The Invitation (Montgomery/Taggert 19)

“No,” she whispered. She liked his voice, liked the air of authority in it. He made her feel as though he’d take care of everything, including her.

“I was planning to spend the night out here, so no one will look for me either,” he said. “While I’m gone, I want you to stay awake, do you hear me? If your head is concussed and you go to sleep, you might not wake up again. Understand?”

Dreamily, Jackie nodded and watched him walk away. Very good looking man, she thought as she lay down on the ground and promptly went to sleep.

Mere seconds later he was shaking her. “Jackie! Jacqueline!” he said over and over until she reluctantly opened her eyes and looked up at him.

“How do you know my name?” she asked. “Have we met before? I’ve met so many Montgomerys that I can’t keep them straight. Bill, did you say your name was?”

“William,” he said firmly, “and, yes, we’ve met before, but I’m sure you wouldn’t remember. It wasn’t a significant meeting.”

“ ‘Significant meeting,’ ” she said, closing her eyes again, but William sat her up, draped a blanket around her shoulders, then rubbed her hands.

“Stay awake, Jackie,” he said, and she recognized it for the order it was. “Stay awake and talk to me. Tell me about Charley.”

At the mention of her late husband, she stopped smiling. “Charley died two years ago.”

William was trying to collect wood and watch her at the same time. The light was fading quickly, and he had difficulty seeing the pieces of cholla on the ground, as well as the deadfall. He had met her husband many times, and he’d liked him very much: a big, robust gray-haired man who laughed a lot, talked a lot, drank a lot, and could fly anything that could be flown.

Now, looking at her, drowsy, he knew he needed to warm her up, get some food inside her, and make her stay awake. Right now she was in a state of shock, and that, combined with her injury, might keep her from seeing another dawn.

“Jackie!” he said sharply. “What’s the biggest lie you ever told?”

“I don’t lie,” she said dreamily. “Can’t keep them straight. Always get caught.”

“Sure you lie. Everybody lies. You tell a woman her hat is nice when it’s hideous. I didn’t ask you if you had lied or not; I just want to know what your biggest lie was.” He was stacking up what wood he could find as he questioned her, his voice loud; he couldn’t let her sleep.

“I used to lie to my mother about where I was.”

“You can do better than that.”

When she spoke, her voice was so soft he could barely hear her. “I told Charley I loved him.”

“And you didn’t love him?” William encouraged her to talk as he dropped a pile of wood near her feet.

“Not at first. He was older than me, twenty-one years older, and at first I thought of him as a father. I used to skip school and spend the afternoons with him and the airplanes. I loved planes from the first moment I saw them.”

“So you married Charley to get near the planes.”

“Yes,” she said, her voice heavy with guilt. She sat upright and put her hand to her bloody head, but William brushed her hand away and turned her face up toward his as he used his handkerchief to wipe away the blood.

After he’d reassured himself and her that the cut on the side of her head was minor, he said, “Go on. When did you realize that you loved him?”

“I didn’t think about it one way or another until after we’d been married about five years. Charley’s plane was lost in a snowstorm, and when I thought I might never see him again, I found out how much I loved him.”

After a moment of silence she looked at him as he bent over the wood he was trying to coax into a fire. “What about you?”

“I didn’t once tell Charley I loved him.”

Jackie smiled. “No, what’s the biggest lie you ever told?”

“I told my father it wasn’t me who dented the fender of the car.”

“Mmm,” said Jackie, becoming a little more alert. “That’s not a very horrible lie. Can’t you come up with something better?”

“I told my mother I wasn’t the one who’d eaten the whole strawberry pie. I told my brother that my sister had broken his slingshot. I told—”

“Okay, okay,” Jackie said, laughing. “I get the picture. You’re a consummate liar. All right, I have one for you. What’s the worst thing a woman can say to a man?”