Sam changed his song to “Da doo ron ron ron,” and some of the kids she would never have expected to sing a note began to sing, too. Addison, who had met Sam on the way in, joined in, and to her amazement, Jason began singing, too. Madeline winked at her, and she winked back. As they worked and sang, she supervised the rough sketching of the tarmac, the terminals, the baggage trucks, the other airplanes lined up, and the ones in the sky. As she answered questions and passed out compliments that made their little chests swell with pride, she couldn’t help straining to hear Jason and Addison’s conversation when they weren’t singing. So far, neither had figured out who the other was. But they were becoming fast friends, and she could see that Addison was impressed with the boy.
Once she had everyone working on their own, she stepped back to pull her thoughts together and wondered where she would take things from here. If their identities didn’t come out this afternoon, she’d tell Addison later. It would be the best way, she decided, for she’d be able to sit down with him and explain what she’d done. And why.
The pat little ending to her scheme didn’t come about as planned. Addison and Jason had been working together for more than an hour when she could feel the truth pushing its way out. Addison had won Jason’s trust. And, curious as he always was, Addison asked the obvious question.
“How does a nine-year-old boy like you know so much about airplanes? Especially a 727?”
Jason continued his fine sketching and lifted one small shoulder. Erin noted that Jason’s throat bobbed. She held her breath and tried to look busy. “My dad was a pilot,” he said, keeping his voice too low for the others to hear. “The captain of a 727. He and I did a lot of models together.”
Addison didn’t make the connection. “I see,” he said, his voice dropping in pitch. “Is he retired?”
“Huh-uh,” Jason said, not taking his eyes from the drawing. Pink blotches colored his cheeks.
Addison didn’t press, for it was obvious, then, that Jason wasn’t volunteering anything. Quietly, he finished drawing the tail of the aircraft.
“He died.” The words came on a hoarse whisper, and Addison stopped drawing and turned to the child.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t know.”
Jason sketched faster. “About three weeks ago. His plane crashed.”
Erin went limp against the back wall as a look of stark realization dawned on Addison’s stricken face. Slowly, his hand came down from the mural. The charcoal dropped from his hand and rolled off the drop cloth onto the cold Formica. “You’re…you’re Mick Hammon’s son?”
Erin saw Jason’s wide, trusting eyes settle on Addison. “You knew my dad?”
Addison turned around, his eyes on the edge of despair, but accusation was rampant as he gaped at Erin. How could you? those eyes asked. You tricked me.
“Did you?” Jason asked, clinging to the question that was so important. “Did you know him?”
Slowly, Addison turned his pale face back to the boy. “No, son,” Addison confessed. “I didn’t know him. But I’ve heard a lot about him.”
Jason’s face flushed to red, and he abandoned the refuge of the sketch. “It’s not true. None of what you’ve heard is true!”
Addison stepped back, dumbfounded. “I didn’t hear anything bad about him, Jason. Just what a good man he was…what a good pilot…”
Jason started to speak, then glanced over Addison’s shoulder at the other kids still chattering as they worked, and his voice became a whisper. “It wasn’t his fault, you know. My dad was the best pilot Southeast ever had. It wasn’t his fault the plane crashed.”
Addison seemed to struggle with emotion, and he reached out a shaking hand and mussed the boy’s hair. Erin could have sworn she saw the glisten of tears in his eyes as he tried to speak. But no words would come.
“Hey, Jason,” Zeke called from down the wall, interrupting the poignant moment. “Come see what you think. I drew an American flag on the side, so it’d look patriotic and all. And look how I shaped these windows. Pretty spiffy, huh?”
Jason glanced at Addison softly, swallowed his emotion, and went to Zeke, as if thankful for the distraction. “Oh, no,” he moaned when he saw the sketching. “You can’t just put an American flag on something because you feel like it! And you can’t change windows. That’s not how it really looks.”
“Hey, man,” Zeke said. “We aren’t going for reality here.”
Erin would have laughed at his use of her own words, if it hadn’t been for the fissures cracking through her heart, exposing the white-hot core of regret. Addison didn’t grace her with another look. Instead, he leaned against the wall, disregarding the damage his shoulder was doing to the drawing. He seemed to be trying to pull his emotions together before they flew out of control—in which direction, she wasn’t sure. The small muscles in his face hardened. A vein in his temple throbbed.
Finally, just as she started to speak he looked at her with a look of condemnation, shook his head in disgust, and started toward the exit.
“Addison?” she asked. “Where are you going?”
Addison didn’t answer. Instead, he pushed through the doors and headed out into daylight.
Quickly, Erin threw down the rag and charcoal she was holding. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she called. She darted out of the center just as Addison screeched from the parking lot.
Erin ran to her own car and pulled out behind him. He drove too fast for her to catch him, but she stayed behind him, desperately trying to keep up. Her own anger welled inside her, spurring her on. Of course he was angry, but what did he expect her to do? Sit back and wait for him to ruin lives, now that he’d admitted what the conclusions of his report would be? Did he expect her to forget the results of the investigation and accept it?
