Truth, Lies, and Second Dates

by MaryJanice Davidson, Camille Anthony, Melissa Schroeder

  “Of course.” She clicked into the PA system. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are unable to lower our landing gear, which means we’ll be making what’s called a belly landing. I know that sounds scary, but I can tell you that in twenty years, there have been only three belly landings and all resulted in zero injuries. I’m going to circle for a bit while they get ready for us. Follow the crew’s instructions to the letter or you’re in for a major scolding. I’m not kidding. I’ll use foul language and everything.”

  She clicked off and looked at Wilson. “Ready?”

  “Of course.”

  “Atta boy. Y’know, the chances of a pilot emergency and a hydraulics issue have to be millions to one. When we get on the ground, I’m buying a lottery ticket.”

  “When we get on the ground, I’ll buy you all the tickets you want.” While they were talking, Wilson had been going over the emergency landing checklist—airlines have lists for everything—and Ava set a course to keep to her pattern and burn fuel. Might as well minimize the chance of them all going up in a blazing fireball, which would be unpleasant and inconvenient.

  A familiar rap, and G.B. was there. “We’re getting set up back there, Captain. Anything I can do for you?”

  “How’s our other captain doing?”

  “Laughed his ass off when he heard your announcement. Which got the passengers in First laughing, so it wasn’t all bad. He says the odds of a pilot medical emergency and a belly landing are millions to one.”

  “See?” she said to Wilson. “Today’s the day to buy a Powerball ticket. G.B., get back there and you and everyone else assume the position.”

  “Way ahead of you. Good luck, my friend.”

  “He’s only saying that because he’s terrified and homeless,” she confided to Wilson.

  “Well, he’s got company. On the first one, anyway. How much more fuel you want to burn?”

  Twenty-five minutes’ worth, as it turned out. By then, the Tower had summoned what looked like every fire truck and ambulance in the state, and she didn’t dare linger—there was also Captain Lewis to think about.

  “NS 729, we can see you. Your landing gear is not down. Do you need a repeat?”

  “Negative, Tower, thank you for the visual verification,” she replied, unsurprised. Faint hope, and all that.

  “You are cleared for low approach.”

  Well, I certainly hope so, since I’m in one. “Thank you, Tower. On approach.”

  “NS 729, when able, please report SOB and remaining fuel.”

  “Tower, we have two hundred twenty-nine souls on board including a crew of seven, and forty minutes.”

  “Copy. Wind calm and we have emergency trucks standing by.”

  “Very good, Tower.”

  As they descended, Ava realized she was white-knuckling and loosened her grip. Belly landings tended to do major damage to the aircraft, but almost never the passengers—that was the good news. The bad was that there was a risk the plane would flip, break up, cartwheel, catch fire, or any hellish combo of the four. Hell, keeping the aircraft straight and level was a must even with landing gear.

  As they descended, she breathed silent thanks for good visibility and low crosswinds. Runway four seemed to be racing up to meet them, and when they hit, there was a terrific bounce and a horrifying noise, like the plane was screaming as its belly was scraped to shit while Ava and Wilson fought to keep seven hundred thousand pounds under control. The plane slid for another two hundred meters, then came to a shuddering, grinding stop.

  Ava turned to her first officer. “I probably should have anticipated the smell.”

  “Jesus Christ, we’re not dead!”

  “That’s the spirit. Tower, we’ve landed and the crew is evacuating the passengers.”

  “Copy, NS 729. Welcome to Salt Lake City.”

  They could already hear the flight attendants deploying slides and barking instructions, and Ava opened the cockpit door in time to see Captain Lewis actually kick G.B. back with his one working leg as he pointed furiously to the passengers and shook his head. Clearly the idea of deplaning before his passengers was beyond unthinkable.

  “G.B., see to the passengers.” She could see the plane was rapidly emptying and decided it would be safer to unload Captain Lewis in forty seconds as opposed to upsetting him (and the passengers) by carrying him off now. “Wilson and I will see to the captain.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Later, at the bar, G.B. would drink to Lewis and say, “For a guy who was barely conscious and could only use half his body, he put up a hell of a fight.”

