Flight 19

by Grant Finnegan

  Ross’s eyes had been fixed hard on the newsreader and the footage of the plane. His mind spun; it looked like Darcy had been true to his word.

  He had not had a chance to tell Tony about his drinking session with Darcy a few days ago. He wasn’t sure if he should. He’d thought about the conversation many times, and kept asking himself what he’d have to lose by getting behind the controls again and flying the plane. Part of him wondered if the impossible was possible—if something had pushed their flight forward five years, what was to say the same thing couldn’t push them back?

  By breakfast, as the conversation of the night before replayed in his then-sober mind, he was sure he wanted to talk to Darcy about it more.

  “And in other updates,” the newsreader said, calling Ross’s attention back to the screen, “it is with great sadness that I report to you that we’ve had another death as a result of the events of Flight 19.”

  Tony shook his head and stood up. Ross knew that though he was heading to the toilet, his main aim was to avoid hearing about the death of someone else from the flight. The two men had gotten to know many of the passengers at Vandenberg, even if they hadn’t become acquainted with them all.

  Weirdly, they still felt partly responsible for what had happened, and took it very much to heart when someone else from their flight died.

  And, as tragic as the deaths themselves, nearly all of them had been suicides. People couldn’t take returning to their lives and finding that they’d been shut out. Their homes were now the property of strangers, their cars were long-sold, and their clothes and shoes had gone to thrift shops. Their partners had fallen in love with other people; their children had been told, “this is your new daddy,” or “Mommy’s in a better place now.”

  “Sue Franklin,” the reporter said, and paused for a moment as though overcome before looking intently into the camera once more, “was a mother of five on her way home from a business trip when Flight 19 tragically disappeared.”

  Ross looked down to the floor and studied the shag-pile rug. He didn’t want to see the passenger’s face, but accidentally looked up when he heard Tony closing his bedroom door.

  Fuck it.

  He remembered her.

  She had asked if she could get a photo with him, as her youngest son wanted to be a pilot when he grew up. Her son would be over the moon that she’d gotten a picture of the pilot of such a big plane, he recalled her saying.

  “Sue was found unconscious and nonresponsive in a caravan near her hometown yesterday.” The reporter looked strained, and Ross could hear it slightly in her voice. “And this brings the total number of passengers and crew who have passed away since leaving Vandenberg Air Force Base to—”

  Tony had silently returned to the room and picked up the remote. He hit the off button quickly, turning the large screen instantly black, leaving him standing looking at his reflection as if it were a ghost.

  Ross was surprised Tony had managed to reach the television remote without him noticing.

  Tony turned slowly from the black screen and looked down at Ross with an expression nearly as dark as the 55-inch television attached to the wall nearby.

  “That’s 31,” he muttered under his breath.

  Ross sat in silence as Tony stood looking into the television screen, hoping it would swallow him whole. Then Tony thought of Sue Franklin and realized the poor woman had been through far worse than he had.

  “Sue Franklin,” Tony said quietly, without turning to Ross, “returned home to find out her husband had turned to alcohol and drugs to deal with losing her.” He seemed to sway for a second before he continued. “Her five children were handed over to the state, as her husband was no longer fit to have them.”

  He walked backward and fell deep into the couch, still not taking his eyes off the big TV. He leaned forward and then finally looked deep into Ross’s eyes.

  “Her youngest son ended up in foster care, where his foster father sexually abused him along with his two foster brothers. Sue Franklin’s story was only on 60 Minutes last week. I cried for most of it.”

  Ross was about to raise his hand and say, “No more.” He wished he hadn’t turned on the television in the first place. Fucking Flight 19, you prick of a thing, Ross thought.

  Tony then said, “So her son ran away.” He wiped tears from his eyes and stared out the window for what seemed an eternity.

  He eventually turned to Ross and said, “Her son was hit by a freight train a few days later. He died alone in a train yard 30 miles away from the mother who loved him.”

  Tony sprang off the couch and shouted Italian profanities, his fists rolling into balls in frustration, “And all I care about is that my wife left me for a woman. That poor woman, and her son!”

  What he said next made Ross feel even worse.

  “When they found his body, he had a small model of an Pacific International Airlines A380 still clenched in his hand.” Tony looked away from Ross, and the pain in his eyes was evident. “And he’d handwritten on the side, ‘Moma’s plane’.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Todd slipped his helmet off and felt the welcome breeze of the Friday afternoon. He’d been looking forward to the moment for at least the last half hour; he’d had his helmet on for two hours straight, and that was more than enough.

  The day was slightly milder than usual for June in Santa Monica, with the hint of faint clouds in the distance keen to bring an end to the brisk, bright, blue sky. He’d ridden the choked-up freeways of LA for the second half of his shift: the Santa Monica Freeway, the San Diego Freeway, and just for fun, the world’s busiest freeway interchange, the East Los Angeles Interchange.

  Apart from the incredible amount of traffic the highways carried every day, Todd hadn’t seen anything alarming enough—in his current IDGAF (I don’t give a fuck) mood—to pull a driver over, pull out his notepad, and write them some pain.

