Passage of the Night

by Amanda Carpenter

  Kirstie set the coffee carefully on the kitchen table, while Louise stalked towards the refrigerator and pulled out orange juice, then turned back to smile at her with blue, charged eyes. 'Well?' murmured her sister. 'How do I look?'

  'Fantastic,' replied Kirstie simply, well aware that she herself wore her disruptive night like a shabby cloak. She sat down and unashamedly stared. 'That's quite an outfit for high-school chemistry.'

  Louise threw back her head, exposing her long white throat, and laughed. 'This isn't for the doubtful benefit of my chemistry classes!' she exclaimed, and the amusement was in her voice as well, tinkling like shards of splintered glass. 'This is for my lunch date today. I'm going out with that incredibly sexy man you kidnapped with such good intentions.'

  Everything in Kirstie stopped.

  She had not been at a standstill before. How long would she continue to deceive herself, how much more was there to strip away and learn? She had been in limbo, refusing to give up that last tiny ember of hope, refusing even to fan it to a flame, sheltering it from all else that crumbled to ash. But she couldn't shelter it from the cutting presence facing her now.

  Slashed.

  She moved finally, and from memory aped a normal expression, an unremarkable surprise. 'This is an— unexpected development,' she said, while those hot blue eyes tried remorselessly to dissect her facade.

  'Oh, not really,' declaimed Louise airily, settling herself with ineffable grace into the seat opposite her.

  She was too close. Kirstie felt it like an outcry jammed at the back of her throat. 'I'd been in touch, you see, after the wedding had been cancelled, but Francis had been really too busy the first couple of weeks to socialise, poor man. However, he called me yesterday, we got together last night, and—well, the rest, as they say, is history. By the way, don't expect me in for supper tonight. I expect we'll celebrate with a night on the town.'

  'How very nice.' Kirstie murmured the senseless words, picked up her coffee and took a sip of it without any of it registering. Could she breathe past the pain in her chest; did she? She must have, for this cruel consciousness continued.

  Slashed to the quick.

  With an excess of good will, Louise leaned forward and captured one of her cold, lifeless hands. 'Whether you know it or not, you've done us an incredible favour,' said her older sister, with her characteristic impeccable charm. 'If you hadn't shaken us both up by what you'd done, I might have gone ahead and married Neil, while Francis would have just stepped aside with that typical generosity of his, and we all would have been utterly miserable right now. But instead, you gave us each the shock we needed to make us put our lives right, and we owe it all to you.'

  'You don't owe me anything,' said Kirstie through motionless lips, and Louise, unsurprised, smiled.

  'And how typical of you too, darling. Oh, God, look at the time!' She swept, cat-smooth and sinuous, to her feet and carried her empty cup to the sink. 'By the way,' Louise continued, with such an enchanting mixture of embarrassment and delight, 'is it possible for you to do me another tremendous favour? If you aren't already planning to go out this evening, do you think you could absent yourself from the living-room so that I can bring him back for coffee—afterwards? I'll lug the television up to your bedroom if you like.'

  'No, that—won't be necessary,' she whispered, through a rising wave of nausea. She couldn't bear being in the same house with them together. 'I have a feeling I'll be working this evening.'

  'You are a love!' Louise danced over and brushed her cheek against Kirstie's, so as not to smudge her lipstick. 'I really must run now, or I'll be late for class! Bye!'

  The tremors began as Louise's light, energetic footsteps tapped towards the front door. By the time the house was shrouded in emptiness, Kirstie's hands and face had crumbled into despair. It was so unimportant, only a physical manifestation of the ruin inside. No one was even around to see it, yet the feeling was so naked, she cradled her body against it.

  Get your priorities right, Francis.

  It was such supreme irony, to think that she had worried for him more than she'd worried for herself. She had underestimated Francis to the very end. He had taken her advice to the fullest extent, and his clearsighted ruthlessness had far and above outstripped hers.

