I cracked looking at the skirt. I fell over in my robe letting the towel fall off my head and sobbed.
“Oh honey,” Kate’s voice spoke as Brooklyn scooped me up into her arms. “I’m so sorry,” they both kept saying as they tried to comfort me. I couldn’t breathe as everything hurt.
“Bring him back,” I pleaded with them. I knew they couldn’t and I think they knew I wasn’t talking to them. I was begging a higher power. I implored to whoever might hear me. My words carried an importune message to whoever could make me whole once more. “Just give him back to me. I won’t keep secrets. I won’t lie. I’ll do anything.”
Sister Katherine walked into my room and I felt her take my hand as Brooklyn and Kate held onto me. It took a while and a lot of comfort before I could stand up without hitting my knees and crying for my loss, but I got up and put on my make up. I put on my clothes, and prepared to go say goodbye to the memory of him.
The drive took a half hour to get to JFK. Traffic seemed to move out of the way as if they wanted me to find closure. I took a deep breath and had to fight myself to force my body to get out of the car. Everything felt like a battle, but I would win the war. I would stand tall and accept their condolences. I’d wear his wings and we’d all be the family he should’ve had all along.
Mark lent me his arm as Brooklyn put Isabella’s carseat on a stroller and fastened it in. Then we walked inside where there were flowers everywhere. The airport looked more like a wedding than a funeral. We walked up to the elevator and went up to the management floor where they had secured an area for all of us.
Hundreds of chairs sat facing a podium and people cried on each other as tissue boxes made their rounds. They were all mourning the lives of the ones they lost instead of celebrating the time they had with them. This isn’t what Logan would have wanted. He never wanted to have his name displayed like it was or have people he didn’t know pretending to miss him.
I shook hands with tons of people who said they worked with him. They told me stories of how much fun he was, and how they loved flying with him. They were all lies. Logan had told me how he was before he found me again. “Always an asshole” were the words he chose to use. Yet, everyone had put him up on a pedestal.
“Please take your seats,” a man announced as we all found a set of rows marked with his name. I sat between Mark and Brooklyn as the speaker talked about love and loss. He told us we all grieve differently as my dad put his hand on my shoulder from behind me. Isabella started fussing, so Brooklyn carried her out so they could continue, but her seat didn’t stay empty long.
“I warned you,” Avery whispered where I could hear him. “I told you that you were going to help me or else.”
“You did this?” I asked with a lowered voice as I looked to see that both Mark and my dad had heard him. “Why?”
“You had an opportunity to do the right thing, and you chose not to,” Avery explained as if it was as simple as choosing between using a pen or a pencil.
“Not here,” my dad growled and Avery got up. I was so livid I followed him out of the room, and down the hall.
“You killed Logan and all those people because I wouldn’t do what you said?” I challenged as I heard my dad’s cane behind me. “I kept your secrets and you killed him anyway?”
“This is the real world. This isn’t your boarding school, this isn’t some piece of fiction. There are consequences to every action. You chose and now you’re feeling the effect of that choice.”
“I could murder you,” the words escaped my mouth without thought. I saw Brooklyn walk out of the bathroom and she halted when she saw all of us with Avery. “You killed my best friend in the entire world and all those innocent people because you weren’t getting your way. Like a spoiled brat whose mommy should have spanked him more. You’ll never get my help.”
“Logan isn’t the only person I can take from you,” Avery warned as my dad stepped forward.
“Alec is not the only person I can take from you,” my dad countered.
“It’s not like it was even hard. Caroline needed money and a recommendation to get into a private flight school so she could move to a permanent airline. She was tired of being shared. The CIA, namely I, was able to provide that in exchange for Logan’s schedule. Then there was Nate, the fool who didn’t even really remember what year it was. Caroline told me about his sleeping on flights and the forgetfulness. I told him he could see his wife if he damaged the plane. It’s so easy to manipulate people into doing what you want, and yet you went against me. Now, I will always be there in the background while you watch and wonder if today is the day I come for you,” Avery directed his words at me, but was staring down my dad.
“You knew?” I asked and my dad nodded.
“I know everything that is happening around my children,” my dad spoke as he stepped forward and got in Avery’s face. “I helped you get your wife and son because it helped me get my daughter back. There is nothing more between us that will help you. My advice, run. Run and hide. Make it a challenge so you can live a little longer because I’m coming. I might not start today. I may not even start till next year, but you should always look over your shoulder because when I come you won’t hear me.”
“Old man,” Avery stepped up. “It’s time you knew your place on this planet and its not at the top of your world. You’re not a king or a boss. You are a scarred up elderly person who belongs in the ground.”
“You underestimate me,” my dad dropped his cane, stood tall as he and Avery were toe to toe. “That man you killed on the plane. Blood or no blood - he was my son. That won’t be forgiven, it won’t be forgotten, and most importantly it will signify a retaliation of some form. Maybe a eye for an eye.”
