The Yankee Widow

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Oh, he did not,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Mmm-hmm.” She grinned and Claire nodded.

  “Couldn’t take his eyes off you,” she said.

  “I’m sure he was just concerned for the safety of one of his employees.”

  “Right.” Jean smirked. “I’m sure that was it. Doesn’t explain all the other times we’ve caught him staring at you, though.”

  The two women tittered as I turned back to the horizon once more.

  “He swam that way.” Jean pointed and I pulled her hand down.

  “I am not looking for the lieutenant,” I said, my voice stern. “I’m looking for those damn planes that were supposed to fly in today.”

  “You girls and your planes,” Claire said. “I don’t understand it. They’re so—”

  “Shh!” I waved for her to stop talking.

  The sound was faint, like static, but growing quickly into a hum.

  My body tingled with anticipation. The air began to rumble with the vibration of the incoming engines and people on the beach stopped what they were doing, sitting up, the game of volleyball halting, surfers sitting on their boards, all eyes rising to the sky.

  I grabbed Jean’s hand as two Curtiss P-40 Warhawks roared toward us, the noses of their fuselages painted like shark faces, their wicked white teeth flashing as they flew past.

  “Woo!” Jean shouted, waving at them.

  “Gorgeous,” I whispered.

  “Too loud!” Claire yelled, her hands over her ears as she cowered behind us. “Golly, you gals are nuts for flying those things. How can you stand the noise?”

  I glanced at Jean who feigned confusion. “Noise?” she said. “What noise?”

  “My ears are gonna be ringing for the rest of the day,” Claire said.

  Jean put an arm around her friend’s shoulders. “Come on. Let’s go for a swim. Audrey? You coming?”

  I searched the sky for a moment more, but the water beckoned, bumping up against my shins like a small, insistent child wanting to play. With a last look north for more planes, I eased in up to my waist and pushed off the soft ocean floor, taking long, lazy strokes parallel to the beach and keeping an eye out for incoming surfers.

  I rolled onto my back. The waves undulated beneath me as I stared up at the bright blue sky and sighed, luxuriating in the feeling of freedom. It was all I’d ever craved, and coming to Hawaii had finally brought it to me. Far from my mother’s all-seeing eyes. From who I was expected to be. From the responsibilities that came with being born into privilege—always having to attend the party, host the brunch and dress the part of the dutiful daughter of the Coltrane fortune. My father’s accomplishments represented by the brand names on my clothing. But my mother came from old money, which added to the show. Diamond stud earrings, a tasteful gold signet ring, a string of pearls like a collar around my neck. A collar I’d strained against for twenty-two years until my father had mercifully cut me free.

  At least for now. This island was my chance to prove to my mother, and myself, that I could support myself and earn the money it would cost me to buy the only thing I’d ever wanted to own—an airfield. It had been my goal ever since I’d grown sensible enough to dream it. Ever since I’d sat at one of my mother’s many soirees and watched the women gossip over sparkling drinks while keeping their eyes on their husbands, prepared to tend to their every need, as the men talked and laughed over amber-colored drinks, never once giving mind to their wives. I didn’t want to be like the women I was being bred to emulate—I wanted to be who I was.

  My father could see it, and he encouraged it. When the opportunity arose to come to Oahu and instruct airmen recruits and earn a good wage doing it, my father not only insisted I go, but also bought my ticket, citing it a reward for my accomplishments at university.

  “She deserves a little fun before settling down, don’t you think, Gennie?” he’d asked my mother while I stood out of sight, straining to hear. “She’s worked so hard.”

  “But a year?” she’d said.

  “I seem to recall your own father sending you to Paris after you finished your schooling.”

  I’d had to bite my lip to keep from snickering. My father was always prepared for an argument. My mother often said he should have been a lawyer. But a lawyer didn’t make half as much as an oilman.

