“Of course it is.”

We pick our way around the skeletal airplanes, stripped for parts, and the various heaps of metal. When I poked through here a few weeks ago, I thought it looked exactly like somebody’s garage, oily rags and mysterious bits of machines in their haphazard piles, but now my eyes are more suspicious. I consider whether it’s just supposed to look haphazard. I mean, why would you just leave a propeller blade lying there on the ground? Neither Lindquist is the type to encourage disorder, even in a junkyard. I pause to finger the edge of a metal pole that looks as if it came from one of those tent kits for Boy Scouts.

Kaiko calls out from the other side of a stack of tires. “Here we go! Come on and give me a hand with this net, why don’t you.”

I walk obediently around the tires, around the bones of some old crop duster, just sitting there like a picked-over carcass, and there’s Kaiko, standing proudly next to a large, sweeping shape covered by one of those dense camouflage nettings they used in the war.

Ka-thump, goes my heart.

Maybe I should have spotted it before, I don’t know. But it hulks down in the back corner, covered by this netting that does the trick pretty well, makes a thing just dissolve into the background so that your eye passes right over it, unless your eye happens to know exactly what it’s looking for.

I grab another corner of the netting, and Kaiko and I slide it carefully away from the object beneath, the airplane, maybe the most famous airplane in the world. A shape so iconic, so memorable, you’d have to be an idiot not to recognize it for what it is.

A custom Rofrano Sirius, the one flown by Irene Foster in the Round the World Derby of 1937.

“Ain’t she a beauty,” Kaiko says reverently.

Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)

October 1936: California

The airplane arrived in pieces the next day, by train from Fort Worth to Los Angeles and then by truck to Burbank, where Rofrano’s team of mechanics would reassemble it inside Hangar D. Octavian said not to worry about the bill, she could pay it when she was done with the tour. The baby had been born shortly after he and Sophie had arrived at Burbank Hospital the other night, a girl they’d named Clara, and Octavian was in a generous mood.

Irene stared at the bright, wide interior of Hangar D and her airplane in pieces on the wooden floor. There was the silvery fuselage, there were the wings and the tail, the mighty engines, the crushed landing gear that would be replaced by a new one. Tools and rivets and everything else. She wasn’t thinking of the latest crackup; she thought about the flight to Rio de Janeiro, the way the city had looked when she plummeted down from the mountains to the landing strip, glazed in afternoon gold. How she had gazed through the window in wonder and remembered why she flew. Why flying mattered, and the rest of it was only the means to fly, the price she had to pay.

She spent all morning in the hangar, discussing the accident and the damage with the mechanics and with Rofrano, how long the repairs would take and how much they would cost, and then she went to the Burbank Hospital to visit Sophie and the new baby.

Sophie was in excellent spirits, as you might imagine. She was one of those women who gave birth like a peasant in the fields, and she was already disobeying the orders of the doctors and nurses by pottering around the hospital room, doing this and that. She carried the baby around like a small white-bundled football in the crook of her right arm. For some reason, this reminded Irene of Sam, who used to carry Sandy around the same way.

“She’s been an angel,” Sophie said, “although they’re generally angels at first, and then they wake up on the third day and turn your life upside down. Would you like to hold her?”

“I’d be afraid to.”

“Don’t be silly.” Sophie thrust the baby to Irene, who had no choice but to hold out her good arm and accept this present. “Open your eyes, Clarakins. That’s the most famous woman in the world holding you. And if you’re lucky, she might just teach you to fly someday.”

“Her father ought to teach her that.”

“No, I’d rather she learned from another woman. Octavian’s a darling and I adore him, but he can’t help condescend a little. He’d call her sweetheart or something, and she’d never learn properly. You taught me more about flying than my husband ever did.”

Irene thought about Sam, who had taught her to fly and never called her sweetheart. She peered into Clara’s face, which was squished shut and somewhat red, not at all like a baby in an advertisement. “Should I be doing anything? Is she breathing?”

“Of course she’s breathing.”

“How can you tell?”

“My dear,” said Sophie, “you just know. Now tell me about the airplane. What does Octavian say? Can it be fixed quickly?”

They spoke about the airplane. Sophie was something of a mechanical genius, knew everything about engines and aerodynamics. She took Clara back, to Irene’s relief. Outside the window sprawled Burbank, bigger and bigger every day. Outside the door, the nurses giggled and listened through the keyhole, thrilled that Irene Foster stood on the other side of it. Irene interrupted herself in the middle of a discussion of ailerons. “How did you meet? You and your husband.”

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.”