Magda jingled Angela's bracelet again, Gray's mother having passed it over fifteen minutes earlier in hopes of calming the wiggling child. Lori had long ago exhausted her bribe supply of gummies and juice boxes.
"Lori?" Dave Clark extended callused hands. "Let me take her."
"Dave, she's not at her best." Lori hesitated, not wanting to impose.
The older man gripped the child's waist. "Grayson couldn't sit still to save his soul when he was a boy. I think I can handle this tiny scrap."
"If you're sure you don't mind?" Lori handed her over with reluctant relief. The kid seemed to have doubled in weight since they'd arrived well over an hour ago.
Angela straightened Magda's hat and matching ladybug-patterned dress. "Of course he doesn't mind. Dave loves babies." A fond smile lit her face, a smile so like her son's. "He was always toting the boys around on his back when they were small." Her smile faded. "Of course he missed Mary Ann's baby years, but she was right about Magda's age when he came home."
All those lost years. An image of young Gray curled up with his stuffed Snoopy dog slipped right up and past Lori's defenses. "Thanks, Dave, my arms were ready to give out."
"No problem." He shifted Magda onto his shoulders so her feet dangled on his chest. Angela pointed to different sites on the runway—cars, trucks, flags—and chanted the words to Magda.
Lori glanced around the tarmac at the other fifty or so waiting people. Maybe one of them would have an answer for the delay. Most of them she recognized from a year ago. Tag's family waited to the side, his wife and two teenagers. Other servicemen milled around in flight suits.
Captain O'Connell, one of the other flight surgeons, stood with the squadron commander and ground crew. Of course, Kathleen O'Connell didn't look at all peaked from her stomach flu bout. If anything, she looked tanned and healthy in her flight suit.
A military doctor, she was just the sort of woman Gray should be seeing. They would have similar goals with a mutual understanding of the job and its demands.
Lori had no reason to suspect there was any relationship between the two of them. Still she couldn't stop the stab of jealousy at comparing herself to Kathleen and finding herself lacking.
Just when she decided she would have to swallow her pride and ask Kathleen for an update, Lori's gaze lit on a late arrival. Lance's wife, Julia, stepped from a military truck, clutching a champagne bottle.
"Thanks, Lieutenant," Julia called breathlessly. "Lance would have had a cow if I wasn't here. Not a pretty sight, let me tell you!"
In a flurry of short, blond curls and yards of whispery cotton, Julia Sinclair rushed across the flight line. Lori had thought they might develop a friendship a year ago, but there hadn't been enough time. Another disappointment. She could have used girl talk and someone to share her bowl of consolation cookie dough.
Lori tapped Angela's arm. "I'll be right back. I'm going to say hello to someone."
"Of course." Angela didn't even look away from Magda. "We'll be fine."
Lori looked up, but still no sign of an airplane. She pushed through the crowd and called out. "Julia. Over here."
The woman turned, frowned, then smiled, waving. "Lori, wow, you came! Lance said you might, but well, men can get things all messed up so I didn't know for sure. I put you on the party count, anyway."
"Thanks. I hope we haven't caused any extra trouble."
"Not at all. Everything's done and waiting." Julia fanned her face with her hand, shuffled, shifted her handbag over her shoulder. Nervous energy radiated from her in waves to rival the heat steaming from the runway. "I thought for sure I would be late. I had to transfer all those deli meats and cheeses to real platters, then stuff the plastic ones deep in the trash. Bury the evidence, you know? Can you believe Lance actually thinks I cut all that stuff up with my own little hands? Sheesh! But who am I to disillusion the guy?"
Lori laughed, looking up at the woman who topped her by at least three or four inches. Julia had a way of making her presence felt in a way that had nothing to do with her near-six-foot height. "I guess it's lucky for you they're running late."
Julia tugged her necklace up to read the watch face. "I guess they are, aren't they? That happens. It's probably nothing."
"Of course." Lori grasped for something to say, anything to keep the conversation alive so she didn't have to think about the delayed aircraft. "It's nice of you to put together the picnic for Gray."
"The local deli and I can throw one heck of a party. Your little one will have plenty of kids to play with. Most of the families are joining us back at the house. Gray has a lot of friends here. We're going to miss him."
"Hmmm." So would she. He'd left his mark on her life. She couldn't walk through her apartment without thinking of him. She'd fed a whole box of crackers to the birds so she wouldn't have to look at the packs and remember Gray.
"It's not often they get to fly with one of his kind."
Where was he? "What do you mean?"
"A flyer flight surgeon."
"What about Captain O'Connell?" Lori nodded to the woman across the runway. "I thought she was a flight surgeon, too."
"She is, but didn't Gray ever explain the difference? He probably didn't want to brag. A flight surgeon is a doctor who specializes in medicine pertaining to flyer ailments! Only a few of them are actually flyers themselves, about a dozen I think."
"A dozen?" Lori answered absently, scanning the horizon, searching for a dot, each minute weighing on her. Wind stirred, swirled, plastering her silk wraparound dress to her body. "Here?"
"No. In the Air Force."
Julia's words sank in, slowly, heavily. A flash of admiration mixed with a wayward twinge of pride. Only a dozen people in the entire Air Force held that distinction, and Gray was one of them.
