It had worked. On her days to come here, a crowd of kids—aged eight to eighteen, and from backgrounds as diverse as flavors of candy—waited eagerly in the colorful corridors for her.
But today no one waited, because she wasn’t expected. She knelt and unfolded the drop cloths she kept rolled beside the wall. After opening the paint cans, she headed upstairs to the supply closet where she kept all her brushes.
The heavy doors leading to the stairwell creaked as they opened, and she reached inside to flick on the light. The door shut behind her, and she started up the stairs.
“This isn’t your day to come.”
The young male voice startled her, and she glanced up the staircase, to the tawny-haired boy sitting on the landing between two twisting levels of stairs. His eyes squinted as they adjusted to the light. “Jason? What are you doing here?”
Mick Hammon’s son gave a shrug that belied the drawn lines on his nine-year-old face. “Nothin’.”
Erin finished the climb to where he sat, his arms hugging his knees. She lowered herself to the step beside him, unconsciously imitating his position. “Why aren’t you playing ball with the guys?”
“Not in the mood,” Jason said.
“Yeah,” Erin whispered. “I know.”
They sat quietly for a moment, neither venturing to broach the subject of the crash or the lies that circulated as a result of it or the pain that wouldn’t die. Finally, Erin patted his knee, where his Levis had worn to a thin blue-gray. “Feel like painting?”
“I guess,” he said.
Erin got to her feet, dusted off her pants, and held out a hand to the boy. Reluctantly, he took it and allowed her to pull him up.
“You’re gonna be all right, Jason,” she whispered, holding his gray gaze.
Trust gleamed like the toughest metal in his eyes—eyes that looked much older than nine—but she knew the doubt that plagued him, as it did her. He dropped his focus to his dirty Reeboks, his shoulders rising and falling with a painful sigh. “I’ll help you get the brushes,” he said.
Jason was quiet as they painted, and he hung conspicuously apart from the ten other kids, who dove into the project at hand. As much as Erin tried to draw him in, he clung to his distance, working with a diligent hand on the section of the mural she had assigned him.
But that distance called attention to him, and some of the other boys—the rougher ones who would have been in street gangs or juvenile delinquent centers if not for the distraction of the youth center—couldn’t stand leaving him alone. He had never quite clicked with many of the boys here, but his athletic nature, his creativity, and his friendship with Erin kept him coming anyway. The other boys were from poorer families, mostly fatherless, with little if any supervision from their mothers. Those were the boys who made trouble as easily as withdrawing the switchblades they often carried, the ones who chided and terrorized anyone who didn’t fit. Jason was different from them. It was obvious by his behavior, his clothes, his silence…He was an open target for anyone who needed one.
Erin’s muscles tensed in dread when three of the boys ambled toward Jason. There were looks of suspicious amusement in their hardened eyes, as if they planned to have “some fun” with the boy. She stopped painting and grabbed a rag to wipe her hands, preparing to intervene if it became necessary. She’d worked with these kids long enough to know that defending Jason too soon would humiliate him and make matters much worse than they were. Jason kept his eyes on his painting, never missing a brush stroke.
“Hey, Hammon,” one of the boys, who went by the name of T.J., said, strutting toward Jason. The belligerent newcomer’s thumbs were lodged in the front pockets of jeans that had been in good shape three or four hand-me-downs ago. “Guess your dad ain’t such a big shot now, huh?”
Erin saw Jason’s jaw twitch, but he set his mouth in a rigid line and kept painting.
“Mr. Airline Pilot,” T.J. mocked. “Guess he won’t be blowin’ his horn off on career day anymore at school. You’ll be just like the rest of us now.”
Jason’s hand froze and his face flushed, but he didn’t offer the boys the satisfaction of turning around.
Erin held her breath, aching to step in. Instead, she followed her judgment and hung back, giving Jason the chance to stop the bullying himself.
T.J. stepped closer to Jason, trying harder to provoke a reaction. “Hey, boys. Did ya hear how Hammon’s ole man zapped all those people? Freaked out and forgot which way was up.”
