Falling(81)

Bill clicked on the desk lamp in the downstairs office and jiggled the computer’s mouse. The screen illuminated, displaying the dozen or so open tabs on his browser. Grabbing a book off the stack next to the monitor, he opened to where he’d left off, highlighter and red circles covering the page.

An hour passed. He laid down his pen and rubbed his eyes.

“I’d give anything to come in here and find you messaging another woman.”

Carrie leaned against the doorframe in her oversized T-shirt, white tube socks on her feet.

Bill sat back, the office chair reclining. “Worse odds of that happening than what actually did.”

Carrie smiled.

“The teapot again?”

Bill nodded.

Crossing the room, she climbed into his lap, her head resting on his shoulder as he rocked them both. She looked at the notebooks full of scribbles, the piles of books with Post-it notes sticking out of the top. She pointed at one of them.

“Have you gotten to the part where she talks about what Saddam Hussein did?”

Bill ran a hand through his hair with a sigh, recalling the atrocities the book described. One hundred and eighty thousand killed with the same poison gas as used on the plane. Nearly every village in that area of Kurdistan had been destroyed. “And how President Reagan did nothing.”

Carrie stared at the cover of the book. “But neither did we. I didn’t even know it happened until I read it. One hundred and eighty thousand people, Bill.” She shook her head. “I think about what we’re going through. How hard it is to deal with the pain, the anger. How hard it is to deal with the trauma. But think about it: every person on that plane walked off alive.”

Bill looked to the pair of silver wings that sat on the desk next to the books, the name BEN MIRO engraved with block letters under the Coastal logo.

“Not everyone,” he said.

Carrie wrapped her arms around his neck. Her warm breath was moist on his skin.

“I wish he was still here,” Bill said.

“I know.”

“I feel like I’m trying to fix something I don’t know how to fix.”

Carrie sat up, laughing. Bill watched her, a smile spreading across his face. “What’s so funny?”

She placed a hand on his cheek. “Bill. You grew up in rural Illinois and now you live in Los Angeles and you’re lactose intolerant and you drive your car through a fancy car wash every other Saturday and you’re telling me you think you are going to come up with the answer for how to fix this?” She motioned to the stack of research.

Bill reminded her of his promise to Ben.

“You didn’t promise him you’d fix it. He would’ve laughed in your face. You promised him you’d do everything you could to help. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do. We’re going to keep learning and keep listening and when we think we know enough—which we won’t—we’re going to look for the people who do know how to fix it. And we’ll help them in whatever way we can.”

Bill looked at her in awe. She was right. This articulate, sensitive, intuitive goddess he was lucky enough to have as his compass in life. He was not sure he deserved her.

“Do you hate them?” he asked.

Her smile faded and her eyes went somewhere else momentarily. Bill thought of the night after he’d gotten home from the hospital when they’d lain in bed together and he’d held her as she wept while telling him what it had been like for her and the kids. The image of Sam wiping his son’s nose haunted him. The way Carrie had rolled up the terrorist’s sleeves did too.

“I hate what they did,” she said, after some consideration. “But I don’t hate them. Do you?”

Bill looked at the wings.

“I haven’t decided,” he said.

Taking her hand, he gently kissed the tips of her fingers one by one before placing his lips into her palm, his faced covered. He didn’t move for a long time. Finally he removed her hand and said, “I’m sorry, Carrie.”

She frowned. “For what?”

“For being me. If I hadn’t picked up the trip. If I’d stayed home—”

She placed the tips of her fingers over his mouth.

“I knew exactly what I was getting when I chose a life with you. And it was the best decision I ever made.”

His face crumpled in shame. “How can you say that now?”

She smiled. “I say that especially now.”

Nestling deeper into his body, she pulled her legs up against her chest, a position he saw Scott often take in Carrie’s lap. Bill rocked her in the same way she rocked the boy.

“Do you think we’ll ever be okay?” he said.

She burrowed into his chest as he tightened his arms around her. “We already are.”





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


In my attempt to find representation for this book, I sent queries to forty-one agents. All of them passed. Turns out, an unpublished flight attendant without a platform is a tough sell. Who knew?

My forty-second submission was to Shane Salerno.

When I sent him my material, I was convinced of two things. One, Shane would be the perfect fit for this story and what I’d envisioned it could be. And two, there was literally not a chance in hell he would ever give it a look. I remember scribbling a note on a yellow legal pad that I included with the first twenty-five pages. I don’t know why I did that. I hadn’t done it with any of the other submissions. And I can’t recall exactly what the note said—but I do remember laughing as I wrote it. The message was a bold and confident pitch of both myself and the story.