The Invitation (Montgomery/Taggert 19)

Jackie had made a good living and a name for herself with barnstorming and thrilling crowds. The more chances she took, the more she got paid—and she was paid very well.

Twists came next. She flipped wing over wing over wing. Quickly she went into a loop, turning in a complete vertical circle. This was followed by her own special creation that someone had called a dippy twist loop, in which she did a twist and a loop at the same time.

When she came out of the dippy, she went into a stall and the world suddenly seemed unnaturally silent until she started the engine again.

Years before, when she was learning to fly, Charley had made sure that she knew how to handle herself in every emergency. He’d made her take off from beaches, roadways, ball parks, racetracks. She’d had to fly right-side up, upside down, in crosswinds, tailwinds, no wind. He’d taught her how to handle a fire on board and ice on the wings. When there was thick fog between her and the ground, he’d shown her how to orient herself by burning a hole in the fog with her engine heat. He’d taught her how to land on water and what to do if she was swept out to sea.

She decided to show William nearly everything she’d learned. She raced around tall trees, calculating the distance between them by inches. One miscalculation and the wings would have been torn off. The moment she was through the trees, she did a couple of snap rolls. Nailing the nose to the horizon, she did several three hundred and sixty degree lateral turns, one after another, coming out about a quarter of an inch before she would have flown smack into a mountain.

About a week after she ran off with Charley, during which time he’d rarely let her out of a pl

ane, he’d said, “Kid, you got a gyroscope in your head. If you’re upside down and backwards it’s all the same to you. You know where you’re going.” Now Jackie flew upside down for a while, maneuvering through the trees with her head pointed toward the ground.

She knew she was getting low on gas so she headed back to Eternity, writing her name in the sky as she went. Skywriting lost something with no flares attached to the tail of the plane, but the motion was the same.

As she hit the hard-packed runway in Eternity, the engine died from lack of gas. Perfect, she thought. She had calculated perfectly. Charley would have been proud of her.

After Jackie landed the plane, William stayed in his seat, not moving, his head back, his eyes closed, and she could see that he was fighting hard not to be ill. There weren’t many people who could go through what William had just experienced and not lose a meal. But somehow he was managing to control his stomach.

Standing up, Jackie reached her hand out to him, and briefly—very briefly—he opened his eyes to glance at her, then gave a faint shake of his head. He was not going to accept her offer of a steadying hand when he disembarked.

On the ground, Jackie politely looked away as he somehow climbed down from the plane without anyone’s help. When she turned to look at him his face was white, his skin clammy-looking, and he wasn’t too steady on his feet.

“All right, Jackie,” he said solemnly, as he took a deep breath, working hard to control his nausea. “You win. I’ll pack my bags and leave. I’ll be out of here in a matter of hours.”

Now that she’d done what she planned, she couldn’t help feeling bad. She didn’t want to discontinue their friendship; she just wanted him out of her house and out of her life on a daily basis. “William, I…”

When he turned to look at her, his eyes blazed, and his white skin was tinged with the deep glow of anger. No, there was more in his eyes than anger; there was rage. Old-fashioned life-endangering rage.

When he spoke, his voice was very soft and very quiet. “So now I guess you’ll tell me you want to be friends. That you’ve always had a high regard for me and you’ll always treasure my friendship.” He took a step toward her, looming over her. “I don’t want your friendship, Jackie. I never wanted your friendship. Since I was a little boy I’ve wanted your love.”

At that statement she made the mistake of giving the slightest smile, and that smile seemed to make something in William break. Even as a child he had been mild-mannered and sweet-tempered, but now he seemed to turn into something fierce, something dangerous. When he took a step toward her, she stepped back.

“Does my wanting your love amuse you? Is it something to make you laugh? Stupid little Billy Montgomery following tall, eccentric Jackie O’Neill around. Oh, yes, you’ve always been eccentric. Even as a child you were different from everyone else. The other kids were trying their best to be carbon copies of each other, but not you. Oh, I know you thought that what you wanted was to wear the latest fashions and be part of the group, but the truth was, you loved climbing on your mother’s roof and hammering the tiles in place. You loved having an excuse to get away from the other kids in your class so you could do exactly what you wanted to do. When you were sixteen and no girl would be caught dead climbing trees and swinging on ropes, you were doing those things. You have always done what you wanted and the rest of the world be damned.”

He wasn’t presenting a very pretty picture of her. He made her sound odd and selfish. She opened her mouth to speak, but he leaned over her until her back was bent.

“And I loved you for having the courage to be who you were. You didn’t try to conform. In this town where everyone knows everyone else, you found a way, an excuse, to be who you wanted to be. You found a way to do what you wanted to do. And when an opportunity came for you to get out of here, you didn’t hesitate, you took that opening. No fear, no second thoughts, not even a backward glance. You saw what you wanted and you went after it.

“I loved that in you, Jackie. I may have been a little boy, but I saw quite clearly what you were and what you were going to do, and I loved you for it. I’m a man now and I know that what I felt then wasn’t puppy love. I don’t have any way to explain it. I loved you as a man then, and that’s the way I love you now.”

“Now?” she whispered, looking into his eyes. It certainly was difficult to think of him as a child at this moment.

“Yes, now! Maybe we’re alike but in opposite ways. Since the first time I saw you I have loved you. I was just five years old when my mother opened the door to you. You stood there, fifteen years old, too tall, too thin, your hair hanging in your eyes because you’d been in too much of a hurry to tie it back. You were pretty in an obscure way, but you weren’t going to make any man’s heart stop beating. You very nearly made mine stop, though. I looked up at you and I fell in love with you, and I’ve never stopped loving you since.”

He seemed to grow taller as he leaned over her even farther. “I was the one who got my father to establish the Taggie, hoping to entice you back to Chandler. I was the one who had my father write to you after Charley died and ask you to start a flying service for our family. I anonymously sponsored six air shows for you and Charley at times when I knew that Charley had drunk your funds away. It was my uncle who pointed out to the president your good deed in saving the burn victims.”

She was blinking at him. “You?” was all that she could whisper.

“Yes, me. I have loved you always. Always. Without hesitation. Just as you took one look at an airplane and knew that flying was what you were supposed to do in life, I took one look at you and knew that you and I were meant to be together. I’ve dated very few women. I’ve never been to bed with a woman because I felt I would have been betraying you. I waited for you, and while I was waiting, I took care of you to the best of my ability.”

Suddenly he straightened and glared at her. “And now this. You.”

The way he said “you” made her skin crawl.

“I misjudged you. I thought you had a spine. I thought you had the courage of your convictions. You could run away with a man twice your age and thumb your nose at an entire town. You learned to fly an airplane better than any man alive, and you can laugh at the idea that a man is equal to you. You swung on tree branches when other girls were afraid to get their hair wet. You can do whatever you want in life. You live life exactly how you want, without thought for what the rest of the world thinks, but when it comes to loving, you’re a coward. You’re ready to throw me away merely because our drivers’ licenses say we’re different ages.”

She started to defend herself, but he wouldn’t allow it.