“Wait a min—,” Erin started to shout, but suddenly Jason snapped, and he swung around, crashing his small fist into the larger boy’s face. In seconds they were on the floor, tangled in a violent embrace, hands grabbing and scratching and tearing as the crowd of kids surrounded them, cheering.
Horrified, Erin pushed through the growing throng of kids and dove for the two thrashing bodies.
“Stop it!” she screamed, pulling on the boy closest to her. At this juncture they were faceless creatures eagerly inflicting pain on one another. “Stop it!”
“What’s going on here?” Clint bolted up the hall, pushed through the melee, and grabbed the scruff of T.J.’s shirt. Erin wrapped herself around Jason’s thrashing arms and pulled him away. As tightly as she held him, he continued trying to reach toward T.J., dead set on making the boy pay for his words.
T.J.’s nose and mouth were smeared with blood, and each raging breath he took made him seem more animalistic.
“Get him out of here!” Erin told Clint. Clint wrestled T.J. up the hall. “T.J., you aren’t welcome back until you can respect the place and the people who come here! I won’t tolerate that kind of behavior!”
“He started it!” T.J. shouted back. “I was just talking to him! Why don’t you throw him out, too?”
“I’ll deal with him,” Erin said, casting an annoyed glance down at Jason, who still thrashed in her arms. “Don’t you worry.”
T.J. jerked out of Clint’s grip and, calling his friends to his side, left the center in a cloud of rage.
When Erin was certain the danger was past, she turned her attention to the troubled boy. He pulled from her grasp and dashed to the stairwell. She followed, closing them off so they could escape the crowd’s scrutiny.
“Jason,” she said, panting, “what got into you? You can’t pull a Hulk Hogan every time someone says something stupid.”
“What did you want me to do?” he cried. “You heard what he said about my dad!”
“He didn’t know what he was talking about. He’s jealous of you, Jason. You’re everything he wants to be, so he tries to belittle you, hurt you, make you seem more like him so he won’t have to envy you.”
“That’s bull!” Jason leaned into the corner of the stairwell, letting the shadows hide his bruised face. “He’s not the first one to say what he did, Erin.”
She wilted against the opposite wall, racking her brain for words that would make some sense of it all. “I know, Jason. But you’re going to have to ignore it. You can’t let it get to you. Your dad wouldn’t have wanted you getting in fights over him.”
“Well, my dad isn’t here, is he?” Jason shouted defiantly, his young voice cracking with fury. “Is he?”
Speechless, Erin tried to hold back her own tears. She stepped closer to the boy, her mouth twisted with pain, and reached out for him.
Jason pushed past her out the doors.
Erin couldn’t maintain her interest in painting after Jason left, so she instructed the kids to wash their brushes and put them away.
Wearily, she loaded the paint back into her car and drove home. The emptiness of the house mocked her. Over and over, she saw Jason’s raging, tearless face, confused and haunted by a crash that no one understood. Out of necessity, she forced herself to eat a sandwich. By the time she was finished, she was ready to leave again, to go anywhere, to tackle anything except the memories that plagued her.
She changed into a pair of shorts and gathered her racquetball racquet and sped like a w
oman possessed to Marty’s, the health club frequented by most of the airline employees because of its proximity to the airport.
Once she’d arrived, Erin sat staring vacantly in the dark crowded parking lot. There would be pilots inside who’d already heard how she’d abandoned the flight yesterday. Flight attendants would treat her with sympathy. Even people who had nothing to do with the airline but who’d heard the gossip would probably be watching her, clicking their tongues and shaking their heads and declaring what a shame it was that the usually vivacious Erin was losing it.
The roaring sound of a plane overhead drew her eyes upward. Through the window, she followed the progress of tiny lights ascending into the dark sky. That sick feeling gripped her again. Determined not to surrender to it, Erin grabbed her racquet and duffel bag and hurriedly left the car.
