The Chance You Won't Return (31 page)

“If you could be anyone else, who would it be?”

Even though Dad assured me Mom wasn’t leaving the house anymore, I still woke up most nights and spent a few hours with her at the kitchen table. They hadn’t spoken a lot since Valentine’s Day. Dad was unusually stoic and Mom was on edge, saying she just needed to complete this last flight and everything would be fine. So I figured it couldn’t hurt to look after her in case she decided that George Putnam didn’t know what he was talking about. A few times, I almost told her about having sex with Jim; since she wasn’t acting like Mom, she wouldn’t have been upset with me. Maybe she would have asked how I felt about it and him.

Mom was sifting through papers on the kitchen table. She claimed to be filling out new forms for landing visas. “With the new route, we need to completely reapply for all clearance. Such a waste of time when there are so many other things to be doing.” When I repeated my question, she scribbled something on a piece of paper and said, “I’m happy with who I am.”

Yeah, right,
I thought. “It’s a game. Just pick someone. Anyone. Real, imaginary, I don’t care.”

“Wilbur Wright,” she said, not looking up from her notes.

I frowned. “Wilbur Wright? Why not Orville?”

“Orville, Wilbur, it doesn’t matter.”

“Just because they could fly?” I stood up from the table and got myself a glass of water. “You have such a one-track mind.”

“They didn’t just
fly,
” she said. “They were the first people to fly. They went up in the air before anyone else. For a little while, they were the only ones who knew what that felt like. Nowadays all it takes to go up in a plane is a trip to the county fair. But back then they had something special, didn’t they? They’d accomplished something great, and it was something no one else had ever even felt before.”

Her face was so blissful, it was hard to get mad at her. She set down her pencil. “What about you?”

I sighed. “Me? Oh, I’d be you.” I gulped water before I could say anything else, and she returned her attention to her so-called visas.

When I put my glass in the sink, I saw something outside — snow. It was drifting through the air and settling on the lawn. There was already enough for white clumps to have gathered among the grass. Even though it was a cold winter, we hadn’t gotten snow all year. For a second, everything was soft and quiet. I remembered when we were little and there was a snowstorm one year, a shocking three feet of snow. School was canceled, but Mom woke us early anyway and told us to get our coats on so we could build a snowman. Having grown up in Florida, Mom loved the first snow. We spent the morning putting together a pathetic snowman — Teddy, at two, kept trying to knock him over — and then had a snowball fight, shrieking whenever any of us were hit. Afterward, when we were sufficiently rosy and exhausted, Mom made us hot chocolate and put on Disney movies. This was before she tried getting pregnant again, before she stayed in bed for a month, before the idea that she was Amelia Earhart had even occurred to her.

Mom had noticed, too. She walked away from the table and stood at the window, arms crossed in front of her like she was cold. Her face was illuminated by the snow. “It’s beautiful,” she said, then looked at me and smiled. “Isn’t it?”

I smiled back. “Want to go for a ride?”

I knew it was stupid while I was doing it, but everything was so lovely outside that I didn’t care much. With the snow floating silently to the ground and the rest of the neighborhood dark, it didn’t feel real at all. It was more like a dream, and in a dream, why couldn’t Mom and I go for a drive through the snow?

The keys were kept in a cupboard, behind the cereal bowls, in case Mom ever tried to drive on her own. Upstairs, Dad would be fast asleep. He’d never have to know.

Mom and I put our coats on over our pajamas. When the first gush of cold air hit us, we shivered. She looked up at the sky, thick with gray clouds. “Are you sure this is good flying weather?”

“Sure it is,” I said. “High air pressure.”

Satisfied, she nodded and climbed into the passenger seat. It was the first time I’d been in a car without Jim or Mr. Kane or even Dad. Mom hadn’t taken me out for driving lessons before she went crazy because she claimed we’d end up fighting, which was probably true. There was a light dusting of snow on the windshield, so for a second, it was like being in a cave. I flipped the wipers to brush it away. Unlike getting caught in the rain with Jim, I wasn’t afraid. I knew where all the buttons and knobs were and how everything worked. And everything felt so dreamlike, it would have been stupid to be afraid. Of course I could drive. Of course my mother was Amelia Earhart. Of course we were going for a drive in the snow.

“Where are we headed?” she asked, clicking her seat belt in place.

We rolled down the driveway, and I took a left for no reason at all. “Newfoundland,” I said.

Her face brightened. “Oh! That was our starting point for the Friendship flight. Have I told you about that one?”

“Once or twice,” I said. “But why don’t you tell it anyway?”

She did, from the beginning, about how Captain Hilton Railey called her, asking,
Would you like to fly the Atlantic?
How excited she’d been but how she calmly asked for details about the flight. How the project coordinators — George Putnam included — thought she had the right look for it. How Railey was the first person to call her Lady Lindy. How she hadn’t really piloted anything aboard the Friendship — she might as well have been a sack of potatoes — but it was about the opportunity. She’d become the first woman to cross the Atlantic, and look at all that happened as a consequence.

I only heard about every other word. I knew the story already, and I had to focus on the road, which was slowly being obscured by a layer of snow. But more than that, I didn’t want to be distracted from the moment. We were the only ones awake, it seemed. Ours was the first car to drive through the snow. The snow falling looked like tiny, frozen stars. Maybe this was what flying looked like, I thought. All those stars, all that solitude.

“It’s a lovely night,” Mom said suddenly.

“Yeah,” I said, not turning my head to catch her expression. “We haven’t gotten much snow this year.”

She pressed her palm to the window. “I never mind the cold. Usually on flights, I drink hot chocolate to keep warm and awake.” For a minute, she was quiet, and then she gave my shoulder a squeeze, saying, “You’re a solid pilot. You know that? Even in foul weather.”