A car pulled out between them, and she slammed on the brakes. The rubber on her tires skidded, reminding her of the morning of her fender bender and the concussion that had kept her from flying. Things would have been so different if the accident hadn’t happened. Drastically different.
She swerved around the car and headed in the direction she’d seen Addison travel. He was blocks up ahead, but she changed lanes and wove between cars until she was close to him. He pulled into a condominium complex and parked his car. Erin drove in to double-park behind him, cut off her engine, and got out of the car.
“You’re wasting your time, Erin,” Addison shouted, slamming his own door. “I don’t have time for your games.”
“Games?” Erin shouted. “You think this is a game?”
Addison started up to his apartment. “Call it whatever you want. It was a dirty trick, and I would have expected you to be above something like that.”
Erin followed behind him, taking three steps for every one of his. “I’m not above anything that will keep that little boy from having to defend his father and his name. I’m not above anything that’ll keep Mick’s memory from being dragged through the mud!”
“I don’t drag people’s memories through the mud,” Addison said through his teeth. “I tell the truth! That’s all!”
“No matter who it destroys? No matter what it means?”
Addison rammed his key into his lock, then swiveled to face Erin, his face flaming. “Don’t you understand? I don’t want to destroy anyone. Especially that little boy. I was going to meet him, talk to him. You had no right to set me up!”
“When were you going to? You still haven’t even met his mother. You’re afraid to, Addison. I saw your face when you realized who he was. You were horrified! I don’t think you would have done it voluntarily.”
“I would have, Erin! It’s my job! I just don’t happen to enjoy seeing people’s pain. I remember it, Erin. I was there myself, remember?” He started to pass through the door, then turned back as if to push it shut, but Erin burst through and closed it behind her.
She leaned back against the door, staring at him across the small foyer. “I don’t know who you lost, Addison,
or what happened. But that little boy lost his father, and Maureen lost her husband. I can go on, but the balance of their lives will never be the same again.”
“That isn’t my fault!” Addison rasped. “Did I make him crash? Did I kill him?”
“No, but you’re killing his memory. You’re taking away anything good Jason can be proud of about his dad!”
“I can’t do that!” Addison said. “If Mick Hammon made an impression on his son, nobody—not you or I—can take that away from him.”
“They can, Addison. You don’t know what it’s like. Mick was his father. His father! You don’t know what he’s going through already, without the rumors and smears.”
Addison slammed his fist against the wall, and Erin jumped. “I do know, Erin! I do know! Amanda was my wife! I lost my wife in a crash.”
Erin caught her breath, and her bold resolve drained slowly out of her. She regarded Addison as he slumped against the wall opposite her, the admission draining him of his fight. His eyes glistened again, and his face seemed to lose all color.
“So don’t tell me I don’t know what those people are feeling,” he said, his voice dropping to a waver. “Don’t come in here and accuse me of bypassing them out of cruelty. I know what it’s like to be questioned, when you have more questions yourself than you could ever answer. I know what it’s like to be hassled by the press, when all you want is to be left alone with your grief. I know the pain a person experiences when he’s slept in the same bed with someone every night for years and suddenly has to get used to that bed being empty. I was trying to spare them for as long as I could, Erin. I had hoped I’d be able to clear him of responsibility first, so my interview with him wouldn’t be necessary!”
He choked on the last words, rubbed his jaw. His eyes focused on her with disgust. “But you had to play God and get me together with the innocent little boy, corner me so I’d learn my lesson.”
Erin’s gaze faltered. That was exactly what she’d done, and for the life of her she couldn’t find any defense.
“Well, I learned a lesson, all right,” Addison added. “About you. I never thought of you as a manipulator before today, Erin. But that’s just what you are. And what about Jason? What will he think about either of us when he finds out who I am…when I really do have to talk to him? It’ll just make it a thousand times harder for him, because he trusted me for a time.”
Tears of shame and regret stung Erin’s eyes, and she stepped toward him, hands outstretched. “Addison, I—”
“Go home, Erin,” he said, his tone as dead as the look in his eyes. “Just go home.”
What could she say? That she was sorry? In all fairness, she wasn’t certain she was. But she didn’t like the image he had of her now, or the determination he had to end what they had begun. Slowly, she went to the door, opened it, and stepped back into the sunshine.
She stood on the step for a moment, looking out toward the parking lot, then heard the door being pushed closed behind her. Her heart sank a dozen levels before she forced her legs to move back to her car.
Chapter Seventeen
Addison pulled into the driveway of the Hammon’s house and regarded the brick, split-level home that had been groomed and maintained with great care for years. The home lay nestled in an upper-middle-class Shreveport subdivision, complete with security at the gates that isolated it from the crime and violence of the city streets. He shut off his engine and sat in the dark car for a moment. His job stank, he decided. When he’d started it, he’d never expected to become a post-death agent whose inevitable knock on the door dredged up heartache and grief.
And what would Jason think when he saw that he was the one “nailing” his dad? Would Jason hate him? Curse him, in his nine-year-old way?
He rubbed a hand over his rough chin and thought of Maureen’s grief—grief that would have to be set aside while he asked her what he needed to know. He hadn’t forgotten the “official” visits he’d gotten after Amanda’s death.
