful feeling forming in the pit of her stomach. She started to believe her children would not be coming. She rolled off some profanities, interspersed with the names Brandon and Annie.

  Tammy ventured another glance at her watch. She was ready to scream. It was just on 10.15.

  But then, from nearby, she heard her name.

  It was a woman’s voice, and it sent a cold spike of sickness from the top of her neck to the bottom of her stomach.

  Teflon Fanny.

  Her sister stood 20 feet away.

  With her, standing close to their—aunt? stepmother?—and looking slightly uncomfortable, were her two children, Beth and Noah.

  Noah seemed to stick closely to Annie, peering at Tammy as if she were made of stone. Beth stood a bit aside from Teflon Fanny, taller and more confident than her little brother.

  For them, it had been five years.

  She had left them when Noah was only five and Beth seven. It was a formative age, and they were ripe for someone like Annie to brainwash them into thinking—anything.

  As they stepped closer to each other, Tammy could tell her daughter realized who she was. A spark seemed to appear in her eyes, and a nervous but beautiful smile began to show her pristine white teeth.

  Tammy, for that one moment, parked her disgust for her sister, and her frustration that it was supposed to be Brandon who had brought them. She shut Annie out of her vision and her thoughts, and saw only her children.

  Beth then ran forward from Annie and Noah, as if a light had gone on in her head and it was five years ago.

  “Mommy!” She quivered as she reached Tammy, who had reached down and put her arms around her.

  If Tammy could have peered inside the darkness of her sister’s mind at that moment, she would have seen jealousy raging through it. But being Teflon Fanny, she never lost her composure, knowing the children would be leaving Forest Park with her, not her sister.

  “Baby.” Tammy dropped to her knees and embraced her daughter. It was the first time in a while her heart had felt the addictive warmth of love. It was beyond good.

  “Mommy.” Beth looked deep into her eyes before Tammy wrapped her arms around her again. “I missed you.”

  Tammy felt the urge to burst into tears, but she fought it, wanting to stay stoic for her children. There would be plenty of time to cry when they left today.

  She looked at Annie, standing dead still where she was, with Noah, strangely, still right by her side.

  Beth and Tammy stopped hugging, and stood looking over at Noah. Beth was the first to speak. “Aren’t you going to come and say hello to Mom?” she said, looking curiously at her little brother.

  Noah hesitated and for a second, and Tammy thought it was as if Annie was holding him back, but he seemed to step a little further away from her and then, still 20 feet away, looked his mother up and down on his own.

  Hesitating, Noah stepped forward as if Tammy were a lion and he had a big New-York strip steak wrapped around his neck.

  When he reached her, he gave her an awkward, almost mechanical hug. Tammy felt the pangs of her heart bouncing around her bo
dy at seeing how hard this was for him, and how little he seemed to know her, but she knew he was younger than Beth and had never expressed himself physically as easily as his big sister.

  She also knew he had always gravitated toward his father rather than her, so she shouldn’t have been surprised by how he was responding to her.

  “How are you going, little man?” Tammy said, kissing him on the forehead. He didn’t seem interested in any affection from her.

  “Good,” he responded quietly. Even at five, Noah had been the king of one-word answers. At least some things remained the same.

  Noah stood back from her. Now there was only one other person left to greet. She moved aside from her children and looked at her sister.

  “Hi, Annie,” was all she said.

  Annie was closer now, and when she studied her carefully, Tammy could see Annie had not aged well over the last five years. She looked tired, pasty, and a little out of sorts, as if she wanted to be somewhere else, or someone else. She stood uneasily in high heels more suited to a cocktail party than a leisurely park stroll on a Friday morning. Tammy could tell immediately that Teflon was heavier than she’d ever been before.

  Tammy could see the weathered lines around her sister’s mouth and eyes. Annie had tried to bury them under too much foundation, but to no avail.

  But Annie had her children. Knowing she now looked a whole lot better than her sister was little consolation to Tammy.

  “Hi,” Annie said. She smiled, but Tammy could instantly see she was nervous, and for the minute devoid of any ego or arrogance. She looked tired and washed out. The cocky persona Tammy remembered was nowhere to be seen.

  The two sisters agreed to take a walk down Art Hill, in front of the museum, and head toward the Grand Basin. Once they crossed Fine Arts Drive and passed the imposing statue of the Apotheosis of St. Louis, they let Beth and Noah walk ahead of them and down the hill toward the lake.

  Tammy wore flat shoes and had no problem walking on the grass. Teflon, on the other hand, only got about ten feet before stopping to awkwardly take off her high heels before continuing the walk in bare feet.

  As the kids walked on ahead, Beth occasionally peered back over her shoulder and smiled at Tammy, which made her feel fantastic. Annie surprised Tammy by coming straight out and saying, “I know what you’re thinking.”

  Tammy let the comment hang in the air before it evaporated into the beautiful blue sky above her. Then she turned to Teflon, and in a composed and steely manner, said, “What am I thinking, Annie?”

  Annie walked alongside her sister for another 20 feet or so; she seemed in no hurry to answer. To Tammy, it was if she was trying to formulate a worthy answer.

  “It’s not how it looks.” Annie had stopped dead in her tracks. Her eyes were wide and her expression serious.

  Tammy looked sidelong at Beth and Noah to check they were both out of earshot. Before she answered Annie with a killer comeback, another thought jumped the queue.

  “I thought Brandon was supposed to come today,” she said.

  Annie motioned for Tammy to keep walking, as the kids were now well in front of them, heading for the Grand Basin Lake.

  Teflon spoke quietly, even though the children wouldn’t hear her. “He, err—” She was about to feed Tammy some bullshit about being tied up with work, but thought the better of it.

