by Ella Carey
“Two strong coffees, please. And a shot of brandy in each, if you can.” Bruce spoke quietly to the waitress.
He leaned forward. “Eva, listen to me. I know what it’s like to lose someone in the military, and I’m truly sorry this is so unexpected. I’m truly sorry that you haven’t known about this for years.”
When the waitress came back with their drinks, Eva moved her hand as if it were not part of her, lifting the small china cup to her lips. She tried to swallow, but a lump formed in her throat. Nina had not been able to see the sunshine. She had not felt the touch of rain. And Nina had died a terrible death out there.
“I wrote to Nina. My husband told me he’d mailed the letters.”
Bruce shook his head. “I’m sorry, Eva. What about your other friends in the WASP?”
“Oh, I wrote them too. Never heard back. Rita, Bea.” She punched out the names. “Jack posted those letters for me too. And yet, I never heard from them, not once.” She shot her head up for a moment. “Bruce? I did not do anything wrong? Tell me I did not leave her to die, because if I did, I cannot—” She cut off her own words. Stared at him. “Was it all my fault?”
He reached out a hand and placed it over her own.
“The investigation after your accident found that the interior catch on the door in the front cockpit was faulty. The inspection sheet that was cleared before the flight showed the all clear, so we think that something went wrong during the flight. The fire in the engine, perhaps, could have caused the door and the front canopy in the A-24 to expand.”
Eva brought her hand to her mouth. “So she was trapped on landing, in the front cockpit?” She felt her mouth working. “What was I doing?”
“Eva, the cockpit split in two on impact. Nina’s half of the plane was separated from yours when the plane skidded to the tarmac. Witnesses reported that they could hear her screams while the cockpit burned. It was a shocking accident, and it’s understandable that you became confused afterward. It’s understandable that your memory blocked it out. Your section of the cockpit, the back part, was halfway up the runway. Hers had hurtled forward away from you. It was some distance away.”
“But what should I have done?”
“You managed to get out of the rear cockpit and crawl away from the plane.”
The tarmac; the flashback she’d had in the market. Sickness spread through her at the thought of what Nina had gone through, how she hadn’t known.
“Then for some time, you were in a coma. You slipped in and out after a while. You had no memory of the flight, or the accident afterward.”
“Dear goodness.”
Bruce Arnold kept his hand on Eva’s. “There was nothing anyone could do.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Somehow, Eva managed the flight home to LA. She acknowledged airport staff, talked a little to her fellow passengers, but her heart was back in Camp Davis. One day, she’d go back there, back to that marshy, wild landscape so that she could at least say her farewells to Nina.
At LAX, Jack’s car was parked in the short-stay parking lot. It was the first thing Eva saw through the sliding doors leading out of the airport. He climbed out from the driver’s seat, and she walked over to him. He reached out to take her luggage from her and store it in the back of the car.
“No, that’s fine, I can do it myself,” Eva said, prizing it away from him and heaving it into the trunk.
“It’s too heavy for you,” he muttered, flicking a glance to the driver behind them, who was waiting to take his spot.
“I’ve been hauling it myself all the time I was away.”
She turned from him, staring out the window once she was in the car.
“You okay?” he asked, climbing into the driver’s seat. “Don’t tell me you’ve come back in a mood.”
“Is Alex home?” Eva’s voice seemed disembodied.
The airport passed by them in a swish, and they were out on the freeway.
“He’s staying with some friend. I forget who.”
Eva frowned. “Really?”
“Haven’t spoken to him for a while.”
Eva tapped her hand on the door of the car.
“He was being difficult.”
“He was being difficult?” Eva could not help the way her head shook in disbelief. “Come on, Jack.”
“Takes after his mother.”
“What did you just say?”
He pulled out onto the freeway. The silence between them was a frozen layer of ice above a stream, a stream that was running cold, or had it stopped dead long ago?
“Forget it,” Jack said. “Oh, all the drivers are here. They’re all out today.” He pulled into another lane, swerving across the traffic, the wheels whistling against the road. “It’s been a nightmare with Alex since you left. He has no darned idea, that kid. You’ve spoiled him. You know that?”
Eva felt her fists clenching and unclenching by her sides. Her throat burned with unspoken words, and she knew, right then, that what was in had to come out. “Jack, can you please stop the car?”
“What?” he said, eyes on the freeway, head lowered. “Eva? Jeez, what’s wrong with you now? I can’t stop the car. We’re on a freeway. Calm down.”
“I’m asking you to stop. Please.” She spread her hands out to either side of her on the warm vinyl seat. Took in some deep breaths.
Jack swooped the car off the freeway, then onto a quiet street. “What is it?” Irritation and boredom and what-are-you-doing-now laced his three words, hung in the air, a toxic, fuming mess.
He turned off the engine.
They sat in silence.
“We accessed the crash records.” Her voice was dull and low.
He leaned his head back against the driver’s seat. “Oh great. I see.”
“Jack.”
He did not move.
“You never told me.”