  She could see the rationale behind it, and it was faultless. There could not be a better choice of one materialistic enough to disregard his long working hours for the benefits of living such a luxurious lifestyle. No compromise was necessary with Louise, who was so adroit at looking after herself that he needn't bother. Lavish her with credit cards and champagne, adorn her with jewellery and furs, and she would never be jealous of his true mistress, would play sexuality for a sometime game and not give it undue importance, would preen in the hostess role.

  Oh, Francis.

  Kirstie mourned for what might have been, what would never be hers, with the knowledge that, as with her guilt, as with her protectiveness, he neither needed her love nor wanted it.

  Then, as there was nothing else for her to do, she washed her face and dressed, her body jerking tiredly through the meaningless motions. She packed an overnight bag, for she was desperate to keep the distance between herself and what was to happen in this house. Perhaps Christian might be persuaded to put her up for the night, and this weekend she would scour the newspapers for a small apartment she could take closer to the airstrip.

  And in the meantime she would go and work herself past exhaustion, where there was still this appalling pain, to a barren state where nothing could exist, where the passage of the night went unremarked in destitute slumber. And when the next day dawned she would do it again. Some travesty of life went on, even after the most debilitating revelations.

  She knew intellectually that somewhere, some time after the test of endurance, she would stop hurting so much inside. She might even be able to meet Francis, with his arm around her sister, and smile. Adults were like that. But for now she couldn't help crying a little for the appalling pain that existed.

  CHAPTER TEN

  'Christian's a no-show,' said Paul wearily just after lunch. With an uncharacteristic display of temper he threw a clipboard with the day's schedule off his desk. It hit the tiled floor with a resounding slap. 'Damn his unpredictable hide.'

  Kirstie sat in his office with a peculiar quiet as if she had abandoned her body, her expressionless eyes watching her eldest brother. Her face looked as if it had been cut from unkind stone, the planes and hollows under her eyes and cheeks chiselled without the redeeming quality of colour. None of her customary mischievous bounce was in evidence; it was as if a totally different personality had taken her over. Occasionally throughout the morning people asked if she was feeling all right, to which she replied with a courtesy made hideous with the lack of sincerity, emotion, any normal human reaction.

  Now what she said in response to Paul was, 'Don't judge him too harshly. He's never skipped out without some kind of warning before. There must be a reason for his absence.'

  'Oh, I know,' replied Paul, expelling a short, impatient sigh. 'But that doesn't get cargo shipped, and if we don't meet the deadline we could lose a two-hundred-thousand-a-year contract.'

  Kirstie swung around in her swivel-chair and rubbed tired eyes. 'I'll take it.'

  An unusual silence met her offer. She looked up as it registered, found Paul watching her with doubt. 'Are you sure you're up to it?' he asked, and the gentle concern was so weakening that she gripped the arms of her seat until the bones in her hands showed stark.

  'I'm up to it.'

  He didn't give it up. 'The latest reports say that the weather is going to worsen. There'll be no room for sloppy flying.'

  That brought the first real sign of emotion from her: anger. 'You know better than that. I have never flown a sloppy flight in my life,' she gritted, eyes flashing.

  'I know,' he replied softly. 'You're one of the best pilots I've got. But I've never seen you look the way you do today, and I don't want
there to be a first time for you. You know the schedule as well as I. There's no other available pilot. But I'd rather sacrifice the contract than have you at any risk.'

  It brought her up short, as it was meant to. She considered her own resources again, running through the length and demands of the flight with a new objectivity, while Paul sat and waited. At the end she shook her head and gave him a brief, pale smile. 'I'm down but I'm not foolish. My flying won't be a risk.'

  'Fine,' he said, with an encouraging nod, and turned back to his work. 'Be ready to leave at two o'clock.'

  Kirstie stood. 'Who'll stay tonight to see me in?'

  'I will.' Paul didn't look up.

  She hesitated, something niggling at her memory. 'I thought you had Carol's parents coming tonight?'

  Her brother glanced at her from under raised eyebrows. 'I'll stay to see you in, Kirstie.' It could have been a rebuff. Paul was capable of it, if he felt his authority was being challenged. But they both knew she hadn't meant the question to be a challenge, and the warm, caring smile he gave her was an altogether different message.

