But this morning he'd been quiet.
“When do you finish working?” They lived in a two-bedroom apartment, and he slipped into her room while she was still pressing her standard-issue airline navy blazer.
Kiahna studied him. “Dinnertime tomorrow, same as always.”
“No, not that way.” He hopped up on her bed and sat cross-legged. “When will you stay home in the daytime? Like Devon's mom or Kody's mom?”
“Max.” She turned from the ironing board and leveled her gaze at him. “You know I can't do that.”
“Why?” He anchored his elbows on his knees.
“Because”—she came a few steps closer and sat on the edge of the bed—“those moms have husbands who work.”
“So why can't we have a husband?”
“C'mon, Max.” She cocked her head and brushed her finger against the tip of his nose. “We've been through this, sport.”
Buddy padded into the room and sank in a heap near Max's feet. “Yeah, but …” Max brought his fists together and rested his chin on them. His green eyes caught a ray of morning light. “Forever?”
“For now.” She crooked her arm around his neck, pulled him close, and kissed the top of his head. His dark hair felt soft and damp against her cheek, still fresh from his morning shower. “Until something better comes along.”
“Like a husband?” Max lifted his face to hers. He was teasing, but beyond the sparkles in his eyes was a river of hope, a hope that ebbed and flowed, but never went away.
Kiahna smiled. She tousled the hair at the back of his head and returned to the ironing board. Max knew better than to push. A husband had never been in the picture. Not a husband and not a daddy. Kiahna couldn't trust a man with her own heart, let alone her son's. Besides, it wasn't God's plan for her to have a husband. At least that's the way she'd always felt.
Max slid onto the floor and looped his arms around Buddy's neck. The dog rewarded him with a solid swipe of his tongue across Max's cheek. “Buddy understands.”
“Yes.” Kiahna smiled. “Buddy always does.”
A soft bell sounded, and Kiahna sucked in a quick breath. They were at ten thousand feet—time to prepare the beverage cart and make the first pass through the cabin. Steph approached her from the other side of the aisle.
“You okay?” She had one hand on her hip, her eyebrows lowered into a V. “What was the trip about the announcement? Never seen you freeze like that.”
Kiahna stood and smoothed out the wrinkles in her navy cotton skirt. “I don't know.” She gave her partner a smile. The feeling, the strange restlessness, had plagued her ever since her talk with Max. “Busy morning, I guess.”
“Yeah, well”—she rolled her eyes—“you wanna talk busy? It's four o'clock, and Ron … you know Ron, right?”
“He moved in last month?”
“Right.” Steph grabbed a piece of gum from her skirt pocket, slipped the wrapper off in a single move, and popped it into her mouth. “Anyway, he gets this call at four this morning, and it's the— ”
A sudden jolt rocked the aircraft so hard Steph fell to her knees. Gasps sounded throughout the cabin, and somewhere near the wing one of the children began to cry. Kiahna fell back against the service counter and reached for a handful of soda cans that had fallen to the floor.
“What the …” Steph was struggling to her feet when the plane tilted hard in the other direction. The motion knocked her back to the floor. In the tenth row, a handful of screams and shouts rang out from a group of college kids, journalism students heading back home from a convention.
Turbulence.
Kiahna grabbed hold of the nearest wall and felt the blood drain from her face. The air was always choppy over the islands, especially in spring. She was about to help Steph to her feet when the copilot leaned out from the cockpit.
“We're going back.” The man's upper lip was twitching. His whispered words came fast. “Something's wrong with the tail.” He swallowed hard. “The whole bloody aircraft wants to nosedive.”
Nosedive? Kiahna stared at him. This wasn't happening, not this morning. Not when every fiber in her being had warned her something wasn't right. The copilot was gone again, and Kiahna shifted her gaze to Steph. The girl was a New Yorker, twenty-two, twenty-three tops. She was cocky and brash and had a quick tongue, but now her face was gray-white. “What … what do we do?”