  A young girl talking on her cell phone while weaving in and out of lanes came close, but when he pulled alongside her and saw the look on her face when she saw him, Todd thought just being caught in the act would be more than enough punishment. She’d dropped the phone from her ear, looking like she’d seen a ghost.

  Sitting sideways on his Kawasaki Concourse 18v-Viper patrol motorcycle, on the sidewalk just off busy Ocean Avenue in his hometown of Santa Monica, Todd sat and looked directly over to Tongva Park, where he came from time to time to think about things. He’d find a nice patch of grass near the three rusty fig trees known as the Three Amigos, and look up to them for advice about whatever was on his mind.

  He realized he hadn’t seen them since returning from his five years away, and decided now was as good a time as any to catch up with his wise old friends.

  He rode his patrol bike along the nearly deserted pathway weaving its way past Gathering Hill and deeper into the park. An old lady walking her impossibly small poodle gave him a slightly unfriendly glare as he rode past, but walked on dragging the little ball of white fluff and tiny legs behind her.

  Todd reached the area where the three large trees were and found a patch of grass just off the path to park on. He put his helmet next to his bike and took off his heavy leather jacket. The old lady with a scowl, and her tiny dog, were now further off in the distance. He was alone with his bike and the Three Amigos.

  He drank from his water bottle and looked up to the trees. The slight hint of the afternoon breeze flowed through them, and they swayed together fluidly, as if to a sad song of love lost.

  Todd knew he was not the same person he had been before the doomed flight.

  He’d fought hard to come to terms with having those five years stolen from him.

  Todd was, in fact, one of the more fortunate passengers, and he knew it. At least he still had his mother, the proceeds from the sale of his apartment, and now he had Emily Collins in his life.

  But he could not escape the dark thoughts stemming from the senseless death of his father. In his dreams, his father
would materialize from nowhere, still in his police uniform, covered in dried blood but acting like there was nothing wrong. It was starting to send him around the bend.

  He was sure some of his colleagues, especially those close to his dad, were probably onto the fact that he was looking for the punk who’d killed his old man. And he knew time was perhaps catching up to him fast. He needed to act.

  Todd looked up to the Three Amigos and took another look around the park. He didn’t want to be noticed lingering here; if the story got back to his bosses, it might add to the list of things they’d want to discuss with him.

  “Tell me what to do,” he said aloud. The trees continued to sway in the cool breeze without a care in the world. Todd envied them and wished he was free of the compulsion to take the life of another human being.

  But he wasn’t asking about whether he should do it: he wanted the big fig trees’ advice on whether to tell Emily.

  After nearly a minute of silence, Todd resigned himself to the realization that the trees, if they could actually speak, would tell only him what he was already thinking.

  Telling Emily he wanted to kill his father’s killer would be a grave mistake. She might break off their relationship. So, even though the weight of his intentions was getting heavier by the day, and even though having grown so close to her, he wanted her to understand why it was something he needed to do—he knew he could never tell her.

  Todd was about to say something else to the Three Amigos when he heard a sound from somewhere behind him and wondered if it were another old lady with a pint-sized pooch, ready to give him more dirty looks. But when he stood to stretch his legs, there was no one there. “Hm,” Todd said, and turned back to the trees. It was probably time to head back to the station and sign out for the day.

  Then his phone beeped.

  As he looked at the screen, his heart skipped a beat and his throat tightened.

  It was a message from Michelle Lowne, one of his old friends from his days in the police academy, now based at the San Bernardino Police Department. He’d helped her out of a few pickles over the years, and now didn’t bat an eyelid if he asked her for a person’s address on the sly. He could try finding things on his own, but Lowne had access way above his pay grade.

  As Todd opened the message, he heard another noise nearby, this time from the vicinity of the Three Amigos.

  He looked up and saw his father leaning against the middle tree.

  His police uniform was stained bright red with blood.

  Todd looked down at the message from his friend before inhaling the fresh park air.

  When he looked at the address for a second, he knew he would never forget it.

  He looked back to the Three Amigos as he hit the delete button.

  The smile on his father’s face was the biggest he’d ever seen.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Tammy was quietly relieved that it was Saturday so Lee could come with her back to Forest Park, where she was due to meet Brandon and spend a couple of hours alone with her two children. If she’d had to face him alone, she might have felt the strong urge to kick him hard between his legs.

  As they drove along Lindell Boulevard, which runs alongside Forest Park in St. Louis, Lee could sense the tension coming off her best friend’s body, as if she had just had radiation therapy.

  “Don’t worry about it, Tam.” Lee did her best to smile through her nervousness as she glanced at her. “We’re doing this together—you and me.”

  Lee had wanted to take a meat cleaver to Brandon’s sausage long ago. She’d long suspected that he was sleeping with Teflon Fanny, having seen them together at Brandon’s favorite bar while Tammy was visiting Maddy in Australia.

  They had been all over each other in a dark corner at the back of the bar, and it was crystal clear to anyone that later, they would be swapping more than just saliva.

