“I can’t do that,” I said.
“I’m telling you,” he said, “just do it before you go up. I’m keeping track of your hours and I’ll pay you overtime if you run over. No problem.”
“I can’t drive,” I said.
He pulled his hand back in surprise, keys jingling. “What do you mean, you can’t drive?”
I meant that nobody had ever taught me to drive, and it didn’t matter anyway because I didn’t have a car. But I wasn’t going down that road again. I was still pissed about trying to explain the washateria to Alec last night.
“You mean you can fly a plane but you can’t drive a car?” Grayson asked. “That’s crazy.”
I chopped my hand across my throat. This had been Mr. Hall’s way of telling us to kill the engine. I meant for Grayson to stop quizzing me on my home life. I’d had enough.
He balled his fist and squeezed until his hand turned white.
“Okay,” he said on a sigh. “Sorry. Go have something to eat.” He rounded the corner of the hangar and started his truck himself.
I walked into the darkness and feasted on strawberry Danish and eggs and ham, stuffing food into my mouth like a starving dog now that nobody was watching. The day continued to get better from there. I never missed a banner pickup, and I took three long flights up and down the sunny beach. By the third flight, the wind had picked up, but the storms were still a long way off, nothing to worry about yet.
Mr. Hall would have thought it was beautiful. In a Grayson-like outburst, he would have exclaimed, “Man, what a pretty day to fly!” and then settled with me in the cockpit for the ride. This time I hardly teared up, thinking of him. His memory made me happy.
My morning break didn’t coincide with Molly’s because she took a break while I flew, and she spelled out my new banner while I took a break. But she ate lunch with the boys and me. Things didn’t seem weird between us like they had when I’d talked to her alone that morning. Like the night before, she carried the conversation and took a lot of pressure off me. I decided there was nothing wrong with her after all. Early that morning she’d just been overwhelmed with work, maybe, or disoriented at waking up before ten on a school holiday.
I didn’t take my afternoon break with her. When I taxied to the hangar, Alec was sitting outside with his back to the corrugated metal wall of the building, smoking a cigarette and watching Molly struggle with the banner Grayson had just dropped, tiny across the field. I didn’t want to sit outside and be tempted to smoke, but I thought I should be sociable since apparently Alec and I had another date that night.
“Welcome,” he said as I walked up. He patted the asphalt beside him like it was a plush seat. Giggling, I sank down. He offered me a cigarette and I shook my head.
He exhaled smoke away from me. “Beautiful day for flying,” he said, squinting into the sky. “Grayson’s already freaking out about the weather.”
“I think he’s nervous about the wind since his wreck last December,” I said.
“Is that what you think it is?” Alec asked. “I thought he was just being an overbearing ass.”
Weirdly, I wanted to jump to Grayson’s defense. He was being an overbearing ass, and not just about the weather. But somehow, while it was okay for me to think this, it wasn’t okay for Alec to say it.
Before I could open my mouth, Alec’s phone rang. He slipped it from his pocket, glanced at the screen, and grinned. “My mom.”
I put my hands behind me on the hot asphalt to push myself up. “Do you want me to—”
“Oh, gosh, no, sit down.” He pressed a button on the phone. “This is your favorite son speaking. How may I help you?”
Even though he’d told me he didn’t need privacy, I felt uncomfortable listening to his end of the conversation with his mom. I knew he and Jake looked like her, but the photo I’d seen of her had been decades old. As I pictured her now, she was a pudgy woman with cotton clothes like sacks and the same haircut she’d had in high school because it was easy and there was no reason to bother anymore, now that her eldest son was gone, and her husband was gone, who had cheated on her, and whom she had always loved.
I was basing this assumption on nothing. She might be slender and stylish with a professional job, a lawyer, suffering the loss of her son and sorry about her ex but already moving on, because her own life was important too. Either way, she was none of my business. I would never meet her. I’d cheapened this lady’s mourning with my nosey musings. I tried to relax and shut her out, but when I sat back against the corrugated metal building, I was shocked at the heat and sat up straight.