“We’re terribly sorry about your loss, Mr. Lowe. We hate to bother you, but we need to talk to you about a settlement…”
No one had blamed Amanda, a mere passenger, for the crash, though. No one had drilled him to support a theory that the person he loved was in the wrong…the way he would drill Maureen tonight.
Maybe Erin had been right. Maybe it had been his conscience that kept him from going to the family. Or maybe what he’d told her was true—that he dreaded making them relive the tragedy, and that he simply wanted to spare them for as long as he could. For the life of him, he didn’t know if his procrastination had been noble or cowardly.
Regardless of the answer, he had no choice but to see them tonight. Erin’s stunt this afternoon had cinched it. Now there was no putting the interviews off.
Like a man heading voluntarily into a lynching, Addison got out of his car and started up the walk. Mrs. Hammon had left the porch light on, probably for him, since he’d called to tell her he was coming. He couldn’t help remembering the night that the airline official had called him to say he was coming to discuss the terms of their settlement to avoid a lawsuit. He had paced the small, empty living room in the dark before the man came, gnashing his teeth and asking himself how those idiots thought they could pay him any adequate compensation for his wife’s life.
Was Maureen pacing now, wondering what this NTSB official would demand to know about her personal life with her husband and wondering if throwing him out would do Mick’s cause more harm than good?
He reached the front door and rang the bell, then wiped his palms on his jacket. He hung his head and waited.
Maureen answered quickly, a tentative smile on her pale face. She looked smaller than he’d expected, more fragile, and there was a delicate beauty about her. Her red hair was pulled back in a chignon, and she wore little makeup. “Mr. Lowe?” she asked.
“Yes.” He held out his hand in greeting, and she took it in her own. “Mrs. Hammon, I’m terribly sorry about your loss…”
The visit went well, much better than Addison had expected, for Maureen was unexpectedly honest in answering his questions. She never dangled the guilt over his head that Erin had, never mentioned the cruel phone calls she’d been getting, never referred to Jason’s pain. She simply said that she wanted to get the investigation over as soon as possible so that she and her son could go on with their lives.
Addison was just closing up his clipboard of notes when Jason came downstairs. At the sight of Addison, he halted midstep.
Maureen stood up. “Honey, it’s all right. You can come in. This is Mr. Lowe of the National Transportation Safety Board.”
Jason’s hands coiled into fists on top of the banister. His lips drew back into thin lines. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked Addison in a voice full of loathing.
Thinking he was addressing her, Maureen frowned. “I told you he was coming,” she said.
Addison held up his hand to her, silently conveying that this was between the two males. He took a few steps toward the boy. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know who you were until you told me who your dad was.”
Jason contemplated the explanation, his small nostrils flaring. “But Erin knew, didn’t she?”
Addison dropped his gaze to the floor. Jason needed Erin now. It wouldn’t help to make him angry at her. “She…she thought if we met that I’d change the thrust of my report,” he said, knowing his voice lacked the conviction needed to excuse her. “That knowing you would change my mind.”
Maureen knitted her brows together, puzzled. “Wait a minute. You two have met? Through Erin?”
“She tricked me,” Jason said, lips quivering. “She didn’t tell me he was the one who’s saying the crash was Dad’s fault.”
“Jason…” Addison reached for him, but the boy backed away, his eyes glossed with tears.
“Get away from me!” he demanded as he ran. When he slammed the front door, the impact shook the house.
Silence wov
e an explosive web between Addison and Maureen as they looked awkwardly at each other. “I’m so sorry,” Addison said. “Erin meant well, but…” His voice faltered and he looked toward the door through which the angry child had disappeared. “Do you…do you mind if I go talk to him?”
Tears came to Maureen’s eyes. “Please,” she said. “I don’t know what to say to him anymore.”
Addison left her alone then, and went quietly out the front door, his eyes searching through the darkness for the boy. He followed the deck that surrounded the house until he found Jason sitting on the redwood floor, legs hanging over the side, feet scuffing the dirt below him. Gritting his teeth and fighting the searing emotion tugging at his face, Jason took a rock and launched it through the air. It landed some yards away with a thump.
Addison leaned against a post and gazed down at the boy. “You have a right to be mad,” he said quietly.
“I don’t want to talk to you anymore,” Jason returned.
The words were like a cold hand squeezing his heart, but Addison wouldn’t give up. “Then can you listen?”
Jason didn’t answer. He only sent another rock barreling through the air. It plunged into a pile of leaves.
Addison sat down on the deck next to the boy, his shoulders slumped. It was a dark night, for the clouds hung low beneath the moon and stars, lending a dismal feeling to the already charged atmosphere. What could he say to the boy, when his world seemed to have ended? He racked his brain, his heart, for the needs he’d had when Amanda had died. He remembered that he’d wanted to know what had gone wrong, in grueling detail. He’d actually wanted to picture the crash so it would become real, something he could grasp. Only then could he begin to sort out the senselessness of it all. But Jason was just a child. Did he have that same need? The haunted look in the boy’s eyes told Addison that he did.