  Afterward, Ava found out they had everyone off the plane in 102 seconds, with zero injuries aside from Lewis. She was amazed when she realized the time lapse from Evans asking her into the cockpit to deplaning was fifty-eight minutes.

  A final head count had shown everyone was out, and then she was sliding out of the plane (wheeeeeee!) where G.B. was waiting for her. “Idiot,” she told him. “You’re not supposed to wait.”

  “You’re not supposed to land without wheels.” With that, he grabbed her and swung her around in an exuberant hug—he was one of the few men who made her feel doll-sized—and when she threw her head back to laugh, Buzzfeed had its photo of the week.

  But like an idiot, or someone born before social media, she’d thought that would be the end of it. Not on the airline’s part, of course—there would be months of investigation, meetings, PR damage control, more meetings, interviews, debriefings, meetings about debriefings, etcetera. But she assumed the public wouldn’t be terribly interested past the first day or so.

  When she and G.B. finally left the debriefing room, they were astonished to find hundreds of people waiting to see her, most of them refusing to be budged by airport employees. And many of them were airport employees. Suddenly everyone wanted to shake her hand.

  “You seem surprised,” G.B. said as they tried to make their way through the crowd, shaking random hands thrust at them and smiling rather fixedly. “What, did you forget that literally everyone is walking around with a portable television studio these days?”

  “Kind of,” she replied, blinking at all the cell phone lights. “Probably a bad day to wear shorts and my PILOTS: LOOKING DOWN AT PEOPLE SINCE 1903 T-shirt.”*

  “Naw. Shirt’s the best part of this story. You wait and see.”

  Eight

  “It was the best part of the story,” Tom agreed.

  “You’ve heard of the miracle on the Hudson? G.B. called it the unlikelihood in Salt Lake City.”

  “Did you ever find out why you couldn’t deploy the landing gear?”

  “The FAA guys found out that a circuit breaker popped. Nobody knows how, just that it would have happened after takeoff. Since they could use hydraulics to retract the gear, we didn’t know the breaker popped until we tried to direct to that system. They closed the breaker and poof! Landing gear worked. Well. As well as it could since the belly of the plane was scraped to shit.”

  “I knew you weren’t telling me the truth.”

  She nearly fell out of her chair. They’d moved from the bar to the back corner and the place was getting empty. “Excuse me?”

  “You said ‘there’s really not that much to it,’ when there was a great deal to it.”

  She shrugged. “Well. It was literally my job, so I can’t get too smug about it.”

  “What happened to Captain Lewis?”

  “Aneurysm. He’s on medical leave and getting a ton of physical therapy. They’re optimistic. I got a really nice card from his whole family.”

  “And did you go out to dinner with First Officer Wilson?”

  “Him and his husband. And his husband works for the local paper, so he was the first guy I gave an interview to.” It hadn’t been her favorite way to pass the time, but she did each and every one, knowing it was helping the company’s bottom line. “You can probably guess that after anything like this, the company’s bookings drop like a rock.”

  “Unless there’s a p
ersonable, charismatic spokeswoman for them to flock around.”

  “Yeah, or me. Heh. Get it? Too obvious?”

  “Very much so.”

  She smiled and looked down at the dregs of her Irish Shirley Temple, then back up. “Well.”

  “It’s late.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you have an early start tomorrow.”

  “As a matter of fact, I do. But first this.” And then she leaned in and kissed him.

  Nine

  The impromptu kiss had promptly morphed into a good old-fashioned make-out session, complete with hickeys. They’d made it out of the bar and to his truck, because she’d decided walking/kissing/groping him to his truck would be the polite thing to do, and when she finally came up for air they were both breathing hard.

  “Wow.”

  “Agreed,” he said, smiling.

  “I never do that.”

  “That’s demonstrably untrue.”

  She gave him a playful whap on the shoulder and her fingers promptly went numb. It had been like trying to smack a tree trunk. “No, really. But it’s been an odd day and a long one and you’re gorgeous and smart and a good listener, but now it’s time to go back to our lives and I’m really glad I met you but goodbye.”