Alec eyed me as he spoke. “No, it’s going great.” He pivoted the phone so he could still hear the speaker but the mouthpiece was away from his mouth, then took a drag from his cigarette. He moved the phone back and said, “Yes, really.” Smoke curled out of his mouth and around his lips. He moved the phone away again and exhaled in a quick huff that his mother wouldn’t hear. Then he said into the phone, “Mom. Mom. Mo-ther. Why don’t you believe me?”
Grayson was landing his plane. A gust inflated the wind sock on the tower and knocked Grayson a few feet off course, but he straightened up in time for the landing. Perfect.
Alec laughed into the phone. And even though he clearly had been bullshitting his mother about how things were going, his laugh sounded genuine. It started as a low manly rumble and ended in a higher cackle like a little boy, cracking up and not caring how he sounded because the joke was that funny.
While laughing, he’d moved his mouth away from the phone again so he didn’t hurt his mom’s ears on the other end of the line. He took the opportunity to suck in another quick drag from his cigarette before he told her more somberly, “That’s Grayson’s problem. You’ll have to ask him about that.”
They chatted for a few more minutes about the weather, it sounded like, and the temperature of the ocean, and whether the beach was crowded, while Grayson taxied his plane closer.
Finally Alec said, “I will. Love you too. Bye.” He pocketed his phone.
“Your mom called to check on you?” I asked. “That’s sweet.” I said it like I was teasing him, but I really did think it was sweet. My mom didn’t call to check on me.
Alec nodded toward the approaching red Piper. “Checking on Grayson. There’s something wrong with him.”
“Of course there is,” I said. “Both of y’all have been through so much in the past few months.”
Alec sucked in smoke and huffed it out his nose. “Yeah, Dad died and Jake died, but I’m still the same person I was at Christmas. Grayson isn’t. He had to go to counseling for impulse control when we were kids. They taught him to grip his fist really hard to keep himself from doing or saying something he’d regret later. Like this.” He made a fist and squeezed until his hand turned white, just like Grayson did. “Mom and Dad would make him do it at the dinner table when he interrupted the conversation or tried to steal all the rolls. He would never do it unless they made him. And nine years later, have you seen how often he’s doing it?”
He shouted these last words as Grayson parked his plane next to ours. The engine cut off. Grayson jumped down from the cockpit and strode across the tarmac toward us.
“Put that garbage out,” he told Alec, sounding exactly like Mr. Hall. Not his imitation of Mr. Hall, but Mr. Hall himself, annoyance and superiority behind those gruff words.
“You’re such a hypocrite.” Alec’s comment was harsh, but his tone was mild. As he said it, he stubbed out his cigarette on the asphalt and stood. He tossed the butt into the trash can at the corner of the hangar, then walked back to me. “See you on the other side.” We bumped fists, and he jogged toward the yellow Piper without another word to Grayson.
Grayson sat beside me in Alec’s place. “You’re not smoking, are you?” he grumbled.
“Not anymore. Your dad made me quit.”
“Really?” Grayson seemed surprised. “Why?”
Alec started his engine. I waited for him to turn his plane and taxi toward the far end of the runway, engine noise fading, before I explained. “Your dad said it took him thirty years to quit and he was going to save me the trouble. This was back when I was still paying him for lessons. I told him he couldn’t tell me what to do, and he refused to take me up unless I quit.”
Grayson said knowingly, “You could have faked quitting.”
“He would have smelled it,” I said. “My hair is large and aromatic.” For emphasis, I ran one hand through my back-to-normal curls. Grayson wouldn’t have believed my real reason for quitting: I had made a promise to Mr. Hall, and therefore I had kept it.
“Do you ever want one?” Grayson asked.
“No. Sometimes I think I do, and I start one, but it’s been more than three years since I finished one. I didn’t want to sit out here and watch Alec smoke, but… no, I don’t want one.” Something in Grayson’s hungry tone made me ask, “Do you?”