Kiahna reached for her partner's hand and helped her to her feet. “We work the cabin. I've done an emergency before.” Her voice sounded familiar, but only remotely so. “We stay calm and everything will work out fine.”
“But what if we—”
“No what-ifs.” She took the lead and headed down the aisle. “We have to work.”
They weren't through first class when a strange popping sound shook the plane and propelled it downward. It's the descent, Kiahna said to herself. And then again for the benefit of the passengers. “We're making our descent. Cover your heads and assume a forward roll position.”
Kiahna didn't dare turn around, couldn't bear to meet Steph's questioning eyes. The truth had to be written across her face: the sharp angle of the aircraft didn't feel like a normal descent pattern.
It felt like a nosedive.
Panic worked its way through the rows in a sort of sickening wave.
“Jesus, help us!” a lady shouted from row eight. She had an arm around each of her children.
“Someone do something!” The scream came from an area near the back of the plane, and it set off a chain reaction of loud words and frantic cries for help. No one had any doubt they were in trouble.
Still Kiahna moved forward. At each row she demonstrated the crash-landing position. Hands clasped at the back of the neck, body tucked as far forward as possible. “Assume the emergency position,” she said over and over again. “Assume the emergency position.”
“What happening?” An Oriental man grabbed her arm; his eyes locked on hers. “What, lady? What?”
Kiahna jerked herself free as the nose of the plane dropped again. The aircraft was almost entirely vertical.
The captain's voice—tense, but steady—filled the cabin. “Prepare for an emergency landing. I repeat, prepare for an emergency landing!”
Babies were wailing now; parents grabbed their children to keep them from falling toward the front of the plane.
“Lord, have mercy on us,” a woman screamed.
The voices mingled and became a single noise, a backdrop that grew louder and then faded as Kiahna caught a glimpse of the ocean out one of the windows. In that instant time froze.
Kiahna was back at home again.
“Come on, Max. Get your backpack. We're running late!”
Max rounded the corner, Buddy at his side. “I can't find it.”
“Check the coat closet.”
He darted across the kitchen and toward the front door. She heard him yank the closet open. “Here it is!”
“Grab it; let's go.”
The whole scene took a fraction of a second to flash across her mind, all of it routine, mundane. No subtle nuances or hesitations, nothing to indicate that this morning could be their last. Nothing but the strange pit in her stomach.
She closed her eyes … where was Max right now? He stayed with Ramey Aialea mornings until the school bus came, and again in the afternoon and through the night when she had a layover. The woman would see him off to school the next day and take care of him for an hour or so when school got out. Ramey was in her late sixties, a weathered grandmother in poor health who took in Max as a way of staying young. She lived just a block away and felt like family to Kiahna.
Max had been with Ramey since he was born.
That morning, as happened so often, Kiahna and Max had piled into Kiahna's old Audi and made time to Ramey's first-floor unit. Ramey and Kiahna both lived in the same modest residential section of the island, the place where apartments filled every available square inch, leaving room for only an occasional palm tree. The place where
the island's food servers and hotel maids and resort staff lived.
The apartments weren't much, really. But Kiahna's complex had a fairly clean pool and a patch of gravel with a swing set. More amenities than some. That, and paradise every day of the year. It wasn't a bad place to raise a boy. A native to Honolulu, Kiahna wouldn't have lived anywhere else.
By the time she and Max arrived at Ramey's apartment, Kiahna's strange feeling had set in. She didn't want to waste time making idle talk with her old friend. Instead she stepped out of the car and met Max near the front bumper. “Have a great day, sport.”
He squinted into the sun. “Do you have to go?”
“Yes.” She pecked him on the cheek. “We'll play Scrabble tomorrow night, okay?”
“It's too sunny for Scrabble.”
“Okay, then basketball? Give and go, all right?” Kiahna rested her hands on her knees and kept her face at his level.