His voice was quiet. “What was I supposed to do? Beat you over the head with the truth?” He brought his hand up to his chin, running his fingers over the slight stubble that she used to think was sexy. Once. “You weren’t coping. You needed to be taken care of. I did that.”
“I should have been told the truth. You, Mom—”
“What good would it have done to upset you further? Leave it alone, Eva.”
Eva stared straight ahead. “You knew I thought Helena was in that plane.” She spoke through gritted teeth. “You knew that I wrote to Nina, over and over again. What happened to my letters? What did you do with them, Jack?”
“Letters weren’t going to go anywhere. It was not in your best interest to send them off.”
Eva reached for the car door.
“There was no point in your writing to Nina.” He let out a sardonic laugh. “Come on, Eva! We just thought you’d realize, in time. I assumed you had. We never talk about the war. Who does? Nobody does!”
“Oh, I know that now!” She flicked the door open.
But he reached across, holding her arm.
She turned to him, and she whispered, but her words may as well have come out as a wretched scream. “My letters to Bea, to Rita? What about those?”
He shifted in his seat.
“Jack? Did they ever write to me? Any of them?”
He dropped her arm. “Their letters are at home. I never did anything with them. I simply never gave them to you.”
“I want to read them. And I’m getting out of this car now. I’ll make my own way home. Get a taxi. Or a bus. I need to calm down right now, Jack.”
“Read them, but don’t blame me if they upset you. You’re clearly having a crisis. Where are you going?”
Eva climbed out of the car. She leaned in the window. “You know what, I have no idea.”
Jack stared at her. After a few moments, he just shook his head and laughed. “For pity’s sake, Eva. I’ve had enough.” He turned on the engine and roared off.
He did not look back, and Eva stood alone under the endless blue she once loved. She was on a slight ridge, under t
he Californian sky. It was the same blue sky that she’d flown through with Harry. The far horizons shimmered all around her. She’d not noticed them in a very long time.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Four months later
One fine spring day in March, Eva drove to her first flying lesson, with Alex right by her side in the car. She stopped outside the Hollywood Burbank Airport. The strings of alfalfa that had hung in the air during the war might have disappeared, and the aircraft were a little more modern and streamlined these days, but the excitement that laced its way through Eva’s belly at the sight of those little planes lined up through the wire fence was as thrilling and raw as it had been when she saw the same sight out at Sweetwater, when Helena had been there to welcome her and Nina after that long, tiresome journey through Texas in the train.
“Mom, this is awesome.” Alex squeezed her hand from the passenger seat next to her. “I never thought I’d get to learn to fly alongside you. Not that you are learning.” He laughed, in that adorable nineteen-year-old way.
“Oh yes, I am.” Eva caught the warmth in his eyes with her own enthusiasm, with her own decision to live her life, for Nina, for both of them from now on. “I’m learning to do everything again, sweetheart.”
A little primary trainer swooped down the runway, lifting into the air in a smooth arc. Eva squeezed Alex’s hand right back at the sound of it. After months of therapy at the military hospital, the sound of plane engines no longer set off one of her bad turns. She drove on into the parking lot that surrounded the terminal, finding a parking spot while the airplane engines whirred and buzzed around them like a happy tune.
She turned off the car engine and waited while Alex got their gear from the back seat. There was no turning back. These last few months had been filled with times when she could have changed her mind about leaving Jack; about moving to an apartment in Los Feliz, right near the one that she’d admired during her WASP interview; about returning Bea’s, Rita’s, and Helena’s letters. And she could have changed her mind about taking up flying lessons again, but now, being here, she knew that the decisions she’d made in the past few months were right for her, at last.
Eva held open the glass door that led into the terminal for Alex and made her way toward the front desk. The young woman behind it smiled when Eva gave her name.
“I understand you learned to fly in Burbank during the war, ma’am?”
“I did.” Eva smiled.
“Welcome home.”
“Thank you, miss.” And it did feel like being home again, being surrounded by planes and folk who loved to fly.
Their instructor came to meet them at the reception desk. She was tall and blond, and she reminded Eva of Rita, or of the girl Rita had been before she started her own helicopter flight training business, something that Eva had been delighted to learn about in the letter that her old friend had written straight to her after finally, finally hearing from Eva after thirty years.
The young woman held out her hand and spoke with all the confidence of Helena, who had recently told Eva how she had married a Boston teacher and ended up working in scientific research.
And when their new instructor sat her and Alex down and started talking about the logistics of the little Piper Cherokee that would be their primary trainer, the young woman showed all the practicality of Bea, who wrote with enthusiasm that she had raised five children, worked as a librarian, and taken great delight in being president of her kids’ school’s PTA.
All her friends had been unanimous in two things: Eva should definitely train to be a flight instructor, and they would come to a reunion to see her whenever she said the word.
Eva brought her hand down to her coat pocket. Inside it, Bea’s, Rita’s, and Helena’s recent letters sat like talismans. She wanted them with her when she went up today, even though the doctor had given her the all clear to fly. And around her neck, she wore her dear silver necklace for Meg. And next to it, she’d placed a little silver locket in honor of Nina, with a photo of her in braids.
