As he reached it, his right wing tip lifted slightly, and he immediately veered in that direction. When he did, the whole plane began to lift, and he slowed into a tight, controlled turn. The sailplane rose dramatically, kept on rising.
Below him, it was clear that Pamela saw what he had found. She turned abruptly away from the gentle up-currents off the cliff, headed in his direction. Her glider seemed to diminish in size with every second as Jeff and Christopher rode the lifting mass of air higher and higher, locked into a steeply banked turn to stay within the narrow confines of the thermal’s center.
Pamela flew in looping circles downwind of his position, searching. At last she caught the nebulous warm updraft, and the distance between them closed as her plane lifted swiftly and silently toward his … until, wing tip to wing tip, they soared together in the crisp, clean skies above Mount Shasta’s ageless and enigmatic peak.
Kimberly had stopped crying, was outside picking a bunch of September wild flowers to take with her on the trip east. Christopher was being a man about it. He was fifteen, after all, and had long since begun to emulate Jeff’s attitudes of acceptance in the face of adversity and unrestrained joy where joy—as it so frequently had these past few years—became appropriate.
'My hiking boots won’t fit in the suitcase, Mom.'
'You won’t really need them in New Rochelle, honey,' Pamela said.
'I guess not. Except maybe if Dad takes us up camping in the Berkshires, like he said he would, I could wear them then.'
'How about if I send them to you?'
'Well … You don’t have to do that. It’s O.K. We’ll be back before Christmas, anyway, and I’d just have to mail them back here again.'
Pamela nodded, turned her head away so her son wouldn’t see her eyes.
'I know you’d like to have them with you,' Jeff put in. 'Why don’t we go ahead and send them along, and we’ll … get you another pair to keep here. We can do that with all your stuff, if J you’d like.'
'Hey, that’d be great!' Christopher exclaimed with a grin.
'It makes sense,' Jeff said.
'Sure, if I’m gonna be spending half the year with Dad and the other half here with you and Mom … You sure that’d be O.K.? Mom, is that all right with you?'
'It sounds like a very good idea,' Pamela said, forcing a smile. 'Why don’t you go make a list of all the things you’d like us to send?'
'O.K.,' Christopher said, heading toward the two-bedroom annex Jeff had built on to the cabin for the boy and his sister. Then he stopped and turned. 'Can I tell Kimberly? I bet there’s a lot of things she’d like to have back east, too.'
'Of course,' Pamela told him, 'but don’t you two take too long about it. We have to leave for Redding in an hour, or you’ll miss your flight.'
'We’ll hurry, Mom,' he said, running outside to fetch his sister.
Pamela turned to Jeff, let flow the tears she’d been holding back. 'I don’t want them to go. It’s still another month before … before…'
He embraced her, smoothed her hair. 'We’ve been through all this before,' he told her gently. 'It’s best for them to have a few weeks to adjust to being with their father again, to make new friends … That may help them absorb the shock a little.'
'Jeff,' she said, sobbing, 'I’m scared! I don’t want to die! Not … die forever, and—'
He hugged her tightly, rocked her in his arms and felt his own tears trickle down his face. 'Just think of how we’ve lived. Think of all we’ve done, and let’s try to be grateful for that.'
'But we could have done so much more. We could have—'
'Hush,' he whispered. 'We did all we could. More than either of us ever dreamed when we were first starting out.'
She leaned back, searched his eyes as if seeing them for the first time, or the last. 'I know,' she sighed. 'It’s just … I got so used to the endless possibilities, the time … never being bound by our mistakes, always knowing we could go back and change things, make them better. But we didn’t, did we? We only made things different.'
A voice droned on interminably in the dim background of Jeff’s consciousness. It didn’t matter who the voice belonged to, or what it might be saying.
Pamela was dead, never to return. The realization washed over him like seawater against an open wound, filled his mind with an all-encompassing grief he had not felt since the loss of his daughter Gretchen. He clenched his fists, lowered his head beneath the weight of the undeniable, the intolerable … and still the voice babbled forth its senseless litany:
'… see if Charlie can get react from Mayor Koch on Reagan’s Bitburg trip. Looks like this one could really whip up into a firestorm; we’ve got the American Legion coming down on him about it, and Congress is starting to buzz. That’s—Jeff? You O.K.?'
'Yeah.' He glanced up briefly. 'I’m fine. Go ahead.'
He was in the conference room of WFYI in New York, the all-news radio station where he’d been news director when first he died. He was seated at one end of a long oval table; the morning and midday editors were on either side of him, and the reporters occupied the other chairs. He hadn’t seen these people for decades, but Jeff recognized the place, the situation, instantly. He’d had this same meeting every weekday morning for years: the daily assignment conference, where the structure of the day’s news coverage was planned as best it could be in advance. Gene Collins, the ongoing midday editor, was frowning at him with j concern.
'You sure you’re feeling all right? We could cut this short; there’s not much else to discuss.'
'Just go ahead, Gene. I’ll be fine.'
'Well … O.K. Anyway, that’s about it for metro stories and; local angles. On the national front, we’ve got the shuttle going! up this morning, and—'
'Which one?' Jeff rasped out.
'What?' Gene asked, puzzled.
'Which shuttle?'
'Discovery. You know, the one with the senator on board.'
Thank God for that at least; so immediately after Pamela’s final death, Jeff wasn’t sure he could have handled a repeat of the chaos and depression in the newsroom on the day of the Challenger disaster. He should have known better, anyway, if he’d been thinking clearly; Reagan had gone to Bitburg in the spring off 1985. That would make this sometime around April of that year, nine or ten months before the shuttle would explode.
Everyone at the table was looking at him strangely, wondering why he seemed so distraught, so disoriented. To hell with it. Let them think whatever they wanted.
'Let’s wrap it up, all right, Gene?'
The editor nodded, began gathering the scattered papers he had brought to the meeting. 'Only other good story developing is this rape-recant thing in Illinois. Dotson’s going back to prison today while his lawyer prepares an appeal. That’s it. Questions, anybody?'
'The school-board meeting looks like it might run long today,' one of the reporters said. 'I don’t know if I’ll be able to make this 2:00 P.M. Fire Department awards thing. You want me to dump out of the school board early, or would you rather put somebody else on the awards?'
'Jeff?' Collins asked, deferring to him. 'I don’t care. You decide.'
Gene frowned again, started to say something but didn’t. He turned back to the reporters, who had begun to mumble among themselves. 'Bill, stick with the school board as long as you need to. Charlie, you hit the Fire Department ceremony after you talk to the mayor. Give us a live shot on Koch and Bitburg at one. Then you can hold off filing until after the awards are over. Oh, and Jim, Mobile Four is in the shop; you’ll be taking Mobile Seven.'
