Naturally I think she’s kidding, but when she opens the door and the fresh air rushes inside, I see nothing but green grass and jungle, and the ocean off to the right.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Lindquist says. “I come here when I want to be alone. That’s the best thing about flying. It gives you the freedom to leave the rest of the world behind you. Hop down, now. I’ve packed a picnic for us.”

My legs are wobbly and something seems to be wrong with the way my head is attached to the rest of me, but I hold myself upright and follow Lindquist along the grass and scrub, through some trees, until we emerge on a cliff above a flawless white beach. A large wave thunders onto the rocks below. Lindquist sets down the picnic basket and puts her hands on her hips. She’s wearing her usual uniform of tan slacks and white shirt; she’s taken off the navy jacket and the gloves and put a straw hat on her head—to save what’s left of her skin, she says, as if she weren’t just the kind of irritating woman who can carry off a wrinkle or two and only look more alluring.

She turns her head to me. “Well? What do you think?”

“I hope you’re not expecting me to surf, that’s all.”

“Of course not. Only a daredevil would surf this wave. Give me a hand, will you?”

I help her spread the blanket and unpack the sandwiches and the bottles of lemonade and the orangey-pink fruit she calls papaya. She removes her hat and eats in silence, legs tucked up against her chest, watching the waves form offshore. The sun is hot, but there’s enough breeze to keep us comfortable. When we’ve finished the sandwiches and the fruit, Lindquist tells me there’s a cake inside the basket, and could I fetch it out and slice it up with the knife. I do as she asks. As I sink the blade through layers of frosting and sponge, I feel as if she’s watching every movement, every tiny gesture, like this is a test of some kind. I hand her a slice. We eat. I say this would be a grand time for a cigarette.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” she says.

“Well, I’ve thrown up all the Scotch, so I’d say you owe me a cigarette.”

She opens her mouth and stops herself.

“What?” I say.

“Nothing.” She stands up and holds out her hand. I allow her to draw me up. The ocean stretches out before us, all the way to the Orient. The wind tumbles my hair. Lindquist speaks so softly, I have to strain to hear her, and yet I have the feeling that this is why I’m here, this is why she brought me here, the flight, the Scotch, the island, the picnic, this particular stretch of ocean before us: all of it in preparation for this moment, some grand speech.

“Samuel Mallory had his faults,” she says. “We all do, I guess. But he was an honorable man. He was a good man. He always wanted to do the right thing, even when he fell short. He loved me. He loved his daughter. Everything else came second. He would have died for us both. If you’re going to write this book of yours, you have to make that clear, because unless you understand that, you can’t understand Sam at all.”

“What about his wife? Didn’t he love his wife?”

This brings her up short. She studies the question for some time. So long, in fact, that I start to wonder whether she means to answer me at all, whether we will ever get to the heart of the matter.

I continue. “Men, you know. They talk all the time about love and fidelity, but in the end they just follow their own inclinations to populate the earth, and who suffers? The wives and the children they leave behind. And that’s something I take personally, because the same thing happened to me. My father left my mother for another woman, and I wound up getting myself in the kind of trouble that a girl often gets into when she loses a father, the kind of trouble she never recovers from, the kind of trouble that haunts her all her life.”

“I see,” she says. “What kind of trouble, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Ah, but we aren’t talking about me, remember? We’re talking about you and Mallory and what really happened in that space of time between Los Angeles and Sydney, Australia. Not what the newspapers reported. Not what the photographs showed, God knows. The truth.”

Lindquist crosses her arms and kicks a tuft of grass and stares out to sea. A gust of wind dares to tangle her famous hair, the hair that Mallory first cut for her on Howland Island.

“All right,” she says. “I’ll tell you the truth. I just don’t know if it will be enough for you.”

One last thing, the most important thing, though I’ve never told a soul until now. Remember that fellow at the law firm, the married lawyer who impregnated me? That was my stepfather.

Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)

August 1928: Australia

Irene had some inkling what to expect when they touched down in Sydney, a little more than forty hours after their rescue from Howland. The captain’s briefing, the radiograms from Morrow, had all made clear the worldwide sensation their disappearance had caused, how everybody in America and around the globe had followed the story with utmost interest.

Still. When the crowd surged forward to encompass the Centauri, almost before it had come to a stop on the runway at Sydney Airport, Irene stared out the window in a state of shock. Nothing could prepare you for that, nobody could explain what it was like to sit in the focus of so much concentrated attention. In those days, when things like syndicated newspapers and radio and moving pictures were only just beginning to exert their power over the mass imagination, fame wasn’t yet something to be afraid of, something that could take over your life and habits and change your psychological composition. Only one man in the world really knew what celebrity meant, and that was Lindbergh. As Irene witnessed this evidence of fame, as she was made to understand what a crowd of fifty thousand people actually looked like, she didn’t feel any sense of elation or triumph. She felt the opposite. She felt dread. Her life was about to change; her daily existence, her sense of herself—Irene—had just been obliterated and replaced with something she didn’t recognize. There was nothing ahead but fog and darkness.

The first man through the hatch was George Morrow. Boy, was he beaming! Irene couldn’t understand a word he said, but she had the unsettling impression that he was a Broadway manager, and she was an actress who had performed her part perfectly, though she hadn’t even seen the script. First he kissed her hand and then he shook Sam’s hand. Then he noticed the cat, crouched behind Sam’s ankles.

“What the hell?” he said.

Sam picked up Sandy. “Stowaway.”

“I’ll be damned. That’s brilliant!” Morrow exclaimed. “Press’ll love it.”

A car was already waiting, motor rumbling, to whisk them into town, to George Morrow’s suite at the Harbour Rocks Hotel. There, a doctor examined them both thoroughly and pronounced them in excellent health, except for some lingering exhaustion and dehydration, in addition to the temporary loss of hearing, which the doctor expected to subside soon. Morrow and the doctor then bustled outside to announce this happy news to the waiting press, and Sam and Irene were left alone with Sandy, who curled up in an armchair and went warily to sleep.

There was no point in talking yet, because of the deafness, and of course they expected Morrow back any second. Sam got up and walked to one of the giant windows that looked out over Sydney Harbor, and Irene joined him. They didn’t touch. Nor did they hear George Morrow when he bustled back inside and came up behind them. They both started when he took each of them by the arm and informed them, loudly, that he was going to escort them by the back stairs to their suites, where the hotel chambermaids were waiting to draw their baths and ready them for an afternoon nap.

“You’ll want to get some rest,” Morrow said. “Tonight there’s a ball in your honor.”

Possibly nothing in Irene’s life until that point felt quite as immediately good as that bath. For one thing, the bathroom itself was a large, luxurious cave of marble and porcelain and soft Turkish towels. The water was fresh and warm, drawn for her by a reverent, wide-eyed chambermaid who added oil from a glass decanter and didn’t say a thing, not because of professional politeness but because her heart was too full for words. Then she left, and Irene sank into that tub like you might sink into heaven.

When she emerged, wrapped in a dressing gown, she was taken aback to find George Morrow at home on her sofa, smoking a cigar and nursing a glass of whiskey. He rose at once and asked if he could pour her something. Champagne, perhaps? It was legally available here in Australia, after all, and would help her sleep.

“No, thank you,” she said. “I don’t touch intoxicants.”

It came out more prim than she intended, and Morrow had the grace to set aside his glass. He urged her to the sofa, settled himself in the nearby armchair, and apologized for intruding.

She cupped an ear. “I’m sorry. You’ll have to speak louder.”