  Lee had meant to tell Tammy when she returned from her trip, but fate had robbed her of the chance. Five years had passed, and finally, when Tammy returned to Lee’s place from her first meeting with Beth and Noah, she had been in such a state that Lee figured Tammy couldn’t get any angrier if she told her everything. Another bottle of Pinot Gris had helped wash the tension from her, at the price of a little hangover the next morning.

  As Lee pulled into the parking lot off Grand Drive, both women fell silent as they envisioned what would happen when they met Brandon near the Pagoda Circle.

  They had agreed not to confront him in front of the kids.

  From her daughter’s reaction the last time she’d seen her, Tammy had the feeling Beth was missing her. But she was unsure of Noah. Her gut told her all bets were off. Brandon and Annie had probably converted him to the dark side, where Tammy was a distant memory despite being very much back.

  As they walked through the expansive grounds of Forest Park, toward the Pagoda Circle, Lee and Tammy could see many people in the area where they had agreed to meet Brandon and the children.

  Tammy was to have her first two hours alone with her kids since returning from Vandenberg and California, and she had never looked forward to anything more.

  As they walked further on, Tammy checked her watch and knew her timing was near perfect; it was 10.59am and the scheduled meet time was 11. She took some deeper breaths and thought it was kind of Brandon to agree to this, considering how awfully the first meeting had ended.

  She knew if her sister had her way, she would never get to see her children again. But she got the impression Brandon was against this.

  And though she was looking forward to seeing them, her heart was also slowly sliding toward her shoes with apprehension at the prospect of laying eyes on her cheating ex-husband for the first time since her return.

  When the two best friends reached the Pagoda Circle and looked through the various people mingling around, they shared the same surprised look. Brandon, Beth, and Noah were nowhere to be seen.

  They stepped to the sidewalk of the Pagoda Circle access road, and as Lee swore quietly under her breath with Tammy about to do the same, they saw someone wave from across the street, sitting near the entrance to the Municipal Theatre.

  Tammy gritted her teeth and turned to Lee with an annoyed look. They studied the two people who had waved to them.

  Tammy’s mum and dad stood from their seats and waved again. The children were with them. Beth looked pained and eager to cross the road, but Noah seemed in no hurry to get off his ass.

  “That fucking gutless prick,” Tammy muttered under her breath as the four of them came across Pagoda Circle toward her.

  “Has your ex-husband got any balls?” Lee whispered.

  Tim had woken early. It was Saturday morning on the West Coast, and Alameda had delivered him a brisk, bright fall morning, with the odd cluster of clouds dotted through the aqua-blue sky.

  The weather meant little to him anymore. It wouldn’t matter if it were the most beautiful day he’d ever seen, or if storm clouds covering the entire sky dumped a years’ worth of rainfall directly over him. None of it mattered since Sandra had died.

  He remembered what his grandfather, old Henry Erwin, once told him: the purpose of life—is to have a purpose. Tim felt his was gone.

  Tim’s doctor had requested—and following his resistance, demanded—that Tim see a counselor twice a week until he felt satisfied Tim was in the clear.

  And now the doctor, who had been the Erwins’ family physician for almost three consecutive decades, was even more deeply concerned with his patient’s state of mind.

  The counselor had been in constant communication, and told him Tim Erwin was in the danger zone. Both were worried Tim was sliding into a depression beyond his control.

  The doctor and counselor were also both across what the medical fraternity, especially in North America, were starting to collectively call the “Flight 19 effect,” often abbreviated to F19E.

  A significant portion of the passengers could not merge back into anything resembling th
eir former lives.

  Tragically, F19E was directly connected to, at last count, nearly three dozen people ending their lives. Tim Erwin, though not losing his wife to the Flight 19 effect directly, might be said to have been a victim in a roundabout way.

  The doctor had heard all about the events leading up to Sandra’s death straight from her husband. And he had known Sandra himself for nearly 30 years. Given her medical history and her obsession with her home, he was not surprised the two had crashed into each other head-on when she opened her front door in 2024.

  Tim swallowed the cocktail of pills prescribed to him and cursed his doctor’s name as the last one went down with the ease of a piece of chalk falling down a garden hose. By the end of the following week, he would decide not to take any more of those darn pills. Something was about to make his mind much clearer.

  The three pieces of sourdough bread he’d just toasted were too thick, and had become black and crisp around the edges. He compensated with an extra lick of his favorite bring-on-more-cholesterol butter, topped with a layer of honey akin to the amount of wax a woman might apply to free her legs of hair for the next hundred years.

  Fuck it, he thought. What’s the worst thing that could happen? A heart attack? Tim Erwin wasn’t worried about that anymore. A heart attack had already robbed him of his will to live.

  He stirred the coffee from his Keurig machine and thanked the assholes who had trashed his home for at least not taking a sledgehammer to the one thing that still brought him joy every morning.

  He then reminded himself that he had taken it with him to Hawaii five years ago in his suitcase, much to Sandra’s chagrin, so they couldn’t have smashed it up.

  The kids had made fun of him when he pulled his coffee maker from the suitcase when they arrived in Hawaii.

  His son, Ben, had told him three times, at the end of the weeks’ vacation, to make sure he didn’t forget it when he left, reminding him how he couldn’t live without his daily dose of cheap (but good all the same) morning coffee.