Marty, the hulking proprietor for whom the club was named, was sitting behind the front desk when Erin bolted in. “How’s it going, Erin?” he asked when he saw her.
“Pretty good,” she lied. “Is there a court open?”
“Sure is. You want me to line up an opponent?”
Erin shook her head. “Just want to hit some balls. Practice my strokes.”
He handed her the clipboard to sign in. “If you get tired of it,” he said, “you ought to try our new aerobics class. Get some of those endorphins pumping. It’s real good for depression.”
Erin gave him a not-you-too look. “Maybe later. Thanks, Marty.”
The door to the empty court banged shut behind her, sending off an echo. Erin dropped her duffel bag on the floor and bent over it for her glove and wristbands. She glanced out the glass wall behind her, almost certain that someone was sitting on the spectators’ bleachers, watching her. But no one was there.
Pull yourself together, Erin, she ordered herself. Don’t let this thing beat you.
Slowly, she started her routine warm-up. But neither the exercise nor the solitude helped her to escape the tension that had her wound tighter than a propeller spinning out of control.
Addison Lowe saw Erin through the glass wall a few moments later, warming up with the grace of a professional athlete. He told himself that this wasn’t the time to see her again, that he should leave and let her work through her problems in her own way. He’d gotten the information he needed from the pilot he’d come here to meet, and he really had no business hanging around. But the sight of Erin compelled him to stand at the glass and watch.
He’d had her figured wrong, he told himself as she picked up her racquet and served the ball, then backhanded it against the right wall to ricochet back to her again. When he’d seen her that morning, she’d seemed too fragile, too broken, and he would have bet she was at home, wrapped in some sort of refuge, unable to cope in any way. But now he saw the aggressive side of her as she ran back and forth across the court, slamming her racquet into that ball with the anger and fury of someone with a debt to collect. Did that energy come from her anger?
She hit the ball too low, and he watched, breath held, as she recovered it, never missing a beat. Her hair swayed into her face and back. The muscles in her legs twisted and stretched as she leaped into the air and then crouched near the floor, always hitting the ball before it bounced a second time. Great whacks sounded with each stroke. Despite what he’d seen of her, Erin Russell was not a loser, he decided, neither on the court nor in the cockpit. Right now, she just needed a little help coping.
Drawing his heavy dark brows together, Addison leaned against the glass, watching more intently. After a rally of five or more minutes, Erin finally let the ball pass her, and set her hands on her hips while she caught her breath. She turned around and wiped her face on her wristband, and he saw that her eyes were red and wet. Her shoulders heaved, and the tormented expression on her face broke his heart.
Their eyes met through the glass before he had the presence of mind to step away from it, and he didn’t miss her look of shock and accusation. Quickly, she turned away from him and wiped her face again. Erin found the ball, picked it up, and prepared to serve it once more.
Addison didn’t know if it was ego or a feeling of kinship that forced him to finally knock on the glass. Before he realized what he had done, he had caught her attention again. Erin turned around quickly, stared at him for a moment, annoyed, then reluctantly came to the door. She unlocked it and held it slightly ajar. “I have this court,” she said.
Addison slipped inside and dropped his bag next to hers, swinging his racquet in his hand. “It was the last one,” he said. “I thought I might talk you into a game.”
Erin let the door swing shut and stepped toward him, her red eyes summoning an unyielding strength as she confronted him. “I think we covered just about everything today, Mr. Lowe. I want to play alone.”
“You were killing yourself,” he observed. He tossed his own ball into the air, then caught it in one hand. “Come on, I’ll go easy on you.”
“Don’t do me any favors.”
“You’re awfully tough on yourself,” he muttered.
She set her hands on her hips, letting her racquet dangle from its wrist thong. “Mr. Lowe, you have no right to intrude on my private time. I may have no choice but to cooperate with you to some extent in the investigation, but I don’t have to let you bully me in my personal life.”
“It’s a game, Erin,” he said in a tone that exaggerated her overreaction. “Just a game. No questions, no arguments. Just a friendly game.”