“Let’s go Alec, you’re done,” Avery turned and pushed the button for the elevator, but Alec walked up and stood next to my dad.
“I’m where I need to be,” he told Avery with no emotion on his face. “They are my family.”
Avery turned and walked into the elevator as my whole make shift family stood there ready to jump in. Kate and her husband Eddie were waiting to be told what to do. Mark went to Brooklyn and hugged her tight after Avery was in the elevator. He told her what had happened. My dad and Sister Katherine gave each other a nod. She really was a good influence on him. In the old days my dad would have killed him where he stood, but instead he gave him a fighting chance.
I don’t know what came over me, but I walked up to Alec and reached up wrapping my arm around his neck as best I could. I hugged him to me as soft tears began to fall from my eyes. The elevator dinged a few minutes later. I turned to look and saw Caroline walking out in a little black dress.
“London,” she seemed shocked. “I didn’t think you would be here. This is for Logan’s family and friends only.”
I turned on a dime and lunged at her only to feel Alec hold me by the waist. I screamed and shouted as she pushed the button rapidly to get back into the elevator, but then I saw my dad nod from the corner of my eye and they let me go.
I grabbed her by her blond hair and shoved her head into the metal doors. Dazed she turned and I punched her in the nose. I punched her again as blood flew. She hit her knees and fell to the floor as I kicked her again. Alec picked me back up and held me tight as I fought to destroy her as she had done to me.
“It’s over London,” he whispered as I sobbed and went boneless. I had nothing else in me except the will to fight her. They stole my life from me, and they both got to walk away free.
“London,” I heard a little voice behind me and turned my head to see Ada was standing there with her mom. Alec let me down and I knelt on the floor. She wrapped her arms around me and cried. She had lost two dads in her short life and never got to say goodbye to either. “Can you find him? Can you find his halo in the stars?”
“I’m gonna find him,” I promised her as I cried with her. “I will find all of them and we will be able to lay them to rest where we can talk to them daily.�
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Chapter Thirty Nine
London
“I don’t know dad,” I stated as I looked at the board of pictures that had taken over my living room wall. “I don’t trust your weather guy.”
“He said the wind was blowing twenty knots that day,” my dad confirmed it again. They had already searched the area where the winds and waters would have carried them. “Maybe they sank too low in the water to find them there.”
“No, it doesn’t feel right,” I confessed. “Something in my gut says we aren’t looking in the right place.”
“Then you aren’t” Ada spoke up with little to no help. “Logan always told me that if my brain said it was wrong then its wrong. He was also always late.”
“Why was he always late?” I asked as I stared at the map.
“He said it was the weather,” she explained as she shoved ice cream into her mouth from her bowl Brooklyn had made her.
“What was the weather doing when they left JFK?” I asked and no one answered. “We know what it was doing over the ocean, but no one checked between here and there?”
There was a silence that made my stomach churn. I got on Brooklyn’s laptop and looked up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. I took down their number and placed the call. I informed them that I was with the FBI task force to find the flight and was looking for any weather anomalies that took place between New York and Ireland that night.
“You’re gonna go to jail,” Brooklyn winked at me when they placed me on hold. “You lied about being an agent.”
“Who’s gonna prosecute me?” I smiled at her for the first time in what felt like a really long time. I finally felt like I had a purpose in life, but in the end when I found him there would be no reason to carry on. No reason to continue living like this. I was thinking of selling the house and moving to London and helping Sister Katherine open the orphanage. Logan had been right about feeling me in New York, because I knew he wasn’t here anymore.
Once I said goodbye I would need an escape. Mourning had already taken over my life and it was resurrected with anger and fury when I found out what Avery had done. I truthfully didn’t know what to expect after he was dealt with and Logan was buried. Who would I be then?
“Yes, I was on hold,” I answered when someone came on the line.
“There was a storm that re-directed all flights one hundred and thirty kilometers off the coast of the United States up off of Maine. The storm was approximately six point four kilometers. They would have flown around the storm and not through it as it was intensifying over the water.”
“Do you know which way they would have gone?” I asked, but he didn’t know. I thanked him and hung up. I walked over to the map and started talking to myself. “Where are you Logan? Tell me how to find you.”
“I think I found him,” I shouted at two in the morning and woke up everyone including the babies who had come to enjoy their sleepovers with each other. I knew Kate and Brooklyn would one day have their hands full with them. They were just like Logan and I.
“What did you find?” Sister Katherine asked as everyone mumbled and tried to listen.
“On his transcription it said he turned north west, but if he didn’t have enough time with the engines failing he would have turned due north. Going north would have put him on the western coast of Greenland where they searched, but if he was able to turn west and not north west he would have ended up in the waters that circle Newfoundland and it could have brought the plane into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. It would take years for the current to carry it back out into the ocean with the narrow strip of water between St. Anthony and Blanc-Sablon.”
“You think they landed in a whole other country and no one noticed?” Brooklyn asked as she wiped her eyes.
