About a quarter mile out, the squall starts to die away, but the sea remains rough. Nobody speaks. Leo’s busy keeping the ship on the right side of the ocean’s surface. As for Sophie, she’s as keen as I am. Her delicate profile points into the wind. Her teeth are bared. You get the idea she relishes this struggle, man against nature, and who would have thought that petite, elegant Sophie Rofrano was a fighter? But Sophie was the one who wrangled me aboard, Sophie was the one who took Leo by the shoulders and insisted that Janey Everett was friend, not foe.

Was she right? I don’t know. I don’t know a damned thing anymore. It seems to me that my fate is not in my own hands but elsewhere, laid out in some grand design beyond my comprehension. The rain spits in my hair. We’re near the edge of the squall now. The blue sky beckons just above the charcoal shadow that is Ki’ilau, and I’m made of yearning for that patch of hope. Of all the things I have ever loved, the darlings who have vanished, one by one, only this remains. The weather buffets the ship. We pitch and plunge, heel and dive. What use is knowledge? All you can do is close your eyes, not even pray, because God has already decided what he’s going to do with you. God has already decreed whether you will live or not live, die or not die, and you must meet your fate as Velázquez did, stoic and obedient.

As I mentioned before, Leo cut his teeth in the South Pacific during the war, so I suppose it’s child’s play to him, bringing this mere civilian craft through a dying squall to the small dock that extends from the beach on the leeward side of Ki’ilau. All the same, the boat twists and lurches at the whim of nature, while the engine grinds us closer. Sophie snatches a coil of rope. At the last second, a wave starts us crashing into the wood, but Leo makes some final adjustment and we kiss the dock instead.

Sophie leaps to shore.

I follow her and fall to my knees, stunned by solid ground. While the two of them mess around with ropes and pilings, I start down the dock to the beach. Leo calls after me. I shift to a jog, into the soft sand to the hills beyond, and the path that leads up to the plateau where Lindquist likes to land her airplanes.

Leo shouts again. “Janey! Wait!”

I don’t wait. I scramble up the path, slipping a little because the ground’s still wet. Out here in the middle of the Pacific, just about every island is a volcano, or used to be a volcano, or a part of a volcano, and I swear you can feel the soul of it under your feet, in the dark, crumbling rock that was once so mighty. I climb and climb. Now the squall is well past, the clouds are parting. From the east comes a gold sun to burn away the haze. I reach the top of the slope and pause to pant. The plateau stretches before me, covered in grass. In the distance, a flash of silver. Behind me, a male voice shouts my name. I lurch forward toward the silver object, running as I have not run in many years, through the wet grass that soaks right through my shoes and socks, the strips of haze that soak my skin and hair. A half mile, or maybe more, I don’t know, and the object takes shape, takes on wings and a tail, a fuselage, a nose that tilts to the clearing sky. A hundred more yards, another hundred, and I come to a stop, heaving for breath, beside the most famous airplane in the world, Irene Foster’s silver Rofrano Sirius that vanished into thin air a decade ago.

I told Lindquist nothing more than the truth that evening at Coolibah, after the charades, when I said I had no recollection of my mother trying to kill herself, or of discovering her unconscious as Lindquist claims I did. At the time, I was only a kid, so I suppose Nature took pity on me and buried that memory in some deep, secret place I’ll never discover.

What I do remember is when Dad came home from Australia. I recall we were alone, the two of us, and Dad was holding me and wouldn’t let go, and I didn’t want him to. I wanted my father to hold me forever. When he pulled away, his cheeks were wet, and a little bit rough. I guess he hadn’t shaved. I told him he couldn’t go away again, not ever, and he promised he wouldn’t. He said he would look after us both from now on, Mama and me, and that nothing could take him away from me, or me from him.

Of course, he didn’t keep that promise. After all, he had to go on making a living, doing the only thing he knew how to do. But when do we human beings ever keep our promises? We mean so well, and we fall so short. He would leave for another air show, another race, another exhibition, and Mama would turn to me and say, That concubine’s going to take him away from us, just you wait. She’ll take everything, and leave us with nothing.

It was not until later that I understood what she meant. You see, in my innocence, I thought a concubine was an airplane. I thought it was the airplane that drew him irresistibly from my side, an airplane that fought me for his love.

Only later did I realize it was a woman, all along.

Now the airplane stands before me, but there’s no sign of the woman, or the children. And I have come full circle and understand that my father was not pulled from my life by the airplane or by the woman, each on its own, but by the two of them together in an irresistible passion and also by an equal and opposing force that pushed him away, which was my mother. But that’s all past and doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is what remains of him. What I might still grasp with my two hands, if only she’ll let me.

A streak of sunlight finds the airplane’s skin and flashes white. The brilliance blinds me. The following breeze streams in, blowing the haze apart, carrying the cacophonous chime of birds, and as I stand there panting in my wet shoes, my wet skin, blind and afraid, the chime clarifies and becomes human.

I turn and open my eyes.

The tribe of them jogs across the grass, Sophie and Leo and Lindquist herself, led by a pair of scampering sprogs, tumbling tadpoles, as wet as I am, sunlight dancing on hair, alive.

Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)

May 1937: Bardenas Reales, Spain

When Morrow left, Mallory pulled his cigarettes from his jacket pocket. He couldn’t walk after Irene; even if he had the strength, his ankle was broken, his thigh split apart, his head concussed. Cuts and bruises lay everywhere on his ribs and arms and legs, stiffened during the long days and nights, so that it was agony just to move. Instead he lit a cigarette and reached for his leather diary and the pen clipped inside. He smoked for a moment, wrote a broken half-sentence while the sound of voices drifted through the hatchway, while the engine of Velázquez’s airplane started with a cough and whine.

GM to rescue at last thank God She will live

The diary fell from his hands. He didn’t have the will. He wanted to listen to the sound of Irene’s going and then slip away into rest, because Morrow was right about one thing. This was his fault, all of it. Irene, her pregnancy, her dangerous days here in Spain, the crackup, his own death—all of it was Mallory’s doing, the work of the devil on his own shoulder, his recklessness, his death wish.

And now he was going to die at last, here in this wreckage in the middle of the Spanish badlands. He was going to get his wish. But Irene would live; that was the important thing. He had not also killed Irene. Instead of wishing Morrow to hell, he should have thanked him. Morrow would take care of her. Morrow would put Irene back on her pedestal in the center of his life, and he would revolve around her to the end of his days, which would be long and many, because Morrow had no death wish. Morrow was not reckless and impulsive and passionate. He would give her everything she wanted, a home and airplanes and probably children. Away from Sam, Irene would thrive. Like Pixie, who had found another father, a better father, and was better off without him. This was the right end, the just end, the only possible end.

God watch over them both, Pixie and Irene. The two living pieces of his heart. God keep them— A thump shook the fuselage. Mallory opened his eyes.

“Se?or Mallory?”

The thick bull shoulders of Velázquez appeared in the hatchway, framed by the sunlight. He had just laid something heavy on the metal deck, like a sack of flour, and now he climbed nimbly over this thing and grasped it under the shoulders and dragged it next to Mallory, without any apparent effort.

“Jesus Christ,” whispered Mallory.

Velázquez shrugged and crossed himself.

“I told the bastard if he tried to get back on my airplane, I would shoot him.”

Ki’ilau, Hawai’i

November 1947