“Oh, Erin…” Lois’s voice trailed off in sympathetic despair. “It just keeps getting worse and worse, doesn’t it?”
“Seems to.” Erin clutched the phone harder with her cold hand. “I’m at rock bottom.”
A moment of silence lingered between them before Lois spoke again. “Do you remember when we were in training,” she asked, “and that Bozo…Randy or Remus or Rowland…”
“Richard.” Erin provided the name with a smile, knowing what Lois was leading up to.
“Yeah. Remember when he asked us why two cute little things like us had chosen piloting over stewardessing?”
Genuine amusement battled with Erin’s tears. “And you sarcastically told him we chose it to meet guys.”
“Only he was too stupid to know I was being sarcastic and made it his duty to ‘weed’ us out. Do you remember how he tried to undermine us at every opportunity, trying to prove that we didn’t belong there?”
“Sure I remember. He was especially out to get you.”
“To the point of tampering with the instruments in my simulator! I’ll never forget the day I crashed repeatedly, never understanding why. The instructors started thinking I was stupid, and before I knew it, I was at the bottom of the class. I thought it was the end of the world. Do you remember what you told me, Erin?”
“That I’d chip in if you wanted to hire a hit man?”
“Besides that.”
Erin reflected back to the day she’d found Lois in bed, despondent, ready to concede defeat and throw away her career plans. She recalled the feeling of helplessness she’d had, and the way she’d struggled for the right words to bring Lois back to herself. The words had come of their own accord, the way they often did when a friend was in need, but for the life of her, she couldn’t recall them now. “No, what did I say?”
“First you prayed for me, and then you said that when you’re on the bottom, there’s no place to go but up. And you dragged me out of bed and informed me that if I didn’t pull myself together and go back there to face that guy and show him that I could be a better pilot than he ever dreamed, then I didn’t deserve to fly for Southeast.”
Erin’s heart lightened with the memory. “And you did, and he ended up being the one who flunked the program.”
“Right,” Lois said. “My point is that your advice was sound. You’re at the bottom now, Erin, so the only place you can go is up. You’ll fly again, when you’re ready, and meanwhile, you don’t have to let anyone bully you. Not even if he’s with the NTSB.”
“Sounds simple, doesn’t it?” Erin asked. “When all I want to do is crawl under the covers and hide there, just like you tried to do back then.”
“Don’t hide,” Lois told her. “Keep busy. You’ve got church, and the youth center, and the health club. They can keep your mind off things until I get back. And don’t forget, Erin. Lean.”
“Lean?”
“Yes. On Christ, remember? You told me back then that I needed to learn how to lean. I’ve been doing it ever since, but you, friend, need to learn how to practice what you preach.”
“Yeah,” Erin said, already feeling better. “I know you’re right.”
“Well, I’d better go. You’ll be okay, won’t you?”
“Sure,” Erin whispered. “Listen, thanks for being there for me.”
“Don’t thank me,” Lois said. “Thank Ma Bell. I’m gonna be praying for you. See you tomorrow.”
“Bye.” Erin held the phone to her ear for a moment after Lois had hung up, savoring the feeling of connection to someone who understood. Finally, she hung up, letting the abysmal quiet settle over her.
Unwilling to be defeated by despondency again, she pulled two unfinished canvases out from under her bed. She laid them on the four half-gallon cans of bright paint that sat in the corner waiting to be taken to the Christian youth center, where she worked as a volunteer two days a week. Then she went to the closet for the seven-foot-wide roll of paper leaning against the wall. It wasn’t the day of the week she usually went to the center, but Lois was right. She needed something to do, something that was removed from death and flying and crashing and questions. She needed to hear the kids there laugh as they painted, needed to dodge the globs of paint flying across the room, needed to see their untamed creativity unfold on the wall murals they painted. Maybe then she’d feel useful instead of alone.