  Paul, too, had his share of family loyalty.

  She quietly shut the door behind her. At her emergence, his secretary told her, 'I've another message for you, Kirstie.'

  It was the second one that day. Kirstie didn't want to talk to anyone and replied, 'I'm still not in. Whoever it is can wait until Monday.'

  Routine was soothing. She checked her flight path and the cargo, already loaded, initialled the inventory list, and listened to another weather report with Paul before setting off. Thunderstorms were due to eclipse New Jersey in the early hours of the morning. Briefly, to cover all contingencies, they discussed the possibility of her staying overnight in Cincinnati and decided it wasn't necessary. She would have a gusty return, but she should be touching down well before the storm would break. On that note, she took her leave.

  The day seemed so unreal. After a month of unrelieved heat the grey sky felt strange, and the distant place inside where she had hidden her real self had nothing to do with lifting the plane off the runway, or with taxiing into the large hangar at Cincinnati so that the ground crew there could unload the cargo sheltered from lashing sheets of rain.

  She waited patiently while everything that could go wrong did, from an accident with a forklift to a miscount on the inventory so that everything had to be checked again. Kirstie didn't mind, because it didn't touch her. It was all surface noise, a comforting distraction, and when business had been concluded, hours behind schedule, she made the decision to continue home late that evening without regret, for to stop at that point meant she might fall victim to wounding reflection.

  She hadn't known at that time that the storm was moving in much faster than had previously been indicated, nor that the head-winds would give her lightened aircraft a constant buffeting, making the autopilot useless and scoring tension along her wrists and shoulders. She was more than halfway home before she hit the worst of it, and by then turning back was no longer an option.

  Reaction she had been fleeing from struck her at the darkest point, when the violent wind was her only companion. She was lonely, so lonely, she was tired and aching and utterly discouraged. She couldn't remember why she should want to return, ever, her lack of direction was total, and the silent sobs clenched her chest as she mechanically refused to let tears destroy her vision.

  It was approaching midnight by the time she could contact Paul through the interference to tell him she was over the Appalachian Mountains and in the home stretch. For a moment she thought she had lost him again, but then he said, eloquent with feeling, 'My God. There you are.'

  She heard it, and understood, for her enforced radio silence had stretched to over an hour in which, to Paul and the skeletal ground crew waiting helpless at the airstrip, anything could have happened. Out of the modicum of pity left in her destitute emotions, she sent him, briefly, the only reassurance she could. 'Not long now, Paul. I'll see you soon.'

  It was fifteen minutes later, as she was bringing the plane down through the storm by sheer determination to the lighted runway, that it happened. The wicked, capricious wind hurled itself at the light plane just a few feet from touching ground, and she knew, as she fought savagely for control, that nothing—Paul's earlier concern, a fresher pilot—could have prevented it. The right wheels connected with the drenched asphalt and screamed a protest for over a hundred hair-raising yards, the sole support for the weight of the careening plane as she did all that she could to keep it from turning on its side.

  There was so much noise, but inside there was nothing, just the shudder of the aircraft and one second of immense relief as at last it obeyed her commands and righted itself. She was still braking as hard as she dared when the overstressed right side of the landing-gear collapsed.

  Kirstie felt a violent jerk as her seat fell out from underneath her. She watched the black wet ground come up to meet her. The underside of the plane impacted with the landing-strip with an awesome roar, and skidded, slewed sideways over the lighted boundary. One heartbeat, a crashing thud, loudest of all. Two heartbeats. When would the plane stop?

  Now. Blessed cessation.

  It stopped just now.

  Hanging sideways in her seat-straps, numb all over with shock, Kirstie closed her eyes and bowed her head forward, and found herself apologising with heartbreaking dejection, 'Oh, Paul. I'm so sorry.'

  'Jesus. Jesus Christ!' The radio was still operable and open, Paul a horrified witness to the whole ghastly incident. But then she knew that. The abused metal hadn't been the only scream to ravish her ears.

