by Hunt, Angela
THE NOTE
THE NOTE
A Story of Second Chances
ANGELA HUNT
Copyright 2001 by Angela Elwell Hunt
Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson, Inc. and in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80920. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any other means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Scripture quotations in this book are from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, organizations, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hunt, Angela Elwell, 1957–
The note : a story of second chances / by Angela Hunt.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-8499-4284-5 (soft cover)
ISBN-10: 1-59554-245-0 (mass market)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59554-245-8 (mass market)
I. Title.
PS3558.U46747 N68 2001
813'.54—dc21
2001026120
Printed in the United States of America
07 08 09 10 11 QW 6 5 4 3 2
Other Books by Angela Hunt
Uncharted
The Novelist
The Truth Teller
Unspoken
The Awakening
The Debt
The Pearl
The Canopy
The Justice
The Immortal
With Lori Copeland:
The Island of Heavenly Daze
Grace in Autumn
A Warmth in Winter
A Perfect Love
Hearts at Home
CONTENTS
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
RESOURCES
READING GROUP GUIDE
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ONE
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 13
The sultry breeze carried not a single hint that the summer afternoon would give birth to the worst aviation disaster in American history. At New York’s bustling LaGuardia Airport, thousands of passengers clutched belongings, flashed driver’s licenses, and gripped boarding passes before departing for far-flung destinations across the globe.
Every one of them had made plans for the evening.
At gate B-13, 237 passengers waited for a jet that would carry them to Tampa International Airport. Their reasons for traveling were as varied as their faces: some hoped for a few days of fun, others looked forward to work, others yearned to see family. A pleasant mood reigned in the lounge area despite the jet’s late arrival. Chuck O’Neil, one of the PanWorld gate attendants, told jokes to pass the time. Four standby passengers smiled in relief when they were told seats were available.
PanWorld Flight 848, which had originated at TIA, touched down at LaGuardia at 2:38 P.M., almost an hour late. Two hundred fifty passengers and crew disembarked from the Boeing 767, which had developed problems with a pressure switch in the No. 1 engine. The trouble was nothing unusual, considering the age of the twenty-two-year-old plane, and Tampa mechanics had corrected the problem while others performed routine maintenance.
In the gate area, families kissed their loved ones good-bye while other travelers placed last-minute calls on their cell phones. Five passengers were PanWorld employees utilizing one of their employment perks: free travel on any flight with available seating. Debbie Walsh, a ticket agent with PanWorld, was taking her nine-year-old son to visit his father in Florida.
Forty-nine-year-old Captain Joey Sergeant of Tampa stepped out for a cup of fresh coffee before returning to the cockpit. With him were flight engineer Ira Nipps, sixty-two, of Bradenton, Florida, and first officer Roy Murphy of Clearwater. Together the three men had logged more than forty-six thousand hours of flight experience.
On the tarmac, PanWorld employees loaded the belly of the plane with golf bags, suitcases, backpacks, and two kennels—one occupied by a basset hound belonging to the Cotter family from Brooklyn, another by a ten-week-old Siberian Husky, a present for passenger Noland Thompson’s grandchildren in Clearwater. While baggage handlers sweated in the afternoon sun, mechanics poured twenty-four thousand gallons of fuel into the jet.
The flight attendants boarded the waiting travelers with little fuss. Among the 237 passengers were Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Wilt, who planned to cruise the Caribbean from the port of Tampa; Dr. and Mrs. Merrill Storey, who hoped to buy a condo in St. Petersburg; and the Darrell Nance family—two parents and four children, all bound for Disney World after a day at Busch Gardens. First-class passenger Tom Harold, defensive coach for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, boarded with his wife, Adrienne. To celebrate their fortieth wedding anniversary, the couple had taken a quick trip to New York to catch her favorite play, Les Misérables, on Broadway.
Forty-eight of the PanWorld passengers were students from Largo Christian School—recent graduates whose senior class trip had been postponed until mid-June to avoid conflicting with final exams. The students and their nine chaperones had missed an earlier flight, and many were openly thanking God that the airline could accommodate the entire group on Flight 848.
Shortly before 4:00 P.M., flight attendants sealed the doors, then airline workers pushed the 767 back from the gate. On the flight deck, Captain Sergeant started the four Pratt & Whitney engines. After checking with air traffic controllers in the tower, the plane taxied to its assigned runway.
At 4:05, controllers cleared the jet for takeoff. By 4:15, Flight 848 was airborne, her wheels tucked back into the well, her nose lifted toward the stratosphere. After a short circling climb over New York Harbor, Captain Sergeant began a graceful turn to the south, toward Florida and sunny skies.