  “It’s different and you know it, Christian. I have family there. And Paris is full of culture. Hawaii is full of...beach bums. Slovenly sorts all oiled up and barely making a living.”

  “Sounds divine,” he’d said. “Sign me up.”

  She’d harrumphed and he’d laughed in response.

  “That is hardly the case,” he’d continued. “It is a vacation destination. George and Millie went last year and had a marvelous time. Don’t be such a snob. Hawaii has plenty of culture, and it would allow our Audrey to earn a living doing the thing she loves best.”

  In the end she’d given in, all her efforts to convince, sway and bribe me to stay thwarted by the one thing she couldn’t promise—freedom.

  A surfer went down a few yards away and I kicked my legs to put some distance between us, accidentally striking a passing swimmer.

  Not just any swimmer.

  “Lieutenant Hart.” I gasped, tucking in my knees and swimming backward as heat flooded my face. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s fine, Miss Coltrane.” His voice was low and deep, the surface of the water carrying it and making it sound as though he were closer, creating an air of intimacy in the midst of the dozen or so people frolicking nearby.

  Little rivulets of water streamed down his neck from the dark hair slicked back on his head, giving me a clear view of his eyes, which—with the sun reflecting off them—were the color of the glass 7UP bottles Ruby was always leaving around the house.

  He looked as though he might say more but then nodded and began to move away.

  “Good day,” he said, his voice once again landing softly in the shell of my ear.

  “Good day,” I whispered.

  With a sigh, I swam back to shore.

  A few hours later we packed up our belongings along with the other beachgoers, preparing to head home.

  “Come on, girls,” I said, slinging my bag over my shoulder. “Let’s go. I’m starving and I only have a couple hours until my father calls.”

  Every Sunday evening like clockwork he called. He caught me up on the news at home; what society events mother was planning, what fella my younger sister, Evie, was torturing, and I entertained him with stories of life on the island. He particularly liked my tales about Ruby. She was like a character in a book. “What’s that Ruby up to now?” he’d ask.

  After my father and I were through talking, my mother would get on the phone, her tone unrelenting in its disapproval. She would reiterate everything my father had told me, adding in all the minute details I couldn’t care less about. If Evie was home she’d hop on after my mother, talking a mile a minute about this boy or that one. It could be exhausting, but I wouldn’t miss the phone call for the world.

  Jean, Catherine and Ruby—who’d returned from her walk with Eddie—threw their belongings into the trunk of the baby blue 1936 Ford convertible we’d all chipped in to buy when we’d arrived on the island, and then piled into the car.

  I shoved my bag in next to the others, closed the trunk, and climbed into the back seat.

  “Looks like someone has an audience,” Jean murmured as she backed out of our parking spot.

  I turned to see Lieutenant Hart standing next to his car across the dirt lot, his eyes on me.

  I chewed my lip and sank down in my seat, trying to ignore my quickened heartbeat and resisting the urge to let my own gaze linger. This was not the time in my life to get distracted by a man. Even if the man was Lieutenant Hart.

  Two

  The wind
whipped past my head as my warplane cut across the sky. Above me, streaks of pink and orange stretched from one end of the horizon to the other. Below, the Pacific Ocean sparkled with light and the shadow of my aircraft.

  From the corner of my eye, I watched the silver plane keeping pace with me. I turned my attention to the array of gauges in front of me, checking each one in quick succession.

  “Ready?” I asked the blue-and-yellow Fairchild PT-19.

  She’d been sitting in the back corner of the training hangar for months, damaged during a training session last year. Bill, the old crew chief, had been fixing her up on his own time and I’d fallen in love with her at first sight. He’d let me take her up as soon as she was ready and I’d named her Roxy for her fiery attitude in the sky. Originally she’d been white with navy stripes down the sides of the fuselage, but Bill had let me pick new colors to paint her. Remembering Jenny, the little sunshine-colored plane I’d learned in so many years ago, I asked him to paint Roxy yellow with blue tips and stabilizers, and he’d delivered. She was recognizable everywhere for her bright colors, which had gotten me into a bit of trouble when Bill learned I’d been flat-hatting all over the island on my off hours. After getting grounded for a week, I stopped doing it as often. But it was hard to resist.