She packed the smaller canvases and paint cans into a box, tucked the larger roll under her arm, and started out to her car, forbidding herself to look toward the sky or at the dent on her fender that had altered her fate…
And she forbade herself to think about Addison Lowe.
Chapter Five
By the time Addison drove home, his anger had settled in the chamber of his heart where other smoldering injustices lay. And there were plenty of them. He was always the bad guy, the one ready to lay blame on someone or some thing that had caused a disaster. Always the villain, and he was getting tired of it.
He gathered his papers off the seat of his car and got out, shuffling them into order while he walked to the condominium the NTSB had rented for him. He reached into his pocket for his keys and pulled them out, jabbing one into the lock. But it wasn’t locked.
Puzzled, Addison pushed open the door. His bewilderment was quickly resolved when he encountered the older man sitting cross-legged on his couch, smoking a cigarette and reading some of Addison’s notes on the recent crash.
“Sid, I didn’t know you were coming,” he said, a trace of irritation in his tight voice, though he tried to conceal it. “You should have called.”
“It was a spur-of-the-moment thing,” the older man said, rising to his feet and dusting stray ashes off his gray trousers. “Thought I’d see how things were going.”
Addison dropped his keys on the table, set down his things, and tried to control the tension rising to his head. He’d learned years ago that it was better to voice his feelings to Sid, or the man would run right over him. “Father-in-law or not,” he said, “you don’t have any business walking into my apartment anytime you please.”
“I’m not here as your father-in-law,” Sid said, stroking his gray mustache with the tip of a callused finger. “I’m here as your boss.”
Addison turned back to him, bracing himself for whatever was about to come. The NTSB didn’t send his superiors to check on him unless they weren’t happy with his job. He’d heard it all before, but the lecture never failed to scathe him. “And what am I getting my hand slapped for this time?”
Sid chuckled under his breath and came toward him, his small build complemented by the silk tie and long-sleeved dress shirt that shouted authority. “Come on now, Addison. Where’d all that hostility come from? Can’t we even take a minute to say hello?”
As usual when dealing with his father-in-law/boss, Addison felt his defenses lowering a bit. It was difficult to forget the pain Sid had suffered when his only child, Addison’s wife, had been snatched from life before her time. After losing his own wife just years earlier, Sid had been the portrait of loneliness, and following the death of his daughter he had clung to Addison as if he were his last living friend. When the double-edged sword of working with a relative sometimes put him unnecessarily on edge, Addison reminded himself of his dead wife’s adoration of the man, and the good relationship he’d had with him during the twelve years of his marriage to Amanda.
He smiled. “You’re right. I’ve just had a trying day, and I guess I expect the worse. It’s good to see you, Sid.”
The men shook hands, and then, as he often did, Sid pulled him into an awkward male embrace. “Louisiana’s treating you well,” Sid said in a paternal tone, stepping back. “Looks like you’ve gotten some sun.”
Addison disengaged himself from the embrace and went into the kitchen to search for something to offer his guest. “Yeah, well. We spent a good many days outside sifting through the wreckage. It was a little hard to tell one piece from another at first. Debris was scattered
for a mile or so.”
“But you’ve had it all tagged and stored for at least a week now, am I right?”
Addison felt his defenses rising again. Sid was fishing, leading up to something. Already he could feel his anger pushing to the surface again, bracing itself for the boss-lecture that inevitably followed. He pulled out a pitcher of iced tea and poured Sid a glass. “More or less.”
Sid’s smile defined the age lines on his forehead and ridges down his jaw, and Addison wasn’t fooled. He knew that smile—the kind a cartoon feline offered to a cornered mouse.
“So where’d you get that sunburn?” Sid asked, as if he still made idle conversation. “Looks pretty fresh to me.”
“I didn’t know I was sunburnt,” Addison said, his tone growing less cordial. “I don’t usually burn.”
“Sure,” Sid said. “Right here on your nose, a little across the cheeks. Take a little time off today?”
