The Aviator's Wife

“Anne.” Charles helped me up from my chair and bent down to my level. Now his eyes were clear and resolute—just as they had been the day I met him, and recognized him as the most perfect, capable man alive. His voice did not waver. Despite my inner turmoil, I drew strength from him, as I always had.

“Anne, they have taken our baby. But you have to trust me. I will bring him home to you.”

“Yes,” I said, marveling to hear my voice clear and strong—as strong as his. “Yes,” I repeated. “I know you will.”

It was a sacred, intimate moment, as if we were repeating our marriage vows. Only this time I wasn’t pledging my troth; I was pledging my baby’s life. We stood together, as close as we’d been since the trip to the Orient. And I gave my child over to my husband in front of these muddy state troopers, in this house so blazing with light it must be visible from five thousand feet up, in this darkness that whirled around outside, howling to come in once more, just as it had done already this endless day. Two hours—one lifetime—ago.

If I let the swirling blackness inside again, even masquerading as doubt, it would never leave; it would poison the two of us forever. At that moment, I was frantic to believe that we hadn’t already been ruined beyond recognition. So I nodded as Charles told me—so boyishly earnest, so heartbreakingly sure—that he would bring our son back home. And that there was absolutely no reason for me to worry.

I believed him, just as I always had, just as I always wanted to. Of course, I believed him; I was his crew. He was mine.

In that terrible hour, long past dusk, dawn an unimaginable miracle away, what other choice did I have?

CHAPTER 10

THE BABY WAS CRYING. I stirred in my sleep, an automatic reflex; kicking away the covers, I rolled over, eyes still shut but breath held, hoping he would stop. Of course, he didn’t. Now he was crying out, calling my name—my real name, how odd! Not Mama, but Anne. “Anne—Anne—”

I was crying, too. I was calling out his name, calling “Charles, Charles!” I had never called him Charles before; it was always Charlie, or Little Lamb, or Baby Boy. The poor thing! He didn’t really know his name. So how would he come, if I kept calling it? Now I was running; it was dark and something kept hitting against the house, the wind howling about, filling my ears with its primal moan. I called, “Charles, Charles!” and I realized he wouldn’t know it was me, I realized he wouldn’t understand his own name, if he could even hear it in the storm. But I kept calling.

“Anne! Anne!” But why didn’t he call me Mama? How did he know my name? Was he already lost from me? Had a lifetime passed, and he was grown up now and I didn’t recognize him anymore? Him, this stranger shaking me, calling out my name?

“Anne!”

“Charles!”

My eyes flew open; it took me a moment to realize I was in bed. My husband was holding me by the shoulders, and I was struggling against him, because I had to go to the nursery—Charlie was crying. That was what had awakened me. Charlie’s cry.

“Is he up already?” I asked, bewildered. Why was Charles still wearing the clothes he’d worn yesterday?

“Anne.”

“Did Betty feed him?” I yawned, rubbing my eyes—astonished to feel tears on my cheeks. I looked at my wet fingers, and knew that even as I did so, I was still crying.

And then I remembered.

“Oh. Oh!” And the grief was real and raw, as if all that had happened the night before was happening all over again. I struggled to get up, to run to his room, but Charles pinned me down.

“Stop it! Let go of me!” I was shouting, and he looked uneasily toward the closed bedroom door, as if someone was standing just outside. “I mean it—let me go!” I actually kicked at my husband, allowing myself a tiny burst of triumph. It felt good, even for so childish a moment, to lash out at someone.

“Anne, hush. I woke you because there’s someone I want you to see.”

I stopped squirming instantly. I held myself perfectly still, allowing his words to penetrate first my mind, then my heart. Then I laughed, pure joy bubbling out of me; it had been a dream, after all!

“The baby? You found the baby? Oh, where is he?” I threw my arms about him. His body remained rigid; he plucked my arms from around his neck.

“No, no. Not the baby.” His eyes narrowed, as if I had somehow challenged his authority—no, his competence. “Pull yourself together, Anne. There’s a man outside I thought you should see—or, rather, he wanted to see you. He might have some information.”

“Oh.” I nodded, looking away; I couldn’t let him see my disappointment. “What time is it?”

“Eight o’clock.”

“You look terrible. Did you sleep at all?”

“No. We’ve been searching outside—although we couldn’t keep the reporters out, not at first, so quite a lot of evidence might be trampled over.”

“Did you find anything?”

“A ladder. Broken in pieces.”

I nodded, not really understanding. What did the pieces of a ladder mean?

“And some footprints, men’s footprints, on the ground beneath the—his—window. The press, of course, is having a field day. You’d better—well, I don’t know. You’ll find out anyway. If you want to read the newspapers, they’re in the kitchen. I would advise you not to. But get dressed now, please, for this gentleman.”

Charles joined whoever it was in the hall while I went through the motions; I splashed water on my face, ran a comb through my hair, and pulled on a housedress, only to find that I couldn’t get it all the way over my hips. I had to wear an ugly yellow-and-black checked maternity dress that I’d somehow thought to pack instead. The first one I’d worn for this pregnancy; I couldn’t help reflecting on the irony—that the new life I was carrying was making itself visible on this, of all days.

Then I opened my bedroom door and stepped into the hall, wholly unprepared for the chaos outside. Men were running in and out of my son’s nursery. Even more were tramping mud all over the front hall carpets. There were tables set up in the hallway downstairs. As I hung over the upstairs railing and peered down through the open front door—shivering in the frigid air; had it stood open all night long?—I could see a small army of cars parked haphazardly, as if all had been driven in a great hurry and then urgently abandoned on the drive.

“Mrs. Lindbergh?”

I turned; a small man in a navy blue suit, his thin red hair plastered flat on his head, his eyes small and nervous, stood before me, holding his hat in his hands. He was barely taller than I was; next to my husband, he looked like a paper doll. He resembled an illustration in one of Charlie’s nursery books—a particularly sinister image of the Pied Piper of Hamelin with long, sharp, ratlike features. The only thing missing was the flute.

“Yes?”

“This is the man I was telling you about,” Charles exclaimed, unable to keep the eagerness out of his voice. “Please, come into the bedroom.”

He ushered this man—this stranger!—into our bedroom. Our house was being turned into a headquarters for evil, just as Charles had said—but couldn’t I keep one room untouched? Unsullied by the dirt and filth that had blown in through that open nursery window?

“Please,” I said, turning my nose up, folding the corners of my mouth primly. I gestured for the man to sit on a footstool, while Charles and I sat, side by side, on our bed.

“Mrs. Lindbergh, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for seeing me. But I have information that I am certain you will want to hear.” The little man now crumpled his felt hat in his excitement; there was a gleam in his eyes that almost made his thin, watery face beautiful.

My heart began to pound, and I reached for Charles’s hand. “Yes?”

“Your child, he is safe.”