  His eyebrows arched. “You’re remarkably blunt, but charming enough to pull it off.”

  “Thanks?”

  “I assume you don’t live in Minnesota.”

  Perish the goddamned thought. “Vegas.”

  “Well. You have my card. If you’d like to get together the next time you’re passing through, please consider reaching out.”

  Puzzled, she shook her head. “I don’t have your … wait.” She pulled a white business card out of her back pocket, then tucked it back—too dim in the parking lot to read, anyway, and it wasn’t like she planned on seeing him again. “Damn, that’s slick. I thought you were just grabbing my ass.”

  “Multitasking,” he replied with a straight face, and she had to laugh. She heard a familiar buzz-whir and he produced his phone, unlocked it, looked at the screen. “Ah. My niece is wondering when I’ll be back. It’s ridiculous that she’s up this late.” At her expression, he asked, “Problem?”

  “Nope. I didn’t know you had a niece, but why would I? We only met two—holy shit, we’ve been talking for three hours.”

  “Time flies.”

  “And so do I. But remember, I was already slipping out of your life before she texted you, so it’s nothing to do with her and everything to do with my emotional immaturity.”

  “Blunt,” he said, leaning in for a chaste kiss on her cheek. “But charming.”

  “Finally a title for my jazz ensemble,” she said, and that was the last she saw of him. Or so she truly thought at the time.

  Ten

  “Get up! I’m dying.”

  Ava spat toothpaste into the sink, wiped her mouth, opened the door, recoiled. “Jesus.”

  “Back atcha.” Dennis pushed past her and sat on the bed before his knees buckled. “I’m not gonna make it to lunch. Just so you know. I’ve updated my will and I’m leaving you nothing.”

  Despite the chaos of his appearance, Ava was relieved to see him. She’d been staring at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, eyeing the hickeys Tom had planted on her throat and shaking her head. She looked like she’d been attacked by a friendly, toothless Burmese python. And remembering his pliant mouth and skilled hands (slipping that card into her pocket had been a neat trick—guy probably paid for college by picking pockets), how the two of them had taken turns playing the aggressor, how her heart was pounding so hard she was sure everyone within a mile of the parking lot could hear it, how she came this close to hauling his ass up the stairs and finding out if he tasted as good as he looked … ummmm. Nice guy, great bod, smart, wonderful kisser, demonstrably responsible if the niece was any indicator. So naturally she kicked him from her life as soon as she could. Why did she pull this shit? Was it simply a matter of—

  “Get up! I’m dying.”

  So, yeah, she’d been glad for the interruption. She’d pulled a high-necked sweater on to hide the worst of the hickeys and went to Dennis. However …

  “You,” she said, staring at this pale, red-eyed, odiferous version of Dennis, “are barely cute right now.”

  “I’m barely alive right now.”

  “You’ve never looked worse. Well, maybe the morning after junior prom.” Memorable if for no other reason than it was the first and last time Dennis had spent the night drinking chocolate milk with tequila chasers.

  He flopped back onto the bed. “What happened last night?”

  “You drank about a gallon of dark black something or other, then had a couple of shots.”

  “That’s it? Because I either had some pretty fucked-up dreams last night or I was abroad actually doing the fucked-up things.”

  “Uh-huh. Don’t read into this, but have you thought that you might have a problem with alcohol?”

  “You’re only saying that because I’m drunk just about every time you see me.”

  “I know some people you could talk to.” Carefully, carefully. She was on tricky ground, and given her own problems with substance abuse, it was possible Dennis would assume she was projecting. “I could put you in touch with some people. If you wanted.”

  “I know some people I could talk to, too. Don’t sweat on my behalf. I’m not a full-fledged alkie. I’m a binge drinker.”

  “You know it’s possible to be both, right?”

  “Change of subject, please.”

  Got it. Case closed … for now. “Fine. After the tar and the shots, I brought you back here.”

  “And then?”

  “And then nothing. You conked out after I left.”