  The silver plane moved closer and I grinned, biding my time. The AT-6 Texan may have been the faster plane, but the PT-19ꞌs smaller engine had its own benefits.

  It wasn’t about the plane, though. It was about the pilot. And the pilot of the Texan was as green as the five-dollar bill Ruby was going to owe me when I beat her trainee in this race across the Hawaiian sky.

  We sped toward the northern tip of the island, the goal to swing around, race back and touch down at the base first. The AT-6, as expected, hit the northern tip first, flying past it, going too fast and blowing his turn.

  I laughed. Male pilots were all the same, their arrogance getting the best of them. And the trainees were sometimes the worst of all.

  As he tried to correct, making a wide arc around, I pulled the throttle back toward my stomach.

  The little plane slowed for a moment above Oahu’s beauty before I gave it full throttle, using the rudder to roll as fast as possible. I idled and applied full opposite rudder to stop the roll as we dove, my heartbeat quickening as the nose dropped and sent me hurtling into a steep dive. I watched the gauges in front of me and held my breath, counting in my head before pulling the stick hard once more to complete the maneuver and level out, speeding now in the opposite direction and ahead of the AT-6.

  “Winner!” Jean yelled as I climbed down from the landed plane a few minutes later with a grin.

  There was a small commotion near the AT-6 and we glanced around the Fairchild to see Ruby’s airman recruit jumping to the ground and running outside, his hand over his mouth. The Texan was notorious for making its pilots sick.

  “Good job, Parker!” she yelled after him and then shook her head at us. “Damn kid just cost me five dollars.” She linked her arm through mine. “Nice work.”

  “Thank you.”

  We hauled our gear to the supply room, discussing our dinner options as we hung our parachutes and stored our helmets and goggles.

  “Ladies.”

  We stopped and nearly stood at attention, our gazes steady on our boss who had entered the tiny supply room behind us on silent feet.

  Mae Burton would’ve been a soldier had they let her. Tall with gray hair pulled back tight, a daunting stare and the rigid stance of someone ready to give or take orders. She’d hired each of us after we’d answered the same call—an advertisement we’d all seen promoting the need for flight instructors on the island of Oahu.

  The flyers had hung in airfields and airports around the nation, but you had to have a certain number of flight hours logged and your pilot license to apply. The four of us arrived within hours of each other that summer.

  Jean hailed from St. Louis, where she’d earned her hours as a crop duster in the early mornings before working at her family’s restaurant during the day. Ruby came from Kansas, disembarking her flight with lips the color of her name. Catherine, from Wisconsin—where the only ocean she’d ever seen was the green of the fields she’d flown above doing deliveries for the postal service—arrived with more bags than the rest of us combined. And I’d flown in from Dallas on the ticket from my father, a month after graduating college with a teaching degree, and a week after refusing an offer to take on a third grade class at my old elementary school. Teaching, in my mind, had always been a backup plan. The real goal was to buy the airfield. Much to my mother’s dismay.

  Genevieve Elizabeth Rose O’Hare Coltrane was a force in pale pink Chanel, pecking out orders for my life, my future and the happiness she thought I was assured if she was at the helm.

  It was quite funny to me, this vision my mother had of my life, so different from what I imagined—from what I wanted. She would never understand me, and I knew the real fight to live the life I wanted hadn’t yet begun. And as much as I dreaded the confrontation, the hysterics and threats... I would not be shoved into this archaic mold she’d made for me.

  “Reports?” Mae said and we handed over our reports for all the men we’d trained that day. “How’d they do?” she asked without looking at the paperwork.

  “Fine, ma’am.”

  “Swell, ma’am.”