Her stiff lips moved to speak again, but instead, Erin dropped her hands and moved onto backcourt, a purposeful expression on her face. “Serve,” she said, riveting her angry eyes on the front wall.
Addison couldn’t help smiling as he hit the ball. The spirit of competition welled inside him, and he liked it. He hadn’t felt it this intensely in a very long time.
When they had each won once, Addison breathlessly tried to convince Erin to call it a draw. He wanted to talk to her, to tap some of the emotion brimming in her eyes, swinging in her fists, kicking in her step. He wanted to be her friend, because she seemed to need one.
But Erin hadn’t come here to talk, least of all to him. She was here to vent her grief, and she wouldn’t stop until she was too exhausted to feel the pain anymore. Addison realized with sagging spirits that he was a mere instrument to keep the ball coming. He could have been anybody with a racquet.
He saw her tears again during the third and deciding game, the grinding of her teeth as she swung, the ruthless way she dove for the ball and skidded across the court on bare knees, never acknowledging the pain. Her only goal, it seemed, was to fire that ball into the wall and hope it came back harder and faster the next time.
Slow down! he wanted to shout. This ball won’t numb the pain! I know! I’ve been there. But instead, he kept smashing the ball with all his might, his heart aching like his weary muscles the harder she fought to keep the rally going.
The final point was hers, partly because she’d fought harder for it, and partly because Addison was too exhausted to rival her vengeance. He slumped against the wall, gasping for breath, thankful that, at last, they could talk.
But Erin had nothing to say. She merely wiped her face and neck on a towel she had brought, dropped her gloves and wristbands into her bag, and slipped the duffel bag’s strap over her shoulder. “Good game,” she muttered. “Thanks.”
And before he could catch his breath to reply, Erin was out the door.
Chapter Seven
The laugh tracks of Nick at Night provided little comfort to Erin as she lay limp on the bed. Even though she felt exhausted, her mind was fully alert. Lucille Ball bumbled through a scene, trying to pull something over on Ricky, but none of it seemed the slightest bit funny. She didn’t usually watch television to fall asleep; instead, she mentally grumbled when she heard it playing in Madeline’s room at night. Now she needed the company, the noise, the distraction…
The day played through her mind like old film clips: Addison’s vivi
d eyes studying her with concern…then with regret…then with delight…then with authority…Addison’s eyes, piercing, alert. Addison’s eyes, competitive. Addison’s eyes, disappointed.
Addison’s eyes.
What was it about him that she couldn’t get out of her mind? She closed her own eyes and tried to see him in a more rational light. Who was he, really, besides an NTSB investigator? Who was he inside? She thought of the sad note in his voice when he’d confessed that he had lost someone close to him in a plane crash. Four years ago, and he still looked freshly torn when he spoke of it. Was it a lover? A close friend? A family member? A wife?
The last thought jarred her heart inexplicably, and a frown stole across her forehead. Not a wife, she thought. A friend was bad enough. What if Mick had been her lover or her husband? Would she have ever recovered? Probably not, when the chances looked so remote now. She wouldn’t wish such pain on anyone. Despite how angry he had made her this morning, she was quite sure that not even Addison Lowe deserved that kind of pain.
You don’t forget. Ever.
Would Erin still be this strongly affected by the crash four years from now? Would she have abandoned her flying and found some other occupation that was nice and safe, without responsibility? It would be so easy now to just give up, run away, forget who she was and what was important to her. But easy wasn’t always best. A life worth living, she’d always said, is one worth taking risks for. If she overcame her fear now, went back up again, someday she could be captain of the largest planes Southeast had to offer, flying the most exciting routes in the world. No, she would never forget Mick or the crash that threatened to destroy her. But wouldn’t she still have the things she had worked so hard for?
I’ve got to fly. The unspoken words incited cold chills, yet covered her in a thin sheen of perspiration. I’ve got to make myself do it.
Tears filled her eyes, rolled down her cheeks. “But I can’t,” she whispered aloud.