good faith? She’d need to make sure she didn’t just want to prove he hadn’t won. To show him how in spite of him and people like him, she’d emerged with self-esteem intact. To parade her slender self, no longer in thick-framed glasses or drab don’t-look-at-me clothes. To show him she had the strength to survive worse than anything he’d ever dreamed of dishing out, a tragedy that put his stupid pranks and arrogance into stunning perspective. To be able to confront him in a situation in which, finally, she held all the power.
Kendra would need to check her baggage and her ego at his door. If she couldn’t be genuine in her approach, she’d do neither of them any good.
A red-tailed hawk circled lazily over a fir tree growing partway down the hill, its uppermost needles at eye level where she sat. The bird landed on the treetop, folded its feathers and stood fierce and proud, branch rebounding gently under him.
When Kendra was in elementary school, she’d found a baby hawk on the fire road below their house—how old had she been, seven? Eight? The creature had broken its wing and lay helpless to move, to fly, terrified of the sudden vulnerability.
In spite of his feeble attempts to peck her eyes out, she’d gotten the creature to the house; her mother had helped her transport it to the Humane Society. Kendra had visited often while the hawk healed, naming it Spirit. The staff had invited her to come along when they rereleased Spirit into the wild. She’d watched him soar into the sky and had felt the deep joy that comes from helping a fellow creature heal.
Kendra had thought of that bird often as she’d struggled through the first year after the crash that left her without family except for the much-older brother she’d never had much in common with who lived abroad. And she’d thought about Spirit when she’d decided on her career path, and when she met people made helpless by grief, and when she was first trying to help people who wanted nothing more than to peck her eyes out. Because she knew something they couldn’t grasp yet. That there would be a moment when she could rerelease them into the wilds of a renewed life and watch them soar.
She picked up the phone and dialed Jameson.
2
WE LIVE IN fame or go down in flame. The line from the Air Force song played endlessly in Jameson’s head. Torture. As if he needed more.
He was stretched out on his buddy Mike’s sofa, staring out the window, sick to death of watching TV. Yeah, he’d gone down in flame. Because this sure wasn’t fame, and it could only marginally be called living.
At least Mike had his back, letting him stay at his place so Jameson wouldn’t have to crawl to Mom and Dad. As if his humiliation wasn’t complete enough, moving back home would have about killed him. He’d met Mike at Maxwell during basic officer training, and in one of those stranger-than-fiction coincidences realized he was living in Jameson’s hometown with his wife, Pat, who was with her new-mom sister in Reno. Mike had been assigned to train at Keesler in computer communications at the same time as Jameson, and offered his place after Jameson’s accident. Couldn’t have worked out better.
His cell rang. Again. He didn’t look at it. He hadn’t looked at it last time or the time before that. It was Dad or Mom or Matty or one of his brothers or a friend. They’d make stilted conversation, Matty and Mom oozing sympathetic cheer, his male relatives masking their contempt with endless advice about how to recover faster than he was, friends who didn’t know expressing shock, Air Force friends going on about all the training he was missing.
He laughed bitterly, throat tight, painful weight in his chest, gazing at the sky. Look out there. No clouds. No birds. No planes. A vast nothing, stretching out over the sea. Perfect metaphor for his days since the accident. Over a month of this limbo, first medical leave, now personal. November 4 today, the accident had happened in early September, then surgery, rehabilitation—felt like forever. And it would be if he was one of the unlucky few who didn’t recover post-surgery stability in his knee. The Air Force couldn’t use a man who couldn’t pass their physical test.
He’d done everything right, everything a Cartwright was supposed to do except want to be a flier. He’d majored in computer engineering at Chicago University, a career field in good demand in the Air Force. He’d excelled in his ROTC training, breezed through basic officer training, in both cases earning the friendship and respect of his fellow officers and commanders. His father and brothers were finally looking up to him, in spite of him being the first Cartwright nonpilot. He was on top, poised to continue at Keesler. He’d ace that, too. What could go wrong?
Everything.
He hadn’t seen the damn cat, but he’d sure heard it and felt it. He’d gone down, twisting to one side rather than crush the little bastard, and had torn his ACL—his anterior cruciate ligament, to be precise—clean off the bone, and also damaged his cartilage. Badly. One second in time, a moment he’d take back and redo a hundred different ways if only he could. But, as Dad liked to say, life gave you no do-overs. You had to get everything very right the very first time.
The door buzzer rang, making him jump and curse the intrusion and the surprise. He’d been in town a few days and hadn’t seen anyone. Only his family knew he was back, and he’d made it clear he wasn’t ready for visits from any of them. This must be one of Mike’s friends who didn’t know Mike was training at Keesler. Where Jameson was supposed to be. Working hard, moving forward.
Two months of stagnation. Many, many more months to come.
He hauled himself off the couch, thinking a shower and shave were a good idea sometime this month—maybe for Thanksgiving—adjusted his knee brace, and limped through the living room and dining area to the front door, where he pressed the intercom.
“Yeah?”
“Lieutenant Cartwright?” A woman’s voice.
He stiffened instinctively. Lieutenant? Oh, man. He should not be caught by Air Force personnel looking like such a mess. Why hadn’t they called first?
He hadn’t been answering his phone.
Crap.
But how had she found him? He’d given out his parents’ address here in town.
Dad. Doggone it.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“This is Kendra Lonergan.”
Jameson did a double take. Kendra Lonergan? From high school? She was in the Air Force? He couldn’t imagine it. There must be more than one Kendra Lonergan in the world. “How can I help you, ma’am?”
“Just checking in. I’ve been sent by Major Kornish.”
His orthopedist at Keesler had sent someone here?
“Yes, ma’am.” He pushed the buzzer so she could enter the building and hobbled into the bathroom, where he splashed water on his face, combed his dirty hair, cringing at the coarse stubble on his face, and reapplied deodorant, ashamed of how he’d let himself go. That done, he hesitated in the doorway, wondering if he could make it into the bedroom for a clean shirt before she got to his door. He was still slow moving, slower than he thought he should be by now, and didn’t want to keep her waiting.
Jameson glanced down. Oh, man. Food stains. Clean shirt was a good idea.
In the bedroom, he’d barely gotten his old one off before the knock came, brisk and no-nonsense, four
