Her Last Flight(88)

“What do you think you’re doing?” I ask indignantly.

“Surfing. ’Scuse me. Got to find a pair of trunks.”



He tells me later that he had no designs on me whatsoever, that he was just worried about me surfing alone. I don’t know about that. One fascinating detail I learned about Leo in the past couple of weeks—he commanded a PT boat in the South Pacific during the war, and such men are always thinking several moves in advance, however straightforward they appear.

We paddle out together. The surf is gentle, and we coast along without speaking, wave after wave, communicating in that wordless way of two people on the water. One wave rises up, bigger than the others, just as I’m about to head in. Maybe I’m tired, maybe I don’t have the chops yet, but I misjudge it completely and tumble into the drink. To his credit, Leo doesn’t try to rescue me. He catches up with me as I stagger onto the beach and asks if I’m all right.

“All right? Are you kidding?” I throw myself on the dry sand and laugh at the sky. “That was just what I needed!”

He laughs too and throws himself next to me. The sinking sun turns his skin to bronze. I lie there and find a curious pleasure in my own restraint, in the uncomplicated perception of his body next to mine, both of us still panting a little, dripping and salty, bound together by a half hour of shared adventure. And while I’m contemplating this innocent enjoyment, congratulating myself even, Leo turns on his side and kisses my lips.

“What was that for?”

“I’m sorry. Lost my head. It won’t—”

I reach for his shoulders and kiss him back.



Leo brings me a flower when he returns to Coolibah for dinner an hour later. His hair is dark and wet from a hasty shower, and the flower is a passionflower. I tuck it behind my ear. At dinner, Doris asks me why I’m wearing a flower in my hair, and I tell her it’s from a suitor. Leo grins from across the table. Olle’s busy carving the pork roast. Wesley’s got his head under the tablecloth for some reason. Lindquist leans forward on her elbows and frowns.

Once dessert is cleared and the children sent to bed, Olle retires to the library and Lindquist sends Leo on an errand. As soon as he disappears around the corner, she turns to me.

“Kaiko made a little confession to me this afternoon,” she says.

“It’s not his fault. I might have goaded him a little.”

“You’re doing your job. I understand that. But the airplane is off limits, is that clear? I want that film you took.”

I hesitate. “It’s in the cottage.”

“Then bring it to me at breakfast.” She jiggles her wedding ring. “Please.”

“But why? I mean, you’ve kept it, all these years. It must mean something to you.”

“Because even if I destroyed that airplane, the parts would make their way into public notice. Someone would find some scrap of wing, some section, match the rivets. It’s safer where it is. At least until I’m dead.”

“You don’t believe that. Not really. You’re worried about some scrap making its way into the wrong hands? You can’t destroy that airplane, any more than you could cut off your own arm.”

She stands.

“You keep it clean, don’t you? Not a speck of dust. You keep it in working order.”

“Her,” Irene says. “An airplane is a she.”

“She, he, it. There must be a reason, right? So tell me.”

Lindquist reaches down for her glass of soda water and finishes it. But she doesn’t sit. She’s just stalling for time, she’s trying to think. A week ago, she would have walked away, but today—I don’t know, maybe it’s the passionflower in my hair, a symbol of some kind, marked friend—she considers what she should say to me and not say to me.

“Bring me the roll of film in the morning,” she says, “and I’ll tell you about that airplane.”



For the record, Leo and I did nothing but kiss on the beach that afternoon. On my honor! You never know when a pair of pint-sized ruffians might tumble down the path, for one thing, and for another this was a different kind of kissing from the kissing I was used to. When Leo drew back and stroked my hair with both hands, the way you stroke a cat, I thought about telling him I had never done this before, just kissed a boy and nothing else, but I realized how that made me sound, what kind of person that made me. So I said instead that we should probably head back to the house, before we did something we might regret.

“I don’t regret this,” he said. “Do you?”

“Yes.”

He leaned his forehead against mine and said he was sorry. I asked for what. He said he had got me all wrong, he’d sized me up and figured I was just using them all, Irene and the entire family, that I was some hard, cold villain who would break his heart.

I told him he was probably right, that maybe I was that villain.

“Maybe,” he said, “but I’m starting to figure I could take that chance.”

The touch of his forehead was warm, the muscle of him, the sanded skin, the breath. I sat on my knees, in the V of his legs, his gentle arms on either side of me, his hands resting at the back of my head. I was surrounded. I thought that I had come to like Leo a great deal, over the course of the past weeks. I had maybe come to like him too much.