Her Last Flight(39)

Lindquist is the kind of mother who believes in routine, which means dinner at six o’clock sharp. The children are sent to the kitchen to help Lani prepare the food and set the table. I wander into the library in search of Olle’s liquor cabinet—Lindquist, it seems, doesn’t touch alcohol—and discover several bottles of fine old Kentucky bourbon whiskey, which gives me a new affection for old Olle. While I’m savoring a sour, I hear some commotion from the driveway, the putter of a small motorcycle and Lindquist’s voice calling out to somebody, who answers back in a voice not unfamiliar to me.

I look out the back window and consider the distance to the guest cottage.

“Janey,” says Lindquist, when she appears at the library door a moment later. “Look who’s come for dinner.”



Mindful of manners, Leo’s brought a couple of bottles of wine to dinner at his stepmother’s house, even though he knows she doesn’t drink. “You and Janey can share them,” she tells him. “I’ll just stick to water.”

Naturally, the children adore him. He’s their brother, after all, and they’ve known him all their lives. They pepper him with questions about Uncle Kaiko.

“Aw, you know Uncle Kaiko,” he says. “He woulda checked right out of the hospital this morning if Dad hadn’t held him down. He likes the morphine, though.”

“I thought you were going to stay there overnight,” I say.

“I thought so too, but the fellow who was supposed to cover for me ate some bad clams at lunch, so I had to take the afternoon boat back after all.”

“What a shame.”

“I thought so too.”

“Did Olle say how much longer he means to stay in Honolulu?” asks Lindquist.

“Surgery went all right, but the doc wants Kaiko to rest up a few more days. I guess we’ll see. Dad might come back early, though, if Kaiko drives him crazy enough. But enough about all that. Kiddos? How do you like having a houseguest around here?”

Doris leaps at the opening. “We taught Janey how to surf!”

“Miss Everett,” says Lindquist.

“Oh, you can call me Janey. We’re practically related, since you just about killed me this afternoon.”

“Aw, I’ll bet you were a natural,” Leo says.

Wesley jumps from his chair. “A big wave took her under! You shoulda seen it, Leo! She about drowned!”

“Sit down, Wesley,” his mother tells him.

Wesley sits, sort of, but his arms keep demonstrating the massive arc of the wave that was nearly the death of me. “It came over like this! She missed the top and just went head over—head over—” He’s laughing too hard to go on, the little brat.

“She looked like a drowned rat,” Doris says helpfully.

Leo looks at me. “You all right?”

“Perfectly fine, thank you.”

“So?” he says to Doris. “Then what happened? Did she pick herself right back up and get back in the water?”

“Yes, she did,” I tell him.

“Only because Mama made her,” Doris says.

“Like riding a horse,” says Lindquist. “You fall off, you get straight back on again. And then she did very well. We’ll make a surfer of her yet.”

I drink the wine. “I’m afraid I’m not planning to stick around that long. But I appreciate the thought.”

Leo falls quiet. The conversation turns to school, about which I have some opinions, because it’s awfully satisfying to have opinions about other people’s affairs, don’t you think? Lani brings in dessert, which is some kind of pound cake dressed in pineapple sauce, and then Lindquist shoos the children off to help clear the table and bathe and change for bed. As I said, a mother who believes in the healthfulness of routine, or else she has another design in mind when she exits the room on some motherly errand, and Leo and I are left alone to contemplate each other across the table.

He rises and divides the remaining wine between my glass and his.

“Not staying long, you said?”

“I’m here on business, I’m afraid. Isn’t that the very first thing I told you, the other night? Are you here for business or pleasure, you asked me, and I said Business, plain as day.”

“Irene says you’re writing a book.”

“Well, Irene’s right. I’m writing a biography of Samuel Mallory. The pilot? He taught your stepmother how to fly.”

“Yes,” Leo says. “I know.”

“I should hope so. He was one of the greatest pilots of his time. So I’ve come to talk to your stepmother about him, since—well, since I suppose you could say she knew him best. Didn’t she?”

Leo pushes away his wineglass and leans forward to fix his eyes on mine. “So listen. I think it’s time we got something straight between the two of us.”

“I think that’s a fine idea.”

“I don’t hold it against you, sleeping with me to get to my stepmother—”

“To be fair, I didn’t know she was your stepmother.”

“Doesn’t matter if you knew or not. You wanted something out of me, and you got it, and no harm done. We both had a real nice time. No hard feelings. I just want to make things absolutely clear, though, for the future. If you do a single thing to hurt Irene, I mean if you cause her the smallest amount of misery—”