“Sam!” Irene pulled away. “What’s happened to Sam?”

Sophie’s face fell. “I don’t know for certain. You know how he does all these ridiculous stunts at air shows. Octavian was on the telephone with a few people he knows in San Diego. They think it was a mechanical fault.”

“Of course it’s a mechanical fault. Sam would never—he’s the best pilot—”

“Oh, darling, stop.” Sophie steered her to the wall of windows and pulled out a handkerchief. “He’ll be all right. You know he’s broken just about every bone in his body by now, and every time he bounces right back. He’s indestructible.”

“I’m sorry. I’m just tired, that’s all, and nobody told me about it, I just happened to see a newspaper on my way in—”

“He’ll be just fine, don’t worry. Octavian says he’s awake, he’s moving and talking.”

“What else?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

Irene stared furiously out the window. She couldn’t turn away and face the room, not with her eyes all red like this, her cheeks damp. Sophie’s handkerchief was now a ball in her fist.

Sophie said gently, “There’s nothing you can do, Irene. You have to let it be.”

“I realize that. It’s not like a light bulb you can switch on and off, that’s all.”

“Of course not,” said Sophie. “Of course it isn’t. Hello, George.”

Irene’s husband appeared at her elbow, blocking the sunset. “Nice glass of lemonade for you.”

“Thank you.” Irene took the lemonade and sipped. Her eyes were dry now. It was just the shock, that was all. With Sam, you expected some terrible accident every day, and yet when the news came, as it regularly did, you still felt that somebody had hit you with a sledgehammer. Sometimes Irene wondered if Sam felt the same way about her. If, when she experienced a crackup somewhere, broke a bone or just strained a tendon as she had in Fort Worth, Sam Mallory felt as if somebody had hit him with a sledgehammer.

It was now eight years since that historic flight to Australia, eight years since Irene and Sam had sat together under the coolibah tree; six years since Irene had set a coast-to-coast record flying from New York to Los Angeles in her own Rofrano Centauri and then flown solo from Boston to Paris a month later; five years since she had stumbled into a love affair with her business manager, George Morrow, and accepted his marriage proposal with certain conditions. She had been George’s wife for four years, and in that time she had set countless records for airspeed and endurance and distance, had flown solo to various points around the world, had circumnavigated the globe with a copilot and a navigator, had cracked up more times than she could count and been hospitalized in eleven of those instances, had gone on eight lecture tours and made one thousand six hundred and fourteen speeches, had designed her own clothing line, had appeared on a hundred and twelve magazine covers and in six motion pictures.

In all that time she had seen Sam Mallory exactly four times. The last time was seven months ago, at a restaurant in Burbank. Irene was having dinner with George and the Rofranos; Sam was there with a film actress in a sequined dress. They saw each other at exactly the same moment, as Irene and George walked past his table to join the Rofranos at the back of the restaurant, and the sight of his horrified face still wounded her. Later he’d come over to say hello, and it was clear he’d had a drink or two to fortify himself. He laughed and joked harshly, and he introduced the film actress, who was beautiful beyond description and didn’t seem to know the history of Sam and Irene. She just appeared girlishly starstruck to meet the legendary aviatrix and babbled on about how scared she was to fly in an airplane, how brave Irene must be. Irene replied graciously, without meeting Sam’s eyes once. She watched him walk away though, a little unsteady, the actress’s arm looped through his. What little she’d seen of his face seemed gaunt. Those ravishing good looks had been hollowed out by misery.

“Poor fellow,” said George. “A wife like his.”

Octavian said, “Not anymore. They called it quits a year or two ago, didn’t you hear?”

Under the table, Sophie had kicked him, and he’d cleared his throat and changed the subject. But it didn’t matter. Irene had already heard that news. Of course she had.

Among the guests at the party, besides the Rofranos, were a couple of movie executives, the mayor of Burbank, the president of the Lockheed Aviation Company, and the editor of the Los Angeles Times. George was nothing if not methodical about his guest lists. They were all sympathetic to Irene. She had to explain the accident five times, had to describe the injury to her arm, had to express enthusiasm for the upcoming lecture tour, had to chitchat over four courses served in the dining room by the housekeeper.

She was used to all this. George and Irene entertained guests three or four nights a week when they were home, and of course a lecture tour meant countless fried chicken dinners with mayors and aviation enthusiasts and the ladies of the town lecture committees and their curious banker husbands. In response, Irene had invented a character named Irene Foster, Aviatrix, who could make patient, polite conversation with all these people and win glowing reviews for her All-American character wherever she went. Irene played this character night after night, like an actress in a long-running Broadway play. She played it now, even though she was exhausted and sick with worry about a man she had loved eight years before.

Only Sophie Rofrano knew the effort it cost her. But then Sophie Rofrano was eight and a half months pregnant and her husband was extremely protective of her. They sat next to each other at the other end of the table, where Irene cast envious glances. She had always envied the Rofranos. Without being attached at the hip or anything like that, they were deeply and affectionately in love. Octavian Rofrano was a reserved man, not easy to talk to. His face, as he made conversation with the woman on his left, crinkled earnestly, as if he were in pain. But when his wife asked him a question from his other side, his expression changed. He turned to her and bent his head—Sophie Rofrano was a small woman—and it was obvious that the rest of the room, the rest of the world maybe, held not the slightest pinprick of interest next to what his wife was saying, at that moment.

Then his expression changed again. He stood and walked around the table to murmur something in George’s ear, and George jumped up and said Of course! Irene looked at Sophie and Sophie looked at her and pointed, smiling, to her middle. Irene rose and went to Sophie, reached her just as Octavian reached her, and together they helped Sophie from her chair, though she tried to brush them away, laughing that she had done this before, she was perfectly capable of walking to the car. The news rippled around the room. Luckily they were just finishing dessert, and the party ended by everyone waving off the Rofranos on their way to the hospital to have their baby, just like they were newlyweds.

It made Irene think of her own marriage, which took place in the town clerk’s office, and how she and George had flown away on their honeymoon from Rofrano’s Airfield in Irene’s airplane, while half the city’s press waved them off. Irene had been furious at this publicity stunt and George had promised not to do anything like that again without asking her first. They had spent their wedding night in Yosemite and started a lecture tour the next day, flying together from city to city to make the most of the newspaper coverage, and Irene had been so busy with flying and speeches and George had been so busy with the logistics and the glad-handing that they were bemused to realize, on the sixth day of the tour, that they hadn’t yet consummated the union.

After the Rofranos left, Irene made her excuses and went to bed with the newspaper. She read the article about Sam three times and learned that the accident had occurred on landing, just as hers had, although the cause could not yet be determined. The engine had gone up in flame and Sam had been burned, but not seriously because they had been able to pull him free within minutes of the crash. He was unconscious but had woken up in the ambulance. He remained at the hospital in a serious condition. That was all, except that it seemed he was now seeing some other film actress, a brunette, who gave a tearful statement to the press before going to the hospital to comfort him. Irene set the newspaper aside and reached for the lamp, just as George walked in, removing his necktie. He took off his jacket too and came to sit on Irene’s bed in his shirtsleeves. He laid his hand on her leg.

“I thought you’d gone to sleep by now,” he said.

“I was reading about Sam.”

“Terrible thing. We’ll send flowers.”

“Any news about Sophie?”