  Then there was silence, and the wet-lashed darkness. She had no energy for disentangling herself, passively waiting for the screech of tyres, the shouts, the urgent assault upon the exterior of the crazily tilted plane. The small door to her cabin was wrenched open almost off its hinges.

  She turned her head. Christian? With gentle, shaking fingers her big blond brother quickly unstrapped her. 'Oh, love, where are you hurt?' he cried.

  'I—don't think I am,' she said, looking so small in the dim reflected light from the control panel, sounding so uncertain that he wrapped both arms around her and held her with his whole body.

  He lifted her out, staggering for secure footing, and walked up the angle of the floor to the open hatch. There Grandpa Whit waited with wiry arms outstretched to take her from Christian and, like him, hug her close convulsively.

  She was wet to the skin almost immediately. Someone shook out a blanket and wrapped it around her torso. The rest of the ground crew raced around the plane, spraying it with foam against the possibility of fire, the hissing sound like the release of a pressure cooker. Christian swung lightly out of the plane to the ground. Another speeding ground car approached the scene as she turned her head and said shakily, 'Grandpa, I can walk.'

  'Are you sure, girl?' he asked as he cuddled her, but he was already lowering her legs carefully to the ground.

  At that moment the other ground car screeched to a halt and two dark figures exploded out of it. Two men sprinting, one of whom was Paul.

  The other, faster one was Francis.

  Her legs were the first to go, collapsing from underneath her. With a harsh exclamation, her grandfather clutched her as she went to her knees, a loud roar filling her ears. She stared up at Francis with blank eyes gone as large as an owl's as he pulled his body to a precipitate halt, his eyes stark, his face so raw, so exposed in the uneven flash of siren lights from the ground crew's vehicles.

  He opened his mouth, said nothing, and sank to his knees in front of her. With delicate hunger, he reached out and gathered her body to him as she fell finally from all that was inexplicable, all that hurt, into darkness.

  'I couldn't,' she said, though she didn't know it. 'Paul, I couldn't help it.'

  'I know,' said the man holding her, and the two words were a loving croon. 'There was nothing you could do. We saw it all happen, love. God help us, we saw it all.'<
br />
  Kirstie was conscious enough to be aware of being laid, tenderly, on to something that felt like a couch. There were lights, shining red, on the other side of her closed lids. Her body felt funny, thick. She opened her eyes.

  And looked into emerald ones.

  She just lay there staring at him, on the couch in Paul's office. Francis made a convulsive movement towards her, and with despair she shrank into herself, for one touch from him and she would fall into so many pieces that she would never pull together again.

  He saw, in that split second. She couldn't have stopped him more effectively if she had punched him in the stomach. He recoiled, and his eyes went dead.

  Then Paul crouched in front of her with a cup of coffee. 'I've called the doctor,' he said, with such extreme care that she knew he was holding on to the bare threads of his common sense.

  'Paul,' she said gently, clearly, for in that moment she was stronger than he, 'I don't need a doctor. I didn't even bang my head. I fainted because I was so tired, and I had a bad scare. Call him up and tell him not to come.'

  'Are you sure?' he asked, wanting to be reassured.

  'Yes.' Then, as her mouth and voice wobbled, she whispered, 'All I want to do is go h-home.'

  It pulled Paul together more efficiently than anything else could have. Suddenly he was in control, still concerned but capable, and he touched her face. 'Then you shall,' he said simply.

  'You've got things to take care of here, and she's in no condition to drive,' said Francis in a quiet voice. 'I'll take her.'

  Kirstie's eyes flashed to him, fearful, uncomprehending of why he was here at all, but he wasn't looking at her. He was looking instead at Paul, who nodded his relief at the suggestion. Then, as Francis made an impersonal gesture as if he would help her rise, she quickly struggled to her feet while pretending she hadn't seen.

  Paul hugged and kissed her, then looked deep into her eyes and said, 'It wasn't your fault. You know that, don't you? It was as if a giant hand had picked the plane up. It was incredible you were able to bring it back to ground at all.'