Her Last Flight(80)

Sophie didn’t miss a beat. “He was delivering an engagement gift from my fiancé.”

“You were engaged to someone else?”

“Not for long.” She cuddled Clara to her chest. “Honestly, how could Mummy even look at another man, after that?”

“If I told you something,” Irene said, “if I told you that I wanted to just disappear somewhere, where nobody knew me and no one could find me, what would you say?”

Sophie looked up. “I’d say, where and when should I bring you your cat?”



Out in San Bernardino, Hank Foster was nearly dead of liver disease. His wife, however, was a dedicated nurse. He had married her three years ago, surprising everybody. Like him, she was an alcoholic. They had met at a drying-out hospital, to which Irene had sent him after an especially bad bender that had required several personal telephone calls from George to the publishers of various newspapers. They had kept the story off the front pages in exchange for a series of interviews with Irene, which took place in the privacy of her own home and offered readers an intimate portrait of her life as an aviatrix and wife. Irene hadn’t loathed anything in her life as much as she loathed those interviews. She still hadn’t quite forgiven her father for them, although at least it had all led to this woman, Pamela Benson Foster, who seemed to view her present charge—nursing Hank through his final illness—as the single good work that would secure her place in heaven after a lifetime of sin.

“He’s having a good day,” she told Irene, on arrival. “He sure is happy you’re visiting.”

“Is he still in bed?”

“No, he’s out back, on the porch. His favorite spot. We had some friends over last night, and all he talked about was you. Proud as a peacock.”

Irene followed her through the house, which Irene had bought for him after the first book came out, the one she and George had written together on the steamship home from Australia. Flight from Home continued to sell respectably well, thanks to the drama surrounding the rescue and all the subsequent scandal, and Irene had signed over royalties to her father, which earned him a decent income. He sat now in the rocking chair that looked out across the San Bernardino Mountains. He had an Indian blanket over his lap, though the air was warm. When he saw Irene, he tried to rise, but she shushed him down and kissed his cheek.

“How are you feeling, Dad?”

“Pretty well, pretty well. Better than you, I guess.” He nodded to the sling.

“Oh, it’s all right. Looks worse than it is. I can take it off when I drive and everything.”

“That’s my girl,” he said, proud as a peacock.

“I’ll just get some lemonade,” said Pamela, from the doorway.

Irene settled herself in the other rocking chair and stared at the wedge of blue sky above the mountains.

“So what happened out there?” asked her father.

“Just a squall, really. I shouldn’t have tried landing. I should have circled until the thing passed through. I had the fuel. But I figured I had to win that race. I didn’t have any minutes to spare.”

“Had to win the race?”

“For publicity. You don’t get publicity for coming in second.”

“You don’t need any publicity. You’re Irene Foster.”

“Well, tell that to George,” she said. “No, forget I said that. George is right. This lecture tour, we can’t fill the seats. Couple of towns are talking about canceling.”

“I can’t believe that. Why would they cancel? Who wouldn’t want to hear you talk?”

“People who have seen me before. I haven’t done anything new since the Rio flight. I haven’t got anything to talk about, just all that business I’ve done before.”

“That’s some business, though. Nobody could get tired of hearing about that.”

Irene laughed. “You couldn’t, maybe. But you’re my father.”

He reached for her hand. “I sure am.”

Funny, how she had resented him once. She had hated him, and despaired of him, and been ashamed of him. Her father had been a thing she avoided, a carbuncle on the hide of her life. He had been the cause of her misery, he had drunk away all their comfort, he had failed her and failed her. Now he was dying, and it wasn’t that all these feelings had disappeared or been forgotten. They lay in a heap on the floorboards between their two chairs. But above that heap, Hank’s hand linked with Irene’s hand. She clung to that hand. She said, “Remember how you taught me to surf, when I was eleven?”

“That was nuts, wasn’t it? You were just a scrap.”

“Those were the best moments of my life,” she said. “The truest.”

“What about flying?”

“Flying’s something else, now. Flying doesn’t belong to me. But that does. Just you and me.”

She didn’t add, And Sam, even though surfing belonged to her and Sam too. Because where was Sam now? In some hospital room, attended by a starlet of some kind.



But surfing got on her mind anyway, and when she left her father’s house, instead of returning to Burbank, she found herself headed in the direction of the Pacific Ocean.

She wasn’t actually going to surf. For one thing, she hadn’t touched her surfboard in years, not since she arrived home from Australia and packed it away in the garage. Presumably the moving men had then transported this ancient thing to the new house in Burbank, but Irene didn’t know where it was, or whether George hadn’t just had it thrown out at some point, while she was away. No, she wouldn’t surf. She couldn’t surf. She just wanted to see the ocean, that was all.