So that was it. Sid was trying to make a case for his not working hard enough, not getting the facts down as fast as they wanted. “As a matter of fact, no. I was interviewing the captain’s first officer. It was difficult for her. The crash was only two weeks ago, and I had to question her on her terms. She wanted to talk at the lake, and since I wanted her cooperation, I obliged her.”
Sid took his tea, chuckling in his maddening, friend-foe kind of way. “The job should have been so cushy when I was in the field. Questioning beside a lake. Not bad. Must be why it’s taking you so long.”
Addison exhaled loudly and went back to the living room. Wearily, he sank down into a chair and regarded the man who had never quite stopped grieving over Amanda’s death. She was the one unifying factor between them, but sometimes their mutual love of her wasn’t quite enough of a bond. “So is that why you’re here, Sid? To badger me about how long the investigation is taking? Because it won’t do any good. You know that by now.”
Sid pulled the knees of his slacks and sat down, holding the tea on his knee. The condensation formed a wet ring on his pants. “There’s been some concern,” he began, “that you move too slowly. You know that crash that happened in Omaha two days after this one? It’s already wrapped up. That investigator is free to move on to his next assignment. Meanwhile, we keeping waiting…”
“That crash didn’t have any fatalities,” Addison pointed out. “It was different. All they had to do there was question the pilot and passengers. The answers were clear.”
“Some believe the answers are clear in this case,” Sid said. “Some of your own team members, as a matter of fact.”
Addison sprang to his feet, ire rising to color his face. He could tolerate criticism from his superiors, but the disloyalty of his team members was too much to accept. “Are you telling me that some of my team members have been complaining about my diligence in my job?”
Sid chuckled again, waving a hand to stem Addison’s anger. “No, no, of course not. Settle down. It’s just that it’s become our impression that they feel they’ve come to a conclusion…”
“How can you even think that?” Addison asked, appalled. “I haven’t even got all the test results back. I haven’t even heard the whole tape yet.”
“Mere formalities,” Sid said, waving the details off with his hand. “In a case where things are so cut-and-dried, those are nothing more than formalities.”
Addison couldn’t believe they were discussing the same crash. “Cut-and-dried? How can you say that?”
“It was a matter of pilot error, obviously,” Sid said.
“And I’m just trying to substantiate that,” Addison argued. “What do you want from me?”
“We want you to follow procedure. We want you to finish his profile and his seventy-two-hour history, then make an announcement.”
“What do you think I’ve been doing?” Addison shouted. “I spent the whole day doing that, and I have an appointment tonight at the health club to meet with another pilot who seems to have some more of the facts I need.”
Sid’s feigned pleasantness disappeared. “Don’t raise your voice to me, Addison. I’m not above losing my patience with you.”
Addison’s jaw went rigid, and he clenched his fist and turned his back to the man who had driven him to the edge of fury more than once. Amanda had loved him, he reminded himself again. For that, he at least owed the man his respect.
“We want you to move this along. The press is waiting for an announcement, and the public is holding their breath. The longer you take on this investigation, the worse the airline industry looks. It doesn’t take all day to question a first officer who wasn’t even on the plane. Maybe if you did it in a more professional environment than the lake, you’d get somewhere a lot faster. Presuming that information is what you want, and not something else!”
Addison caught the innuendo and struggled not to swing at the man. “I don’t work the way you did,” he said in an explosively calm voice. “I try to make the person I’m questioning comfortable. I try to take into consideration that they’re working through their own grief.”
“Grief in a health club? Are you going to question the pilot during an aerobics class?”
“Racquetball, as a matter of fact,” Addison admitted defiantly. “It works, Sid. If I can meet people on their own terms, they’re a lot more willing to cooperate.”
Sid set down his glass and crossed his knees. Silently, he shook his head, the way a father does when he can’t believe the naiveté in his son.
“What do you guys want?” Addison asked, finally. “Bottom line. Just get to the point.”