There wasn't a chance he could give it up. That doused the last of her hopes, banked though they may have been. No reserves or weekend warriors after his stint in Washington. He'd charted his life.
A nimble sounded in the background. Lori straightened, her breath catching as she searched the sky and runway. Was that the plane? She jerked to look over her shoulder.
Hangar doors growled open, not aircraft sounds at all.
Sirens split the air.
Numbness fell away.
Fire trucks tore out, six of them screaming across the tarmac toward the runway.
Lori stopped breathing altogether. She looked around frantically. Gray had said a fire truck would hose him down, a tradition for finit flights, but he hadn't said anything about six trucks with sirens.
Julia's pale face didn't calm Lori in the least. Just as she started to search for Gray's parents, a handheld radio crackled, blaring loudly enough to be heard over any flight line pandemonium, "Wolf One, this is command post."
Lori followed the noise to a small group between the bleachers and line of planes.
The squadron commander, Lori searched for his name and couldn't find it, raised the radio to his mouth, "Yeah, Wolf One here, over."
"Sir," the radio broadcast, "Lifter one-three has declared an in-flight emergency. Experienced a rapid decompression. They're on twenty-five-mile approach."
In-flight emergency. Just the words horrified her. Lori held herself still, desperate to absorb and decode every word.
"Roger that, command post. Rapid decompression. And the crew?"
"No injuries."
No injuries. Lori clung to those words as tightly as she held Julia's arm. When had she grabbed it?
"Roger," the commander barked. "Send Foxtrot over to pick me up at spot twelve. I'm heading out for landing. Over."
Seconds later the commander leaped into a truck. Sirens blaring, it followed the fire trucks past the line of parked planes next to the lengthy runway.
As quickly as that, her world rocked.
Lori felt a hand on her shoulder and startled. She found Gray's father standing behind her, Magda still on his shoulders jingling Angela's bracelet.
"He'll be fine, Lori." Dave held his wife's hand, her face pale but in control. "Rapid dees happen all the time. The trucks, the noise, it's all procedure. Since he's only twenty-five miles out, he'll be here in minutes. Probably landing in less than five. Should be breaking the horizon right about … now."
Like magic, a speck appeared.
Lori exhaled. She pulled the fragmented pieces of her reason together. What right did she have to accept comfort, anyway? She wasn't anyone to Gray, not like his parents beside her. And Julia had a husband to worry about.
That didn't stop Lori's heart from punching her rib cage or her hands from shaking.
Julia's hand fluttered to rest on Lori's arm. "Really, thank goodness it's just a rapid dee. Those can be absolutely nothing big."
Lori looked around at the fire trucks positioned along the runway. If this was "nothing" she didn't want to consider "something." How could they all be so blasé?
The plane roared closer, growing larger. She started breathing again. Her pulse only raced double time now, not too bad.
Julia laughed a slight wobble. "I remember once when Lance came home and told me—"
Angela cleared her throat, shooting a pointed look Lori's way. "Save that one for another time, dear."
"Ooops, sorry, just nervous chatter." Julia clutched the champagne bottle to her stomach. "We'll all laugh at the party."
Of course they would. She could always count on Gray for a laugh, and in minutes he would surely step from that plane as carefree as ever. "I'm fine. Dave, do you want to pass me Magda?"
"Let her stay."
Lori held Magda's foot, anyway, needing the comfort of contact. Eyes trained upward, Lori watched the plane near, slow, touch down.
Relief turned her limbs to oatmeal. Thank God she wasn't holding Magda because she surely would have dropped her.
Engines whined as the aircraft slowed, fire trucks pacing alongside. The cargo plane turned, heading toward them.
Dave nodded. "That's good."
"What?"
"If it was a serious emergency, they would have stopped on the runway. But they're still coming over. That's good. Probably nothing more than a loose seal."
Swallowing twice, Lori tried to moisten her gritty mouth. The lumbering aircraft neared. She could even see Gray through the window, his headset on as he parked the plane.
Lori inhaled deeply, the exhaust-tinged air stinging her lungs with each gasp. This was nothing, she reminded herself. Just a little in-flight emergency, practically an everyday occurrence for him.
She would have a heart attack by the end of the week. Handling a crisis had always been her strength. Why was she freaking out now?
Because she was helpless. Out of control. There was nothing she could do in a situation like this, and she needed control over her life after so many years of chaos.
The side hatch door opened. A firefighter in his silver fire suit waited, firehose poised and ready.
One at a time crew members ambled down the few steps onto the runway. Burly Bronco. Too-pretty-for-his-own-good Lancelot, Steady Tag.
Finally Grayson.
His smile as bright as the sun glinting off his airplane, he loped down the stairs.
"Congratulations, Major Clark," the firefighter shouted. "And farewell!"
The blast of water caught Gray full in the chest. His laugh rumbled over the flight line as he stumbled back from the force of the crystal-clear water.
Bronco grabbed a bottle of champagne from a cooler, popped the cork and launched into the deluge, pouring the bottle over Gray's head. Sun shimmered off the fire hose spray, sparkling rainbows into a nimbus around them.