The pilots couldn’t have asked for better weather. Temperatures in Tampa were in the high eighties, the humidity a sultry 70 percent. No clouds marred the horizon for as far as the pilots could see. The captain took the jet to 35,000 feet, typical cruising altitude for the 767, and held it at 530 miles per hour. Once the plane was safely settled into her flight path, he checked the passenger list and noticed that he flew with two empty seats. Florida flights often sold out at this time of year.
The passengers set about the business of making time pass as quickly as possible. They closed their eyes to nap, clamped on headphones, browsed through magazines, or peered at dusty paperbacks they’d picked up from the airport bookstore. The high school graduates in the back of the plane laughed and shouted across the aisles as they shared stories of their Manhattan adventure.
The flight attendants unfastened their seat belts and whisked out the drink carts, murmuring “Watch your elbows” with every step they took down the aisle.
One of those flight attendants was Natalie Moore. She had joined the flight in New York at the last moment, filling in for a steward who had taken ill. Before leaving New York she told a roommate she was looking forward to her first visit to Tampa. A rookie with the airline, she had graduated from flight school in Atlanta and moved into Kew Gardens, a New York neighb
orhood primarily populated by young flight attendants who worked out of LaGuardia and Kennedy Airports.
As the hands of her watch moved toward five o’clock, Natalie and her coworkers began to serve dinner. Passengers had a choice of entrées: baked chicken breast or sirloin steak, both accompanied by green beans and salad. As soon as the flight attendants served the last of the dinner trays, they cleared their cart and pushed it aft to begin cleanup. The flight from New York to Tampa did not allow much time for lingering over dinner, and only because Flight 848 flew during the dinner hour was a meal offered at all.
At 6:06, after nearly two hours of uneventful flight, Captain Sergeant began his descent. At 6:18, air traffic controllers at Tampa International cleared the incoming flight to drop from 15,000 to 13,000 feet. As usual, the pilot responded by repeating his instructions: “PW 848, out of one-five for one-three.”
On board, passengers on the right side of the plane caught a dazzling view of Florida’s Sun Coast—white beaches, pool-studded backyards, and green treetops, all bordered by the wide, blue expanse of the Gulf of Mexico.
In the galleys, flight attendants locked the drink carts into their stowed positions, getting ready to make a final pass down the aisle. Natalie Moore moved through the cabin reminding passengers to be sure their seatbacks and tray tables were in their upright and locked positions. As she waited for a rambunctious teenager to comply, she bent to glance at the horizon. The sun, slipping toward the ocean, had painted the sky in a riot of pinks and yellows.
At 13,389 feet, while Natalie and the other crew members went about their work, the torrent of air rushing past a loose screw on the fuselage outside the fuel tank created a spark. The electrical fuses tripped, and at 6:29 the plane’s radio and transponders fell silent. Captain Sergeant sent a distress call, but no one heard it.
The loose screw continued to spark.
A few moments later, a man sitting in row 24, seat C, noticed three of the attendants huddled in the galley, their arms around each other. One wiped away a tear, while another bowed her head as if to pray.
“Isn’t that nice.” He nudged the woman sitting next to him. “Look—they’ve had a tiff, and now they’re making up.”
Their disagreement must not have been serious, for the flight attendants immediately separated. “Ladies and gentlemen,” a male voice called over the intercom, “this is the captain. Please give attention to the flight attendant in your section of the plane. We have experienced a loss of power due to an electrical disruption, but we can still land safely. In order to prepare for this event, however, we ask that you remove all eyeglasses, then give your attention to the flight attendants as they demonstrate the crash position.”
Leaning forward, the man in 24-C looked out the window and saw that they were descending in a curving path, moving over water toward land. Though the atmosphere in the cabin hummed with tension, he remained hopeful. The jet was coming down in a relatively smooth spiral above the choppy waters between the Howard Frankland and Causeway Campbell Bridges. The airport lay just beyond.
As the people around him fumbled to obey the flight attendants, he pulled a sheet of paper from his coat pocket and scribbled a message. Glancing out the window again, he saw the blue of the water and felt a flash of inspiration. Digging in another pocket, he produced a plastic bag, then tucked the note inside and secured the seal.
Smiling, he looked up at the pale stewardess standing in the aisle, her mouth a small, tight hyphen. “Sorry,” he said, noticing that everyone around him had already bent forward to prepare for an emergency landing. “I wanted to take care of something. I’m sure we’ll be all right, so tonight I’ll laugh and give this to my—”
He never finished his sentence. A spark from the fuselage ignited the fuel vapors, and Flight 848 exploded. At 6:33 P.M., pieces of the plane began to rain down into the waters of Tampa Bay.
Among the shards and debris was a note.
TWO
TWO HOURS EARLIER
Across town, at the Tampa Times office, Peyton MacGruder received a note. The summons came in the form of an e-mail, and, as usual, Nora Chilton minced no words:
Need to see you at once.