“Really?” Max's eyes held a hint of doubt. “Give and go?”
She winked at him. “As long as it's light out.”
Max bit his lip. “Japan's a long way from here.”
“Yes.” Kiahna angled her face. Why was he talking like this? She'd flown since before he was born. “But not so bad when you go all the time.”
“Yeah.” He lifted one shoulder and let his gaze fall to the ground. “Sorry about this morning.”
“For what?” She fell back on her heels.
“The husband stuff.” He lifted his eyes to hers. “I just get sad when you're so far away all day.” A few seconds passed. “What if I break my arm? Who'll help me?”
“Ramey, silly.”
“She's my 'mergency contact.” He pushed the toe of his tennis shoe against her leather loafers. “But I mean the hug part and the singing part. Who'd do that?”
Kiahna hesitated only a moment. This was the part of being a single mom that always made her throat swell—the idea that she couldn't be all things to Max, not while she had a full-time job.
“Well”—she framed his small face with her fingers—“I would.”
“You'd be somewhere over the ocean.” He wasn't arguing with her, only making a point. Sharing a fear she hadn't known he'd had until now.
“Even if we're oceans apart I'll always be right here.” She lowered one hand and let her fingers rest on the spot just above his heart. “You know that, right, sport? Remember our song?”
A breath that was more sad than frustrated slipped from him. In a rush of arms and hands and fingers he threw himself into her embrace.
Her voice was a whisper, and she breathed it against his face as she stroked the back of his head. “Come on, sport, right?”
“Right.” The word was a defeated huff, but it would have to do.
“Taco Bell tomorrow?”
“Sure.”
“You can do better than that.” She straightened and made a silly face, hoping she could coax a smile from him before she left. She did an exaggerated pout and mimicked him. “Sure…”
The hint of a grin broke Max's expression, and before he could stop himself, a giggle followed. “Okay, fine. Taco Bell!” He burst out the word and laughed at his own humor. “Better?”
“Much.” She stooped down and kissed his cheek again. “Keep your chin up.” When her face was still at his level, she looked straight through to his soul. “I love you, Max. See you tomorrow.”
A faint whistling sound was coming from outside the airplane, and it snapped Kiahna from her memories. They were headed straight for the Pacific Ocean, the pilots unable to pull out of the dive. They had half a minute at best, and Kiahna was using all her strength to keep from tumbling down the aisle and slamming into the cockpit doors.
The news would have to come from Ramey … the news and the details that would follow. She'd written out her last wishes seven years ago, days after Max's birth. And there was the letter, of course. A different one every year on Max's birthday. But even with all her preparations, she never thought it would come to this.
Don't forget what I told you, sport … I'm with you … always with you … as close as your heart.
For an instant she turned her thoughts toward God. She had loved the Lord all her life, loved Him even when she didn't always understand Him. If this was the end, then she would be with Him in a matter of minutes. God … give us a miracle … or give one to Max. Please, God.
The screaming and crying around her grew louder, then in the final moments it faded. Kiahna made a desperate attempt to right herself, to stand up so she could calm the craziness in the cabin.
They could still make it, couldn't they? The aircraft could straighten out before impact and settle safely on the surface of the ocean. The Coast Guard would be called out and they'd inflate the emergency slides and rafts. Everything would be okay and she'd tell Max all about it that night. Each seat cushion was a flotation device, right? Wasn't that what they told people every day on this flight?
I love you, Max … don't forget me.
Her mind jumbled, and then cleared just as quickly, until finally two thoughts remained. As the plane made impact with the water, as the fuselage splintered apart and ocean water gushed into the cabin, it was those two thoughts that became her last.
The thought of Max, and what would become of him after today.
TWO
The frantic race of another busy weekend was on from the moment Connor Evans woke up.
It was the first Saturday in April, and the girls had two birthday parties to attend. Michele put him in charge of wrapping presents and dropping their daughters off at the first party. The second was immediately after, and a neighbor would ferry the girls across town, after which Connor would pick them up.