  “Could use some work on maneuvers, ma’am.”

  “Good. Good. Fine,” Mae said, glancing at the report on top. “And who won the race?”

  We glanced at one another, trying to keep the grins from our faces. I slowly raised my hand.

  “Again, Dallas?” We were all a city or state to her. She never called us by name.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  “Y’all need to work on your skills. Dallas is flying circles around you,” she said, raising her eyebrows at the others before leaving us to finish stowing our gear. “Just don’t let ol’ chrome dome catch you racing in his precious planes.”

  Ruby and Catherine snickered as we glanced at Bill who stood rubbing his bald head and swearing under his breath while staring at the engine of a half-gutted plane.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good night, ma’am.”

  Jean snorted a laugh as soon as we were alone.

  “God, that woman scares me,” Catherine said, sinking onto a bench. “I thought we were about to get in trouble. And how does she know about the racing?”

  “One of the boys probably told her,” Ruby said. “I’ll twist a few arms and find out who.”

  “Oh, leave them alone,” Jean said. “If you terrorize those boys, you’ll just confuse them, and they’re already confused enough having to do what a bunch of women tell them to do all day long.”

  “Poor little pilots,” I said as I backed out the door—and straight into Lieutenant Hart.

  I cursed myself as I pictured him on the beach and felt my face heat. “My apologies, sir.”

  He nodded at the three women who’d exited behind me before meeting my gaze. “Miss Coltrane,” he said. “I was looking for you.”

  “You were?” Ruby sidled up next to me. “For an after-work rendezvous perhaps?”

  His cheeks turned as red as I feared mine were.

  “Mae informed me of your...shall we call it...spirited teaching method?” he said.

  I heard Jean swear quietly behind me.

  “It’s fine,” he said, his lips curving up in a small smile. “I’m in favor, actually. I find a little friendly competition beneficial. Makes one think on their feet, so to speak. As long as everyone keeps to regulation and is safe, of course.”

  “Oh, we are, sir,” Ruby said. “Always. I assure you.”

  “Wonderful,” he said, his eyes locking on mine again. “I am wondering though about the maneuver I hear you’ve been doing in the Fairchi
ld. Mae says you’ve been performing a low altitude split-S in it and I’m a little concerned. It’s a daring and slightly reckless move, being performed with one of my men in it.”

  I bit my lip, my gaze lowering.

  “It’s been a while since I’ve flown a PT-19,” he said. “I’d like you to take me through it so I can see it performed for myself.”

  “She’d love to,” Catherine said, discreetly pinching me on the behind.

  “Of course, sir,” I murmured, my heart sinking. “I’d be happy to.”

  “Tomorrow morning then?” he asked. “Say at zero five thirty?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Wonderful. Thank you, Miss Coltrane.” He nodded at the four of us and walked away.

  “Shit,” I said under my breath as we headed to our car.

  But the girls were excited, talking of nothing else all the way to Skip’s, our favorite spot for burgers, fries and milkshakes.

  “Did you see the way he focused on Audrey?” Ruby asked, resting her cheek on her palm dreamily during dinner. “He barely even noticed we were there. No man ever looks at me like that.”

  “Men look at you all the time,” I said, dragging a fry through my vanilla shake. “He was only focused on me because he was angry.”

  “I don’t think so,” Jean said. “Concerned maybe, but not angry.”

  “I think he likes you,” Catherine said. “Did you see the way he blushed when Ruby asked if he wanted to take you out?”

  “She embarrassed him,” I said, shooting Ruby a look.

  “I think Catherine’s right,” Jean said. “I saw the way he was watching you on the beach the other day.”

  I sighed and pushed my plate away. “You gals done?” I asked.

  “Why the hurry to get home?” Ruby asked. “Anxious to get a good night’s sleep so you’re fresh for your date tomorrow?”

  I threw my napkin at her.

  “Ruby,” Jean said. “Don’t you have a date tonight?”