“We want you to go after the questions where you’ll get answers. Go to the family. Question the wife about that seventy-two-hour history. Stop pampering and start drilling. Start at the core, and you’ll cut weeks off the investigation. There isn’t time to waste with lakes and health clubs. You have a job to do.”
Addison crossed his arms rigidly, his compressed lips revealing his distaste. “So, does the NTSB plan to throw in some bright lights to put the subjects under, a few torture devices? That might save a little time, too. Maybe we could make those people talk. Show them we mean business.”
“Come on, Addison, you know what I’m saying.”
Addison leaned forward, waving his finger in the man’s face. “And you knew before you came here what my reaction would be. Either I do my job the way that I see best, or you give this assignment to someone else.”
Sid lurched up and grabbed Addison’s hand. Their eyes locked. “You’re walking on thin ice, son. I don’t like it.”
“Fine,” Addison said. “Then let up. Let me do my job. If you can’t do that, maybe I don’t belong with the NTSB anymore.”
“How can you say that?” Sid’s question was an astonished whisper. “How dare you say that? After your wife—my little girl—died in one of those planes. How dare you act as if your responsibility was a chore? It’s a privilege and an obligation! You used to see it that way!”
“I used to see a lot of things differently,” Addison confessed. “When you promoted me to this position, I went into it with a fever, ready to change the world. I was angry and driven, just like you were. But that was a year and a half ago, Sid.”
“She was your wife! Can you forget that easily?” Sid shouted.
“No, I can’t forget!” Addison returned. “But I can stop being ready to convict the world over it. I can stop seeing every crash as a way to get retribution! I can show a little compassion now, and as God is my witness, I’m going to do it.”
Electric silence enveloped them as they stood locked in each other’s angry gaze.
Finally, Sid set his lips and spoke in a frosty voice. “You have to interview that family sooner or later, whether you like it or not, Addison. I suggest you do it sooner.”
“I’ll do it when I’m good and ready,” Addison said. “But if I had my way, I wouldn’t do it at all.”
Sid lifted his chin with the sternness of an executioner and started for the door. Addison watch
ed him open it, then linger in the threshold. Slowly Sid turned back, his expression unreadable, as though he might be about to beseech—or to threaten. “Don’t push me, son,” he finally said. “You’re the best field investigator we’ve got. But if you throw that away, not even I can protect you.”
“When I want your protection,” Addison said, “I’ll ask for it.”
The door slammed, echoing through the small apartment, and jolting Addison as a guilty mixture of pain and resentment blended in his heart.
Chapter Six
The youth center contained its usual sounds of young voices striving to rise above the din, music blaring a bit too loudly on contrasting stations of rock and rap, the echo of basketballs bouncing and sinking.
Clint Jessup, who helped run the center, in addition to being youth director at Erin’s church, greeted her with an armload of basketballs. “Erin, what are you doing here? I wasn’t expecting you today.”
“Just had some spare time and thought I’d work on the mural,” she said.
She could see from the look on his face that he had heard the rumors. “Wanna talk?” he asked.
She tried to smile. “Not really.”
“I did take a few counseling courses at seminary, you know.”
Counseling. She remembered her promise to Frank to get counseling, but something—pride? stubbornness?—stopped her. “I’m okay, Clint. Really.”
“Well, Sherry’s in the art room doing ceramics with the girls,” he said, referring to his new wife, Madeline’s former roommate. “If you’d rather talk to her…”
“Clint, please,” she said. “I’m fine.”
“Okay.” He reached the supply closet and managed to get the door open, then let the balls fall in. “You know where we are if you need us.”
Erin watched him disappear into the gym, then she set her paint cans down in the hall, next to the mural she and the kids had been working on. The project had been her idea a year ago when the center was first built, and the freshly painted walls had soon become covered with obscene graffiti. If the kids wanted to paint the walls, she thought, she’d give them something worthwhile to paint. Maybe they’d take more pride in facilities that bore their signatures.