Wings

“Welcome home, Cassie!” a flock of reporters shouted at her, as her father grabbed her firmly by the arm, and propelled her through the crowd like a snow-plow. Oona was following them closely, and Pat was heading for the car and driver he had hired to meet her. And before the reporters could say anything, she was being pushed into the car, and Desmond had come toward them.

“You're very kind,” her father was saying warmly to the members of the press, “but my daughter's not well. She's ill and she's had a traumatic experience in the hospital at the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Thank you… thank you very much.” He waved his hat at them, shoved his wife into the car after his daughter, and climbed in behind both of them. And then told the driver to pull out as quickly as he could without hitting them. Cassie was laughing at Desmond's expression as they drove off. They had completely foiled him.

“Does that man never stop?” her father said irritably. “Has he no heart at all?”

“None whatsoever,” she assured him.

“I don't understand why you married him.”

“Neither do I,” she sighed, “but he was very convincing then. Until afterward; then he didn't think he had to hide his moves anymore.” She told him about his threats to go after her now with his lawyers.

“You owe him nothing!” Pat raged at her, incensed at what Desmond had told her.

“Mind your heart, dear,” Oona warned, but he had been fine since the summer. Even during Cassie's ordeal, he had held up surprisingly well. And now he was only angry.

“He'd better mind my fist, not my heart,” Pat said bluntly, as they drove back to the Fairmont. Her parents had taken a suite for the three of them, and they spent two days there celebrating her safe return. Before they went home, she went to visit Billy Nolan's father. It was a sad and difficult visit, and she told his father that Billy had died in her arms peacefully, and he hadn't suffered. But even knowing that, it was difficult to console him.

It dawned on Cassie afterward, that with the war now, there would be many young men like Billy dying. It was an awful thought. And she had never been as happy to go home as she was this time.

Her father had brought a co-pilot along, and flown the Vega out for her. Halfway back to Illinois, he turned the controls over to her, and asked her if she'd like to fly it. And much to his surprise, and her own, she hesitated, but he pretended to ignore it.

“It's not as fancy as what you're used to, Cass. But it'll do your heart good to fly again.” It was a nice plane to fly, and he was right, she loved the feeling of flying again. She hadn't been in a plane since she'd gone down in the North Star, two and a half months before. And it was odd to be flying now, but she still loved it. It was in her Mood, just as it was in her father's.

She told him about the crash then on the way home, and she and her father discussed what might have caused the fire in the engines, but it was anyone's guess. Desmond had brought back what was left of the Plane, and was hoping they could learn more about what went wrong. But it was unlikely they would find much, the explosion had been so powerful.

“You were damn lucky,” her father said, shaking his head, as she flew his plane for him. “You could have been killed on the way down. You could have been blown to bits, or never found an island to light on.”

“I know,” she said sadly. But it still hadn't helped Billy. She couldn't get over that. She knew she'd never forget him and then as she helped her father put the plane in the hangar that night, he offered her a job at the airport. He said he could use some help with cargo and mail runs, especially now that every able-bodied young boy would be enlisting. Most of his pilots were older than that, but still there was room for her, and he'd love to have her, he said with a shy smile. “Unless you're going to be doing a lot of advertisements for tooth powder and cars.” They both laughed at that one.

“I don't think so, Dad. I think I've had enough of all that to last me a lifetime.” She wasn't even sure she wanted to do air shows, not after Chris died. She just wanted to fly, nice easy runs, or even long ones.

“Well, I'd love to have you. Think about it, Cass.”

“I will, Dad. I'm honored.”

He drove them home after that, in his truck, and her sisters and their families were waiting for them at the house. It was New Year's Eve, and they had never looked better to her than at that moment. Everyone cried and hugged, and screamed, and the kids ran around like crazy. They all seemed to have grown, and Annabelle and Humphrey looked cuter than ever. It was a scene she had never thought she'd see again, and she broke down and sobbed as her sisters held her. She only wished that Chris could have been there… and Billy… and Nick. There were too many people missing now, but she was there. And they thanked God that night for His blessings.

21

The week after New Year's, Cassie started helping her father at the airport again. But before that, he took her to see an attorney in Chicago. He was an expensive one, with a good reputation, but her father said that she couldn't afford to see anyone less than that if she was going to defend herself against Desmond Williams.

She explained her situation to him, and he advised her that she had nothing to worry about. There wasn't a judge or a jury in the world who would feel that she hadn't fulfilled her contract in good faith, and at great risk and personal expense to herself. “No one's going to take money from you, or put you in jail, or force you to fly for him again. The man sounds like a monster.”

“And that brings up another matter,” her father said pointedly. The divorce. That was more complicated, but not impossible by any means. It would take time, but it would be easy to say that their marriage had not survived the trauma of her ordeal, and surely no one would contest that. It would be even easier to accuse him of adultery and fraud. And the attorney intended to wave those flags at him. And he was sure he would get Desmond's full cooperation.

He told her to go home, and not to worry about it, and three weeks later some papers arrived for her to sign to set the wheels in motion. And it was shortly after that that Desmond called her.

”How are you feeling, Cass?”

“Why?”

“It's a perfectly reasonable question.” He sounded very pleasant but she knew him better than that. He wanted something. She thought maybe he had called to argue about the divorce, but she couldn't imagine why he'd want to. He didn't want to be married to her any more than she wanted to be married to him. And she wasn't asking for money. Much to her surprise, he had sent her the full amount he owed her for the Pacific tour, even though she hadn't completed it, after her lawyer contacted him and pointed out that trying to shortchange her would look very bad to the American public after all she'd been through. Desmond had been furious, but the check for one hundred and fifty thousand was safely put away in her bank account, and her father was well pleased that it was. She had more than earned it.

“I just thought you might like to do a little press conference sometime… you know… tell the world what happened.” She had planned to, at first, just once, but in the meantime, she'd decided against it. Her career as a movie star was over.

“They heard it all from the Department of the Navy, after they rescued me. There's nothing else to say. Do you really think they want to know how Billy died in my arms, or about my dysentery? I don't think so.”

“You can leave those parts out.”

“No, I can't. And I have nothing to say. I did it. We went down. I was lucky enough to come back, unlike Billy, unlike Noonan, unlike Earhart, unlike a lot of fools like us. I'm here, and I don't want to talk about it anymore. It's over, Desmond. It's history. Find someone else you can mold into a movie star. Maybe Nancy.”

“You were good at it,” he said nostalgically, ‘the best.”

“I cared about you,” she said sadly. “I loved you,” she said very softly, but there was no one to love there.

“I'm sorry if you were disappointed,” he said pointedly. They were strangers again. They had come full circle. And then he realized that pushing her was pointless. “Let me know if you change your mind. You can have a great career if you ever get serious about it,” he said, and she smiled. It had gotten as serious as it gets, and miraculously she'd still survived it.

“Don't count on it.” She knew he hated people like her. In his mind, she was a quitter. But she didn't give a damn what he thought now.