“I think no one looked because they expected him to have stayed the course. I think they didn’t look because the files don’t indicate that he was further south than he should have been because of that storm. I think he is off the coast of Saint Anthony, because Saint Anthony was the Patron Saint of lost and stolen articles. Get it? He was the Saint for things that were lost. Logan has to be there, he’s lost.”
I watched as Sister Katherine held onto her silver cross and gave me a nod.
“That’s the way I always know where you are,” she smiled for me. “Let’s go get our apple.”
“Sounds like we need a plane and a boat,” my dad spoke as he nodded to Alec and calls were being made.
“I’m calling in a search for the area,” Brooklyn announced as she used her pull in the District Attorney’s office to gain her a favor from the coast guard who was closest to that area.
“Eddie and I will take the kids to our place, you go get him and bring him home. We can start working on the arrangements as soon as you confirm he’s there,” Kate gave me a soft smile.
“If not,” Ada chimed in. “We can have a funeral for his wings and bury him next to Bramley.”
“This is it. It has to be. I have gone over it a million times. Logan would’ve never flown north over the storm, he would’ve gone south. Taking him south puts him in a search grid no one has looked in. I know him. I know what he would’ve done.”
Everyone seemed to allow me to believe whatever I wanted, and they trusted me to be right. They took me at my word even though I had lied to them and hid things from them. I didn’t deserve them, but Logan did. He should’ve had a family his entire life that would’ve come together to search for him. He should’ve been welcomed with open arms even when he made bad choices.
I walked over to my dad and sat down beside him on the couch. I had a million things running through my mind, but I could only focus on one question. The one thing that brought Logan into my life.
“Dad,” I spoke softly as everyone moved around us. “Why was I the one that was sent away? Why didn’t Brooklyn have to come too?”
“Brooklyn didn’t trust anyone and you trusted everyone. She would have defended any of us, but you would’ve traded yourself for us.”
“I don’t understand,” I replied.
“Brooklyn was always ready for a fight because she grew up knowing she would always be fighting. You were too sweet, too young - too innocent. When the bad came and it came a lot you didn’t want to fight. You wanted to offer up anything you could to end it instead of guarding what was yours. I didn’t want that wholesome way you looked at life stripped from you. I wanted you safe from it all - to hold on to that innocence.”
“You sent me away and made me feel like I was unwanted because I wouldn’t fight?” I asked and my dad nodded.
“You’re fighting now, but back then you didn’t want to. When my enemy threatened you, you ran away and took your favorite stuffed bunny and put it on his doorstep. You hoped it was a peace offering. Miska found you and returned you to the house before anything bad happened to you. That was when your mother and I decided you couldn’t stay in the life I had created and I couldn’t get out unless it was in a coffin.”
“Don’t ever do that again. Don’t ever let me believe I am unwanted,” I warned as I leaned my head over on his shoulder and forgave all the nights I cried myself to sleep. I exonerated him of any feelings of resentment. I found peace in knowing I always had a family, they just did what they had to to save my life and I was going to do the same to save theirs from Avery.
The next few hours seemed like an eternity. Brooklyn left her phone on speaker as her friend at the Coast Guard worked on getting permission to scour. When they finally had it we could hear every communication.
“Be advised we have a confirmed piece of a plane in the water,” came through the line with static. “We have the cockpit, be advised we have the cock pit.” My knees hit the floor. I had found him. I couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief and cry for the loss we all just confirmed. “Diver one away - Diver two away,” they continued. “Be advised two divers are in the water.
Chapter Forty
Logan
Somet
imes in life you question the decisions you made in the past. I know I did as everything moved in slow motion and I saw my life pass before my eyes. The last of the engines had failed, the electrical panels had went up in flames, and a sticky residue was now all over the cock pit from the fire extinguisher. and we were going down. There was nothing I could do except prepare for the inevitable.
I said a prayer, I looked over at the one place on my dial that wasn’t covered in foam. It held a picture of London. The same one I had crumbled up and once threw into a trash can in anger. I didn’t regret a second of the last few weeks except that I was foolish enough to walk away from the love of my life.
After Avery’s call I understood why she was keeping secrets. I knew there was something wrong and instead of waiting for her to come to me I pushed. I pushed her away because I couldn’t allow myself to trust her.
In the end, when you know you are going to die and you are watching as flames barrel out of the wings of your plane and water is coming at you rapidly you take a split second to think of all the things you would have changed.
I would’ve fought for her.
I would have taken on my dad and hers.
I would’ve raised my daughter to avoid men like I had become without London.
I would have told them I loved them every day.
I would’ve found faith in more than just London, even though I knew she had enough for us both.
I would have spent more time in the air with both my girls.
There were a million things I would’ve done, but my time to change it was over. My life was over.
“Logan,” Nate yelled as we tried to keep the nose from going straight down. “I’m sorry Logan.”
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