Peyton sighed at the imperial command from the lifestyles editor, then checked her watch. Four-forty-five, which meant she couldn’t slip away and later claim she hadn’t seen the message. E-mail at the Tampa Times flew through the office at the speed of electricity, and Nora didn’t miss a trick.
Peyton made a face at the computer monitor. If Nora kept her more than fifteen minutes, she could kiss her tennis game good-bye. Karen Dolen, a news writer and Peyton’s tennis partner, had a husband and three hungry kids to feed by six-thirty, so tennis couldn’t be postponed.
After checking her computer’s “in” basket to be sure nothing more appealing had arrived, Peyton stood, picked up her backpack, then glanced at the blonde head hovering over a keyboard at the desk across the aisle. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Mandi, but probably after lunch. If anyone asks, I’ve got a morning appointment in St. Pete.”
Mandi Sorenson, a college intern who had filled Peyton’s morning with insistent and irritating offers to help, looked up and blinked. “What was that, Ms. MacGruder?”
“It’s Peyton, and I said I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Okay.” As Mandi lowered her wide gaze back to the obituary forms some soul from local news had contributed to the cause of Keeping Mandi Quiet, Peyton shouldered her backpack and tried to remember if she had ever been that bug-eyed with wonder. Probably not. One of her college profs claimed she’d been hard-wired for skepticism, and even as a student reporter for the Independent Florida Alligator she’d not been easily impressed. What was a newspaper office, after all, but a collection of computers and a motley assortment of writers?
“And the older I get,” Peyton mumbled, moving through the maze of desks, chairs, and rolling file cabinets, “the more motley the writers.”
Nora Chilton’s office was situated in a row of offices at the back of the building. As Peyton moved toward the expanse of wide-windowed rooms, she nodded to two men in navy suits—out of towners, from the look of them. No Floridian wore dark colors in June. She watched the strangers disappear through the senior news editor’s doorway, then leaned against the door-frame of Nora’s office and rapped on the open door with her knuckles.
From behind her desk, Nora glanced up over the rim of her tortoiseshell reading glasses. The petite editor was sitting erect in her chair, her head capped by a curled mass in a uniform shade of brown, the surest sign of home hair coloring.
“Come on in, Pat,” she said, lowering her gaze to the papers in her hand.
Stepping into the office, Peyton resisted the urge to correct the woman. Her name was Peyton, not Pat, Pate, Patty, or Mac, but Nora Chilton insisted on giving everyone in her department a nickname. Peyton wasn’t sure why, but she suspected Nora wanted to cultivate friendlier relations between writers and editors.
Fat chance.
“Pat,” Nora said, dropping the papers as Peyton slid into the guest chair, “thanks for coming in. This will only take a moment.”
Peyton waited, one brow lifted, as Nora glanced out at the newsroom beyond her door. After a moment of silence, she spoke again, her voice lower. “Did you happen to see the bean counters out there?”
The corner of Peyton’s mouth lifted in a wry smile. “The two guys in suits?”
Nora leaned forward, the grim line of her mouth thinning. “Accountants from New York. They’re after us to tighten up.”
Folding her hands, Peyton waited while Nora shuffled the pages on her desk. “We’ve been asked to give special attention to the figures from our latest readers’ survey.”
Readers’ survey? Like malevolent genies released from a bottle, the words loomed up and shadowed the office, killing Peyton’s hope of a pleasant meeting. Her column, “The Heart Healer,” had never scored high in the Times’ reader polls. Peyton liked to think she had lots of
readers, people who were too busily productive to bother with questionnaires.
“Here are the figures.” Nora slid one of the pages across the desk. “According to the latest focus group, your column ranked lowest of our five regular features. I’m sorry, Pat, but the numbers don’t lie. And if a column isn’t pulling its weight, something’s got to change.”
Peyton’s lips parted as she stared at the paper. “The Drive-Through Gourmet” occupied the top position, followed by “The Pet Vet,” “The Quick Cook,” and “The Car Caretaker.” Like a lead weight, “The Heart Healer” sat heavily at the bottom of the list.
For a moment her head buzzed with rationalizations. Plucking the most obvious defense from the top of the swarm, she said, “It’s not entirely my fault, you know. I inherited this column. If it were up to me—”
“It’s not up to you, and, if it’s any comfort, the column does rank high with one particular audience.” Nora’s thin mouth curved in a barely discernible smile. “‘The Heart Healer’ came out on top with women over eighty-five. I suppose that’s because nursing-home residents don’t drive, cook, have pets, or eat often at McDonald’s.”
Peyton narrowed her gaze. Nora’s sense of humor— if that’s what it was—left something to be desired. “I don’t know if I’d put much stock in those polls, Nora. They’re only collections of random opinion.”