“Yes. I’m like”—he inhaled deeply through his nose—“ahhhh, secondhand smoke.”
“When did you quit?”
“Saturday.”
“God!” I exclaimed. “No wonder you’ve been acting that way.”
Tiny on the opposite end of the runway, Alec took off. Molly lost her hold on a banner and chased it through the grass on a breeze, which was picking up ahead of the approaching storm.
Finally Grayson said, “Alec and I both were smoking more because of the stress, I guess, and it got out of hand. We agreed to quit because thirty years of smoking was part of what killed Dad. Alec’s having a harder time than I am.”
“That’s weird,” I said. “I would think you’d have the harder time.”
“Why?” he asked flatly.
“Alec says there’s something wrong with you. You’ve changed.”
A new engine started up. In front of the airport office, the Admiral was getting ready for his afternoon flight.
Grayson said quietly, “I changed that day I crashed last December. I’d never been scared before. Never. I’ve been scared ever since.” He sounded so uncharacteristically solemn that I turned toward him.
He still didn’t look at me as he continued, “I understand cause and effect now. Life was more fun when I didn’t, but I can’t undo it.”
At the far end of the runway, the Admiral had finished his run-up of the engines. He raced forward and sailed into the air, sweeping toward us and then away, headed for the sun.
“There’s something wrong with Alec, though,” Grayson said. “I’m doing all the brainwork for this business. It’s like him to be worry-free, but it’s not like him to trust me.”
His phone rang in his pocket. He drew it out and glanced at the screen, then answered it. “Hello, this is your favorite son. May I help you?” His imitation of Alec was dead-on, both the words and the teasing tone of his voice.
I didn’t offer to walk away and give Grayson privacy for his phone call with his mom, like I had for Alec. I wanted to hear this.
His tone returned to normal: a pleasant voice. A radio voice, as in a DJ rather than a pilot, not too high or deep, friendly with just a hint of the sarcasm under the surface, waiting.
“Everything is going great,” he said. He didn’t have a cigarette to fidget with like Alec had, but I heard him playing with a rock, tapping it on the hard tar beside him. “No, that hasn’t been a problem, because I planned it out before, remember?” The rock tapped faster as she said things he didn’t want to hear.
Finally he tried to interrupt her. He was imitating Alec again. “Mom. Mom. Mom. Mo-ther. The business is running just as smoothly as when Dad was here.”
I looked at him incredulously before I realized what I was doing.
His eyes darted to mine and away. He reared back and hurled the little rock he’d been tapping. I followed its trajectory across the sunny tarmac. It sailed a long time, bounced on the asphalt, and kept going. I couldn’t see where it went.
“Okay,” he said. “Love you too. Bye.” The instant after he pressed the button to end the call, he turned to me and said angrily, “It is running just as smoothly as when Dad ran it, because when Dad ran it, it didn’t run smoothly at all.”
He probably suspected again that I’d figured out his secret by listening to his conversation with his mom. I hadn’t. All I could hear was how worried he was. About what, I had no idea.
“I didn’t say anything.” I stood to duck inside the hangar and snag a drink before taking my last flight of the afternoon. “By the way, thanks for feeding me today. And yesterday.” I paused. “And Sunday night.”
He shrugged. “I’m just doing what Dad would have done.”
“He fed his pilots?”
“Yes, because they were hungover.”
Alec and I were not hungover. Grayson had made sure of that. He was just ensuring I had enough to eat after he peeked inside my empty refrigerator. I didn’t want to discuss this any more than I’d wanted to tell him I couldn’t drive. But I didn’t want him to think I was naive, either. I was about to tell him I knew why he was feeding us.
He tilted his head to one side, the blond curls beneath his cowboy hat moving against his shoulder. “You looked really beautiful last night. I do like your hair better now, curly, but it was pretty last night too.”
“Ha-ha,” I said.