Chapter 5

The drive from Seattle to Bend took roughly six hours.

The farther south I went, the less it rained.

The gray of the city gave way, little by little, to mountains and pine forests. Dry grassy hillsides began to line the road.

By evening, I reached the cabin by the river.

The landlord had left the key in the lockbox by the door, along with a bottle of milk and a note in the fridge.

"Welcome to Bend. It gets cold at night. Remember to close the windows."

The cabin was small. One bedroom, and a living room with a fireplace.

I set the two suitcases down. The first thing I reached for wasn't my clothes. It was the logbook.

The next morning, I went to the flight school.

The instructor who met me was named Rachel. She was in her forties, spoke quickly, and wore her hair pulled back in a short ponytail.

She went through my old logbook, then had me take a basic knowledge assessment.

"You've been out for seven years," she said.

"Yes."

"A lot of your records can't carry over. You'll need a new medical exam too."

"I know."

She looked at me.

"It'll be expensive, and it'll be slow."

"I know."

"Why come back now?"

I ran my fingers over the cover of the logbook.

"I want freedom. Real freedom."

Rachel didn't ask anything more.

She scheduled my medical exam, ground refresher course, and a first familiarization flight.

That morning, I took a refresher knowledge assessment in a tiny classroom.

Wind direction, weight and balance, emergency procedures. Some of it I remembered; some had gone rusty. The last page was a route decision question. I hesitated for a long time, then went with my own judgment and chose the diversion.

Rachel reviewed my answers and said only, "Knowledge can be relearned. Your judgment is still there."

When I heard that, I realized my shoulders had been tensed the whole time.

When I signed the forms, my hand was steady.

That night, I called Mia.

When she heard I'd enrolled, she cursed Ethan out first, then asked if I was scared.

"Yes," I said.

"And you're still going to fly?"

"Being scared and not flying are two different things."

She was quiet for a moment, then said, "That sounds like the old you."

I hung up and placed the logbook on the nightstand.

That was the first time I fell asleep without waiting for a text saying his flight had landed.

...

Back in Seattle, Ethan flew with Skyler for her exam and didn't come home until several days later.

When he opened the door, the house was pitch black.

He frowned and called my name.

No answer.

"Nora, quit playing around."

His voice echoed through the living room and fell back into the empty house.

The lighting system recognized his voice and switched on automatically.

The screen displayed a single administrator.

Ethan Cole.

My name was gone. The landing-day schedule I'd set up was gone. The medication reminder he was used to hearing was gone.

Standing at the control panel, he realized for the first time that the system had once had another owner.

My slippers were gone from the shoe cabinet.

My coasters were gone from the coffee table.

No toothbrush in the bathroom. Two sections of the closet were empty.

He searched room by room, moving faster with each one.

"The house, the car, living expenses. What didn't I give her?"

It sounded like he was asking someone. It also sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

Then he pulled open the bottom drawer of the nightstand.

The logbook was gone.

The ultrasound report was gone too.

Everything else he could explain away as me throwing a tantrum.

But not those two things.

I had taken the logbook he had closed and the child he had never even known about.

Ethan rushed to the study and opened his computer.

His browsing history showed the Bend flight school's enrollment page, and his inbox contained my course confirmation from three days earlier.

He pulled up my vehicle toll records. They led straight to Oregon.

I hadn't gone to my parents'. I wasn't sitting in a hotel waiting for him to come coax me back.

I had gone to fly.

A piece of paper sat on the corner of the coffee table.

The words on it were brief.

"I took my wings back. I'll complete the solo flight missing from my logbook myself in Bend. You must have seen the date on the ultrasound report by now. Don't come looking for me. I don't need you to make amends for any part of my past."

Ethan's fingers slowly tightened around the note.

He thought of the old ER bill.

He thought of the surgical consent form I'd mentioned at the door of the celebration dinner.

Only then, for the first time, did he connect the D&C with a pregnancy.

But he still couldn't piece together the full truth.

He grabbed his phone and called Mia.

The phone rang for a long time before she picked up.

Mia didn't ask what he wanted.

She just let out a quiet laugh on the other end.

"Captain Cole. Finally done flying with your little Lark?"