"We're in the army now," Matthew sing-sung a little ditty as we climbed out of the military base's khaki-green van.
General Hefferon and his wife came out to meet us in the driveway.
The Hefferons had warm, friendly smiles, but several of the MPS were holding M- 16 rifles and that brought back bad memories.
"Flying is probably forbidden here," Max turned and said to me. "I don't feel so good about this place anymore. It's creeping me out."
"Give it a chance," I whispered to her. "This is a good idea, Max."
"People are already gawking," she said.
"That's because you're so beautiful."
Just then, the front door of the house opened wide. Several men and women walked out onto the porch single-file. They stood there looking stiff and uncomfortable, nervous and afraid. I couldn't help thinking that they mirrored our own body language.
"Let's go up to the house, children," the general's wife suggested.
Each of the children was given a name tag and pinned it on. I helped Peter, who was being a little pill, and Kit assisted Icarus, who seemed the most nervous of all the kids.
"Let's go up to the porch," I said. "Be good now."
The children started to walk across the manicured front lawn. They were quiet and subdued. They had never met their birth parents before.
As we got closer, I could see that the men and women assembled on the porch wore name tags, too. They stood in distinct pairs inside the larger group. They fidgeted and didn't know what to do with their hands.
They were trying not to stare at the children.
"Here's your mom and dad," I whispered to Peter and Wendy, who were trailing close behind me. I almost started to cry, but I held the tears back somehow. I felt as if something were about to break inside of me.
"This is Peter, and this is Wendy," I said.
"We're Joe and Anne," the parents introduced themselves. The woman's lips were quivering. Then they broke down. Joe was a large, generous-looking man and he bent low and put out his arms, and choked on his own tears.
Wendy surprised me, and ran right to her dad. Then Peter did the same, flinging himself into his mother's arms. "Mommy," he cried.
Just about the same thing was happening with the other children and their birth mothers and fathers. The kids had been wary and even cynical as we traveled to the army base, but all that was behind them. The army, the people in Washington, had done a good job arranging the reunion.
Most everybody on the porch had tears spilling from their eyes, including General Hefferon and his wife, and even a few MPS.
Max and Matthew were wrapped in the arms of a handsome-looking couple in their late thirties. I knew their names, Art and Teresa Marshall, and that they were good people from Revere, Massachusetts.
Icarus was being hugged by a slight-looking woman who was down on her knees and had one of the brightest, biggest smiles I've ever seen.
Oz was in the arms of his birth mom. She was cooing softly in his ear.
Oz was cooing back to her.
Something had finally gone right for the children. I stood there holding Kit, and tears streamed down both our cheeks. I was almost blind with tears, but I couldn't take my eyes off of the children and their mothers and fathers.
"Let's fly for them," Peter started to chirp in his unmistakable, high-pitched voice. "C'mon, let's show everybody. Come with me, Wendy.
Let's go, slowpoke. Let's fly as high as we can."
"Peter! Don't you dare!" It was Max calling from across the porch.
The crackling sound of her voice stopped Peter in his tracks. He rolled his eyes and then he grinned.
"We'll all fly. We'll do it together," Max said then.
And that's what they did.
The children ran across the front lawn together and they took to the air like an amazing flock. They whistled so that Icarus could keep up. They rose up over the rooftops of the houses, the surrounding magnolias and towering southern pines.
They floated effortlessly in the cloudless baby-blue skies.
It was so unbelievable to be there, like nothing anyone had ever seen in the history of our world, certainly like nothing the mothers and fathers had experienced before. Just to watch the beautiful children fly like birds.
The End
James Patterson - When the Wind Blows Page 30