The Invitation Read online

  There was instant silence in the room. Only William seemed to be at ease as he took Arnold’s hand and shook it. “I am hoping to persuade Jackie to marry me,” he said smoothly, seemingly unperturbed by what had just been said.

  As for Jackie, she wished the floor would open so she could sink down inside the earth and never be seen again. Turning on her heel, she walked out of the room, ignoring Arnold’s apologies ringing out behind her and the group’s pleas for her to return.

  When she got outside, she wasn’t surprised to feel William’s hand on her arm. He was trying to make her stop walking, but she meant to get into a plane, as that was the only place where she felt really safe.

  “Jackie,” William was saying, “the man is half drunk, and even sober I doubt if he can see past the end of his nose.”

  “He could see what everyone else can see.”

  William grabbed her shoulders. “Jackie, I’ve had about all of this I can take. I love you. I love you. I don’t care how old you are, what race you are, whether you’re fat or skinny. I love what’s inside you.” When she didn’t respond, he dropped his hands from her shoulders. “But it’s your decision,” he said, and his voice was cold. “You have to decide.”

  She moved away from him and kept walking toward the plane, and within minutes she was airborne.

  If William thought she had flown recklessly the day she took him out, he would have been horrified to see her now. She buzzed trees, flying so low that the top branches scraped the plane. She flew straight toward a mountain, not knowing until the moment she pulled up whether she was going to miss it or not. When the plane, its engine straining, almost didn’t make it, part of her didn’t care.

  She flew for hours, right side up, upside down, sideways, every which way the plane would turn.

  When she ran out of gas she was at ten thousand feet and hovering over a mountaintop. Below her was a flat, treeless meadow, and she dropped the plane onto it, neither knowing nor caring whether she would overshoot it and plunge over the side of the mountain into oblivion.

  She made the landing, the nose hanging over the mountain, the wheels at the very edge of the precipice.

  For a moment after the engine sputtered to death, she sat where she was, leaning her head back, her eyes closed beneath her goggles. She was on top of a mountain with an empty fuel tank, and the only way out was to walk down and climb back up with a can of gas.

  She got out of the plane, but she didn’t start down the mountain. Instead, she sat down on the edge of the cliff, looking out over the long, magnificent view and waited for some wisdom to come to her.

  No wisdom struck her, but hail did. In the late afternoon the skies opened up and hailstones came down on her head. Jackie moved under the wing of the plane.

  When night fell, she curled up in a ball, pulled about her the leather clothes she’d quickly donned before going up and dozed some. She still couldn’t think. In fact, she hoped she’d never think again. She wished she could go back to the time when life was easy, when she was younger and knew all the answers.

  Early the next morning she wasn’t surprised to hear a plane approaching. Of course William would look for her. Didn’t he always rescue her? He was always there to save her, whether she needed money or stitches or help in dealing with intrusive people. When the plane was directly overhead, she stepped out from under her own aircraft and waved to the pilot, letting him know that she was unharmed. In reply, he waggled his wings, so she knew she’d been seen. From this distance the pilot looked to be one of Charley’s friends. Feeling guilty for having caused so much trouble, she realized that William would have put all of them to work in the search for her.

  She was hungry and tired and knew she was being a great bother to a lot of people who were worried about her, but she still didn’t start down the mountain. And she hoped that no one would come after her. Especially not William. Right now she needed to think.

  Only she couldn’t seem to think. There were too many voices inside her head. There was William’s voice, urgent and imploring. There was Charley’s voice saying, “What will it matter a hundred years from now?” There was Arnold’s voice and Terri’s voice. How Terri’s voice echoed in her head!

  But most of all there was Jackie’s own voice. He will want a younger woman. He deserves better. He deserves a woman who can give him a houseful of children.

  “Stop it!” she said, putting her hands to her ears. Why couldn’t she hear what she’d told Terri? How wise she had been then, so very wise. She’d said all the right things. So why didn’t she believe them?

  It was late afternoon, and she was light-headed with hunger. She knew she should head down the mountain, but still she didn’t go. Still she hadn’t made a decision.

  When she heard the unmistakable sound of someone coming up an old elk trail to the top of the mountain, she knew without a doubt it was William. With her jaw set, her arms folded across her chest, she braced herself to wait for him. What was she going to say to him?

  To her utter disbelief, she saw, not William, but his soft, plump mother, Nellie, struggling up the mountain, a huge, heavy picnic basket under her arm.

  It took Jackie a few moments to recover herself, and for a moment she thought she was having hallucinations.

  But Nellie’s words made her react. “I do believe I’m having a heart attack,” she said, a smile on her lips. Then she slowly sank to the ground.

  Chapter Twelve

  Nellie was not having a heart attack. She was just not used to climbing, and the exertion combined with the altitude was making her feel that she was dying. For several busy moments Jackie’s attention was off herself and on Nellie, but within minutes they were sitting in the shade of the wing of the plane and eating from the prodigious amount of food Nellie had hauled up the mountain.

  Patiently, Jackie waited for the lecture to begin. But Nellie said nothing about William or about the two of them together. She commented on the weather and the fact that Jackie’s plane was nearly over the edge of the mountain, but didn’t mention anything important.

  Finally, Jackie could no longer wait for the lecture to begin. “You think I’m stupid, don’t you?”

  Nellie didn’t seem fazed by Jackie’s abruptness. “No, dear, I think you are one of the finest young women I have ever met.”

  Jackie snorted in reply.

  Nellie didn’t seem to notice her sarcasm. Instead, she changed the subject. “Why won’t you enter the Taggie?”

  Jackie smiled. She could refuse to tell William, but not his mother. “I don’t like being a celebrity, and I hate instrument flying, which is what flying has become today. You don’t need talent, you need a degree in mathematics. In a few more years people like William are going to be better fliers than I am.”

  Nellie smiled at the innocent conceit in Jackie’s words.

  “Why don’t you want to marry my son?”

  So, Jackie thought, here it was. “A lot of reasons. For one thing, he deserves better. And then there’s my vanity. I don’t like all the gossip and the talk.”

  Nellie laughed. “You have indeed stirred up a lot of talk. My poor husband can’t walk down the street without someone telling him the latest bit of gossip about two unmarried people being in bed together. You have scandalized all of Chandler. I’m sure you must be the first couple in this town to jump the gun.”

  Jackie turned red with embarrassment and looked down at the ground.

  “You know what they’re saying now? That maybe something was going on between the two of you when you were children.”

  Jackie blinked a couple of times at that. “What?”

  “Yes. Mrs. Beasley says that the bond between you and my son all those years ago was not natural.”

  Jackie opened her mouth to speak, but then closed it. Then she began to laugh. “But William was a child! And a pest. An absolute pest. I did everything to get rid of him. If that isn’t natural, I don’t know what is.”

  “Did you try to get a