  “Abandoned me, you mean.” He let out a piteous moan, then peeked to see if she was moved. “Anything else?”

  “You had the common courtesy to not barf in my rental car, for which I thank you. Well, you did, but it all hit the basin.”

  “I could have died! What basin?”

  She restrained herself from rolling her eyes. “Don’t worry. A total stranger helped me get you to drink a glass of water—”

  “I hate water.”

  “How can you hate water? It doesn’t taste like anything—never mind, I’m not having the H2O argument with you again. Then we turned you on your side so you wouldn’t choke and die and left you snoozing.” She’d forgotten that Dennis was a creature of drama even before his twin sister had been murdered. “Now what were you babbling about on the phone?”

  “Something happened at the funeral home. My ma’s freaking out and wants both of us over there ASAP.”

  “What? Both? She’s not the boss of me.” Right? Right. “And what’s ‘something’?”

  “I. Don’t. Know. I basically said yes so she’d stop screeching. We’ve gotta go; my life’s now measured in minutes.”

  Ava drove and fumed while Dennis hung his head out the window and gulped fresh air, periodically ducking back inside to drink from one of two bottles of water she’d brought for him. A return to the funeral home was not on the agenda. Nor was dealing with more Monahans. Not to mention she was due in preflight in a couple of hours. Well, nine. But still. What had been on the agenda was to wake up, hate herself for kicking Tom to the curb, eat oatmeal, use all the hotel moisturizer she could get her hands on, then hang out at the airport until preflight. It was an odd life, but it was hers.

  Her (mostly) inaudible grumbling turned to real anxiety when she swung into the parking lot and saw the cop cars and ambulance.

  “Oh, fuck,” Dennis said, which just about summed it up. They parked, got out, and at least one of the cops seemed to know who they were, because yellow caution tape was pulled aside for them and they were waved right in.

  And stopped short once the doors closed behind them. In the twelve hours since she’d last been there, someone had radically redecorated the Crisp and Gross Funeral Home in graffiti, brok
en glassware, upended chairs, and overturned tables, and there was some kind of dark dust all over the—the—

  “Is that…” Ava started to reach out just as Dennis seized her wrist and yanked.

  “Don’t,” he said hoarsely, which was good advice. She should have caught on quicker, or at least recognized the upended urn. Someone had come in and made a grand fucking mess, and finished by flinging Danielle’s ashes all over the room.

  On the wall, written in her ashes: WRONG.

  Eleven

  “You!” The word wasn’t shouted so much as shrilled, and Ava jumped like she’d been poked. She realized she’d been so transfixed by the bizarre scene she hadn’t realized the room was full of cops (yikes) and Mrs. Monahan (quadruple yikes). It was amazing how she saw everything when she was in the cockpit, and nothing out of it. “This! Explain yourself!”

  “I—what?” Was she looking for a critique? Well, the upended tables clearly represent chaos, but I feel the artist went too far with the ashes. “I can’t explain this. How could I explain this?”

  “Exactly.” Mrs. Monahan was still in yesterday’s dress, which was surprising—had the woman been up all night? “How could you?”

  “You think I had something to do with this?”

  Something happened at the funeral home, Dennis had said, and yeah, something had. My ma’s freaking out and wants both of us over there ASAP, he’d said, and yeah, she was. Ava should have realized they’d be looking for a scapegoat, because it’s what they’d done ten years ago.

  “Miss Capp?”

  “Yes,” she said, too distracted to correct him. “And this is Dennis Monahan, Danielle’s brother.”

  The tall blond with a sunburned forehead—not often something you saw in early Minnesota spring—and tan suit showed them a badge. “I’m Detective Springer. Can you help us figure out what happened here?”

  “I have no idea what’s happened here,” Ava replied, and she was pretty sure it was the truest thing she’d ever said.

  “Goes double for me.” Dennis looked even worse than when she’d first seen him that morning, which she’d honestly thought was impossible. And he smelled worse, too. Could he still be drunk? Stranger things etcetera. “When did this—I mean, who even called you guys? And Ma? What is this?”