Michele was redoing the kitchen, and sometime between drop-offs and pickups, Connor wanted to stop by Home Depot and find a riding mower for the backyard. His fall fertilizing had paid off, but now the acre of grass out back was halfway to his knee, typical of what was happening throughout Florida.
His neighbor liked to pause and hold his hand to his ear.
“Hear that, Evans?”
“What?”
“That whooshing sound.” He'd point to his yard. “That's the sound of our Florida grass growing.”
It seemed almost true. After West Palm Beach's record-breaking March rain, the grass was growing even faster than usual. Connor could pay someone to cut it; lots of pilots did. But what fun was that? Besides, he liked spending time in the yard. Easy, monotonous downtime. Quiet enough to give his mind the rest it needed after a week of flying commercial aircrafts.
It was 10:50 when he climbed into his silver Tundra and tapped the horn. He leaned his head out the window. “Come on, girls”—his fingers tapped out a rhythm on the steering wheel—“party starts in five minutes.”
Elizabeth and Susan were ten and eight that spring, as different from each other as he and Michele had been when they first met. Elizabeth, their firstborn, was sweet-spoken and demure, a child whose favorite activities included playing tea party with her three baby dolls. Elizabeth lived in dresses and ribbons and lace, and wanted her hair curled even on play days.
Susan was supposed to be a boy from the beginning. The ultrasound technician told them so halfway through Michele's pregnancy. “Yes sir”—the man grinned across the room at Connor—“looks like you got yourself a healthy little boy.”
The boy part turned out to be Susan's umbilical cord. She was born with a lusty scream and hadn't quieted down since. Keeping Susan's hair brushed and her clothes clean was a full-time job, and with Michele already busy running a home hair salon, she had long since stopped trying.
Connor was secretly glad. If he couldn't have the son he'd always dreamed of—and Michele was adamant about not having more children—at least he had Susan. Pigtailed Susan to toss a ball with or play Ping-Pong with or take to spring training games when the major league baseball teams flocked to Florida.
Connor had been an only boy growing up. He had sisters who
were younger than him, but his days were spent playing football and basketball, hanging with his teammates, and surrounding himself with guy things. College had been more of the same. Guy games and guy talk and guy silliness on evenings and weekends—right up until graduation, when he met Michele.
He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Girls! I'm leaving.” He sat back and released a burst of air. Nice threat, but it meant nothing. He couldn't go to the party without the girls, and he'd never been able to keep them from running late. They were Michele's daughters, after all.
Then, in a sudden blur, they flew out the door. Susan led the way, leggy and grinning, a present tucked under her arm. Crazy girl. Connor grinned. She looks like a pee-wee running back, bent for the end zone.
Elizabeth was behind her, skipping with dainty steps, a present clutched to her chest. Her hair was curled, and she smiled at him, mouthing a quick apology as they made their way to the truck. First one, then the other piled into the backseat, and the air filled with breathless giggles.
“Sorry, Daddy.”
“Yeah, sorry.” Susan followed Elizabeth's lead. “It's okay if we're a few minutes late.”
“Let me guess.” Connor stifled another smile. “Mom told you that.”
“She said something else.” Elizabeth dropped her chin. Her voice had that sing-song sound girls could turn on at will, and her eyes grew big—clear warning that some serious teasing was at hand.
“Yeah.” Susan let loose another giggle. She covered her face with both hands. “She said to tell you she has a crush on you.”
More laughter, and the girls began talking at the same time. Who would be at the party? What games would they play? What presents did the birthday girl really want?
Connor let his mind drift.
Michele had a crush on him, huh? A slow smile lifted the corners of his mouth and traveled up his cheeks. His heart filled with thoughts of her, his precious Michele. Her shoulder-length dark hair piled loose on top of her head, work smock smudged and smeared, a paintbrush in her hand, telling their girls she had a crush on him.