  “He … just couldn’t muster the courage to see you today.”

  Pussy, Tammy thought. Brandon could sometimes be outright gutless.

  “You have got to be shitting me,” she said. “What the fuck is he afraid of?”

  In Tammy’s estimation, Annie was easy to rile; it didn’t take much to get her spitting words as if her mouth was a Gatling gun and her words fifty-caliber bullets.

  But this had been before the last five years had changed her life. Like many of us who think the grass is always greener on the other side, once she had gotten there, reality set in and she realized—

  It’s just as hard to mow.

  Tammy waited for an answer with a fair share of attitude. She had come to expect that from Annie.

  Teflon did not disappoint.

  “Exactly this!” she yelled. Tammy took a step back in surprise. “You always treated him like a little boy who could never think for himself.”

  Tammy walked on and was relieved that at least Beth and Noah hadn’t seen or heard any of what was just said.

  Tammy shook her head. She knew what Annie was accusing her of was utter bullshit. She knew it would have come from Brandon, or maybe it was Teflon’s way of justifying her actions.

  Annie continued to walk; the steam coming from her ears was almost visible, and Tammy didn’t care. She had lost everything she loved. Tammy peered at her sister and thought if anyone needed to lose anything, it was Teflon Fanny. Tammy was about to suggest she do a couple of laps around the lake to shed some excess pounds.

  As the kids reached the edge of the lake, Tammy realized it was her turn to be blunt.

  She stopped walking and stomped her feet on the grass.

  “One week?” Tammy said through gritted teeth, her hands curling up into balls with rage.

  Teflon scowled, showing those lovely little wrinkles all over her face again and said, “One week what?”

  Keep it up, Teflon Fanny, Tammy thought, and in a few moments you’ll be swimming with the ducks in the Grand Basin. You and your high heels, fat ass, cheap clothes, and cheaper makeup.

  Tammy stepped within a couple of feet from Annie.

  Jeez, she then thought to herself, even her perfume is cheap, if you can call it perfume. It smelled more like air freshener for restrooms.

  “One week after they said our plane was gone,” Tammy snarled, “you—” Tammy lost herself for a second in her emotions, but recalled herself to the moment.

  “—made a move on my husband!”

  Annie stepped back a foot, looking at if she was expected to get attacked from all sides.

  “What the fuck?” she said, through short angry breaths.

  Tammy was ready to do her best Ronda Rousey impersonation and give her sister a decent roundhouse kick to the side of the head; her emotions had been there for the last few minutes. But even she was taken a tiny bit aback by the look of sheer anger on Annie’s face.

  She thought she might be about to get a roundhouse kick to the head herself.

  The two sisters stood apart. From a distance, it looked as if they were about to have a fistfight.

  Annie looked at Beth and Noah, who were, luckily, distracted by the ducks on the lake, oblivious that the two sisters looked about to kill each other.

  She turned back to Tammy and recollected herself. Her lips curled into a snarl as she nodded from left to right.

  Tammy stood there motionless, the joy of seeing her children slipping away by the second.

  Annie stepped forward, to deliver a verbal slap her sister would not forget for some time.

  “Brandon,” she said, leaning forward and hissing under her breath, “was fucking me well before you got on that plane.”

  She stepped back to make sure the words stung Tammy.

  And to then, just to put a little something on top, she added, “You pretentious cunt.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Melanie Lewinson returned to the firm she had worked at before Flight 19.

  But there was no need for her to work. The multimillion-dollar windfall from her late husband’s will was only days away from being given to her. There was no need for her to hold a nine-to-five job anymore.

  The managing partners of Johnston, Neville, and Tolls had welcomed her back with open arms when she asked if she could return.

  But within days of her return to work, the rumors of how much Charles Lewinson’s estate was worth, and that it was going all to Melanie, spread like wildfire.

  Her bosses placed a bet between themselves as to how long it would be before they lost Melanie for good. They knew it was only a matter of time before
she left to live out her days on some tropical beach, lazing under a palm tree, sipping the de rigueur piña colada.

  Melanie had returned to the home she’d shared with Charles in Point Piper, and when she walked through the door for the first time, she had a profound sense of what some Nineteeners would call reverse déjà vu. Like many of her fellow passengers who were able to return to their original homes, they felt as if they had only been gone a month or so.

  But then a voice in their head, and their memories of Vandenberg AFB, told them it had been five years. It was the weirdest feeling, and none of them could ever explain it adequately to anyone who hadn’t lived through the experience.

  As she made her way through the luxury home, she saw her husband had completely removed all traces of her from every room. Regardless of what had ever transpired between them (culminating in him trying to squeeze the last breath out of her on the pavement at Los Angeles airport), seeing no trace of herself in what was once her home made her feel empty.

  Charles had no idea how to decorate a home and, like other wealthy people all over the world, had paid someone else to make his mansion look beautiful.

  Whoever it was had done a good job on the Point Piper place, Melanie thought. Even five years on, it could easily have wound up on the front cover of an interior-design magazine.

  But to Melanie, no matter how beautiful the house that was now hers was, one thing would never change. This would always be her dead husband’s home, first and foremost.

  She’d thought of giving the mansion to her sister, Carley, then remembered that she’d hated Charles with a passion.

  But who was she kidding? Carley would still jump at the chance to move from her pokey little house in Paddington, especially if she was going to get Melanie and Charles’s old place for nothing. Let’s face it; most people would take a multimillion-dollar home in Sydney’s east, and forget the previous asshole who owned it.

  With the significant amount of money about to go into her bank account, Melanie could be anywhere in the world. When she announced she was going to leave, her boss Bruce won the partners’ bet—he’d predicted she wouldn’t last a month. But no one would guess where she’d end up.