At first I thought it was a part of her delusion. I was just some other Ninety-Nine, the daring girl pilot of her mind who would win races and fly impossible distances. But then I glimpsed her out of the corner of my eye — she was looking at me so solidly, so tenderly, I wondered if she was thinking of me as something more. Maybe somewhere in her brain, she recognized me. Me, Alex Winchester, her daughter, who fought with her constantly and barely passed driver’s ed and was a general disappointment. Maybe she was actually talking to me, and this was the only way she knew how to say it.

“Thanks,” I said, blinking at the windshield. “I’ve been practicing.”

A gust of cold air filled the car. Mom was rolling down her window. I opened my mouth to ask what she was doing, but then I saw her stick her hand out the window, feeling the air rush against it. Instead of asking her what she was doing or complaining about the cold, I rolled down my window and stuck my hand out, too. It was the first time I’d allowed myself to take a hand off the wheel. For some reason, Mom and I both started giggling. Our laughter and the wind were the only sounds we heard. I reached out as far as I could, trying to catch snowflakes in my palm. It seemed like a better idea to go faster — more snow, more wind. My foot pressed against the gas pedal and soon we were soaring down the street. People in their houses were fast asleep while we were zipping through the snow, laughing all the way. It was our own secret.

Until the car hit a patch of black ice.

The world spun around us. I wanted to scream, but the sound died in my throat. I didn’t know what to do; I’d never learned how to handle ice; I wasn’t even supposed to be driving, really. So I did the only thing my body could do at the moment — slam my foot against the brake. It didn’t matter much. There was a sudden hit and pop, and the car stopped.

For a minute, I didn’t move, in case I’d died and didn’t know it yet. Then I felt my entire body start to shake, and I knew I couldn’t be dead.

“What . . . what happen — ?” I tried to say, but once I could form syllables, my throat swelled and I started to cry.

Mom unbuckled herself and slid her arm around my shoulders. “It’s all right,” she said calmly. “Deep breaths. No one was injured, and that’s the most important thing, right?”

I choked back a sob and nodded. Mom’s voice was so steady that for a moment, I believed she was going to handle this for me. She’d pull it together and help me deal with whoever owned the mailbox I’d just smashed. She’d act like my mom instead of a famous historical figure.

“And it doesn’t seem like the vehicle took much damage, either. With a little maintenance, it’ll be up and flying again soon.”

“Driving!” I looked at her like she’d betrayed me, so she backed off a little. “It’s a car, not a fucking plane.”

“I was just trying —”

“Well, don’t.” It didn’t feel dreamlike anymore. It was cold, and hot tears were blurring my vision, and the car was half on someone’s lawn. I didn’t recognize the house — a blue split-level. Wiping my face with the back of my hand, I stumbled out of the car to assess the damage. One tire completely blown out, a dented bumper, and someone’s totally demolished mailbox. (A mailbox in the shape of a cow. Perfect.)

I kicked the deflated tire. Of course I didn’t remember how to change it. “Dammit.”

Mom had gotten out of the car as well. “It’s not so bad,” she insisted.

I didn’t answer her, just shook my head and sniffled. A few yards away, lights flicked on in the blue house.

“I guess I’ll have to call Dad,” I said, even though I didn’t want to think about what would happen when I did. I’d have to explain why I was out with Mom in the middle of the night. Why I was driving without actually having a license. Why I was driving in the snow. Why I’d crashed. Why it had all seemed so nice until I lost control of the car. Hugging myself on some stranger’s front lawn, I wished I could be anywhere but there. I would rather have been miles under the Pacific Ocean, in the cockpit of a plane, never to be seen again.

I’d never seen Dad so upset. He couldn’t even talk — just kept shaking his head like he had to jostle the information around for a little while. He apologized to the owners of the mailbox, but with me, it was like he had to struggle to get any sound out. And it wasn’t only outside, with the smashed mailbox and banged-up car, either. For a few days after, it was like he tried not to look at me, his eyes glazing over whenever I was in the room. At first I would try to make insignificant conversation — “Weather’s better today ”; “We need more cereal”— but his responses were so brief that after a while I stopped.

He did speak enough to mention that I was grounded for a couple of weeks, and, when I wasn’t at school, I had to call him every hour to let him know I wasn’t destroying the neighborhood. I also wasn’t allowed to see Jim outside of school, not even for driving lessons. Whenever I said I needed to practice, Dad said he’d take me out instead. But we never got near the car.

Things were tense between Mom and Dad, too. They were arguing a lot more: Mom would blame Dad for not paying enough attention to her flight plans. “I can’t do it all myself,” she’d say, and shove charts at him. Usually Dad was calm as he explained that he wasn’t George Putnam and they weren’t planning anything, but now he’d snap a response, and soon they’d be yelling at each other behind their bedroom door.

A little part of me thought that maybe it was a good thing — that Mom was working out whatever issues she had — but I didn’t get my hopes up. Once I warned her that if she tried to fly around the world, she wouldn’t make it home, but she waved me away, claiming I was unnecessarily nervous and that she was taking the proper precautions. I argued that it wasn’t about proper precautions, that it was going to happen, that it had already happened. She started muttering to herself about heading west instead of east, wondering if the weather patterns would be more favorable that way.

No one else seemed worried about her disappearing. Dad looked distracted all the time, and not only because he was upset with me. I would have asked him, but no one was talking about anything. We were all standing still, waiting for things to get worse.

In bed, I would listen for Mom downstairs. More specifically, for the sound of the door opening. For Mom trying to make her exit and vanish forever. Eventually I would fall asleep listening to the sound of maps crinkling and her footsteps on the kitchen floor.