Her friend Nina. The girl who had shared all her youthful dreams. That companion of her younger days, whose own days had been cut tragically short. But she would always be with Eva. No matter what. She’d hold Nina close until the day she died. And she would never let their girlish dreams down, ever again. She’d fly for the both of them now, in every aspect of her life.
The young woman stopped for a moment before leading Eva into the ground school classroom.
“I’m delighted to meet you,” she said, flashing an almost hesitant smile that reminded Eva of herself at nineteen. “I heard from our bookings team that you flew planes in the war. That you were one of our newly famous WASP?”
Eva smiled. “Why, yes, I did, but that was long ago. I’m in sure need of a little refreshing when it comes to my flying skills.”
The instructor led Eva to a spacious classroom filled with three rows of desks and shiny white plastic chairs. “Sit down where you like. We are honored to have you here.”
Eva slid down behind a desk on a chair next to Alex. She pulled her favorite pen out of her shoulder bag. And opened her old book full of notes from ground school. She’d kept it, and she’d found it. And now, it was time for it to be put to good use again.
The instructor still looked at Eva with something like intrigue. “And you learned to fly right here in this airport?”
Eva smiled at the punch in her belly brought by that memory. “Yes, I did.”
“I hope I can teach you as well as your last instructor did.”
Eva felt a blush spread over her cheeks.
In her left pocket, she curled her fingers over letter number four.
After their ground school lesson, Eva drove with Alex toward her parents’ old house with the window wound down all the way. She let in the afternoon breeze, savoring the spring after the winter and the accompanying drama with Jack.
The little original Lockheed factory houses still lined the streets where she’d grown up, but the paint on their yellow house was chipped and faded now. Eva’s parents’ driveway was dotted with tall weeds. It seemed nobody was taking care of her past here. Eva had not been back to Burbank since her parents had moved to a small apartment near the farmers’ market not far from the house where she and Jack lived, until both parents had died in their seventies.
The sting of what she had thought was Nina’s rejection had kept her away from her old neighborhood, spurred on and encouraged by Jack.
She moved on past her parents’ old house, driving along slowly in companionable quiet with Alex, until she came to Nina’s old house, stopping outside it for a moment in the still afternoon. Alex sat silently beside her, letting her remember. Letting her reflect.
Eva could swear that the sounds of Nina’s mom’s singing filtered out into the street.
Eva sat, a middle-aged woman looking at ghosts that had long gone, until after a while, she allowed the memories of her times with Nina to wind their way into the past again and turned on her car engine to drive away down the familiar old streets.
She stopped outside the cemetery.
“You okay to do this?” Alex asked.
“I am.”
She gathered the sheaf of roses she’d brought with her.
“Mom?”
She hesitated, one hand on the car door.
“Would you prefer to do this on your own?”
She held his gaze. “Thank you, Alex.”
“I’ll be right here waiting for you. Always,” he said. “I’m here if you need me.”
She hugged him, then climbed out of the car and walked slowly toward the white-painted gates that led to the little gravestones beyond.
Above her, a lone airplane drew lazy eights in the azure Los Angeles sky.
Eva stopped for a moment, shielding her eyes and watching it do its maneuvers, before making her way down the driveway that led into the graveyard, flanked by rows of the dead.
Somehow, for the first time in over
thirty years, she did not feel as if she had no sisters left.
Nina’s small gravestone was white. It sat silent in the sunshine, resting among a whole row of other folks who’d been killed in the war. Eva stood at the foot of Nina’s grave awhile before she bent down to place her beautiful bouquet of yellow roses on the place where her little friend had been laid to sleep.
She startled a little at the sound of footsteps, a voice. Finally, she brought her gaze up from Nina’s resting place, her lips drawing into a smile.
“Kiddo.”
He stood there, opposite her on the other side of Nina’s grave. Looking the same, looking like Harry. She felt a warm smile spread across her face.
“It’s been a long time.” He held her gaze, the man whom she’d loved like her North Star. “It was good to hear from you.”
The sun glimmered on Nina’s gravestone. Harry bent down, running his hand over the warm stone before looking up at her, the sun catching his eyes now, his still-handsome face.
“I’ll never forget her.”
“I know, Harry.”
“I’m so sorry about everything that’s happened.”
“I’m sorry that I never got your letters. Not one.”
“Not your fault, no apologies . . . Evie, how are you?” Something crossed his face, and he took a step toward her.
She fought the urge to pull him into her arms. “Learning to fly again.”
“Turns out neither of us was very good at flying with our wings clipped.” He took a tentative step closer.
Nothing had stopped her loving him, not a war, not being married to the wrong person, and not even tragic loss and the loss of the girl she’d once been.
Her dad had been right after all.
“You too?”
“Evie, we both got into marriages that everyone assumed were right for us. I think our rich spouses wanted to do everything they could to keep their playthings.” His eyes were still locked with hers. “But now, I want to undo the worst mistake of my life.”
“Lucille?”
“Lucille upgraded back in London a long time ago. She fell for an earl.” His lips twitched.
“Oh.” Eva brought her hand up to her mouth, trying to hide her giggle. “I’m sorry.”
