Eagle & Crane
Page 40
He takes the box out to the Ford coupe, secures it in the trunk, and proceeds to load the car up for a short road trip. He will only be gone for a few days, he decides. Just long enough to make amends. Just long enough, he hopes, to make one last exchange: the fake Harry for the real.
* * *
As days turn into weeks, Ava tells herself not to get her hopes up. Louis might not want to forgive them. Or he might forgive them but not want to find them.
The one thing she does know for certain: He knows where to find them. She didn’t dare write it in the letter she left for Louis—in case the letter was found by someone else—but she knows all Louis has to do is think for a moment and the answer will come to him.
By then, Cleo, Ava, and Harry have gone to work sweeping out the cabin, trying to weatherproof it, make it livable. Ava makes trip after trip up the coast in the Model A. She retrieves bedrolls and blankets, food and toiletries. Afterward, they are careful to roll the truck a short distance along the footpath and cover it with tree branches and brush.
The days that followed the crash were hell for Ava. She had sent Harry on ahead, but he had to travel on foot and keep himself hidden. Every day the F.B.I. agent’s presence delayed her departure, she worried that Harry might run out of supplies. And her mother was a nervous wreck, biting her nails all the time and reliving what had happened with Earl. Finally, when Ava could take it no longer, she loaded her mother into the Model A and went to join Harry. She left a letter confessing that she’d been the one to sabotage the plane but leaving out the part that Harry was still alive. The letter would exonerate Louis if he needed it. Ava wasn’t willing to risk the rest.
She was sorry she hadn’t told Louis the whole truth all along. He’d looked so angry that afternoon he’d fought with Harry. There was a moment Ava thought for sure Louis was going to kill him.
“Be patient,” Harry tells Ava, whenever she wonders aloud if Louis will ever come to them. Harry thinks—or so Ava guesses—that Ava wants to be forgiven. And she does want to be forgiven—forgiven for all the things she kept secret from Louis, really. But all Harry says is, “He’ll turn up. Be patient.”
Ava tells herself: At worst, he will simply never arrive. He won’t send anyone after Harry, not Louis . . . not ever. But as the wait goes on, she begins to wonder.
Then, one afternoon when her mother has driven the Model A up the coast to retrieve more supplies, Ava hears a far-distant automobile winding along the highway. It is too early for her mother to be back already, so the sound catches her attention. She listens, wondering if it is merely a motoring tourist headed down the highway, past the turnout for the path that leads to their little cabin. But for some reason she knows: This one is different. She hears it pull off the highway and into the turnout, its tires spitting rock and dust and crunching to a stop. She hears a door slam shut.
“Harry!” she shouts. “Harry!”
Harry comes inside from where he was attempting to dig a vegetable garden.
“I heard it, too,” he says.
Harry drops his trowel and wipes the soil from his hands. Together they begin to walk the narrow path back up to the main road, each step bringing them closer to their friend.
Acknowledgments
This book was inspired in part by a few real-life family connections. I would like to acknowledge the late Barbara Matsui. Barbara was a close friend of my mother’s who spent time with me as a child and who happened to be legally blind. When I asked my mother about the trouble with Barbara’s sight, she told me a little bit of Barbara’s past: Barbara had been born in an internment camp, where her mother had contracted German measles while pregnant. That these camps ever existed in America, much less in my home state of California, shocked me as a child. In recent years, remembering Barbara’s story led me to research more about the internment camps and the kinds of health problems former internees suffered (and some continue to suffer). Barbara’s personal story left an impression on me. She was simply a delightful and uplifting person to be around (a teacher and a talented musician, no less). I’m grateful to have known her.
My other influences include my great-grandmother Jessie, who owned an orchard and ranch in Penryn, California, and who relayed the story of the Japanese-American foreman and his family who lived on her property up until the time the U.S. government ordered their internment. On the other side of my family, my grandfather Norbert grew up picking fruit in the orchards of Placer County. He recalled the large number of Japanese-American settlements and properties that abruptly disappeared after Executive Order 9066. Like Louis, he became a flight instructor during World War II for the U.S. Army Air Corps. His daughter, my mother, also learned to fly and got her wings. And my father eventually flew F-111s for the U.S. Air Force during Vietnam. I myself am terrified even to fly commercial (must’ve missed that gene), so I’m not sure I would have or could have written this particular book without the influence of my many flying family members, or the numerous air shows our family attended when I was a kid.
In the book world, I would like to thank the following people for their guidance and support: Emily Forland and everyone at Brandt and Hochman, Jake Morrissey and his assistant Kevin Murphy, Ivan Held, Sally Kim, Stephanie Hargadon, Alexis Welby, Madeline Schmitz, Ashley McClay, Emily Ollis, Brennin Cummings, and all the amazing people at Putnam. I am also very lucky to have Michelle Weiner of CAA as a champion of my work. I am grateful for the many friends who have kept me company through the writing process over the years: Jayme Yeo, Susan Shin, Julie Fogh, Brendan Jones, Georgia Clark, Lyndsay Faye, Amy Poeppel, Elizabeth Romanski, Brian Shin, Melissa Ryan Clark, Julia Masnik, Ning Zhou, Eva Talmadge, Joe Campana, Susan Wood, Sophie Gouyet, Cécille Pradillon, and Sophie Weeks. I’d also like to thank Kimi de Cristoforo, daughter of translator Violet Kazue Cristoforo, for her help in gaining permission to include the poem “Rain shower from mountain” by Suiko Matsushita. Again, I’m thankful to my family members: Sharon Rindell, Arthur Rindell, Laurie Rindell, Melissa d’Armagnac, Phillipe d’Armagnac, and Rémy d’Armagnac. And finally, to Atom and the Poppet: I could not have written this book without your love.
About the Author
Suzanne Rindell is the author of two previous novels, The Other Typist and Three-Martini Lunch. She earned her Ph.D. in literature from Rice University, and divides her time between New York and California.
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