The Invitation Read online

  He had the fire going now, and he smiled at her over it. “I like that story. What did Charley say when he got no turkey?”

  She shrugged. “Charley was happy if he had turkey and happy if he had beans. When it came to food, Charley was into quantity, not quality.” She looked up at him. “What’s the worst thing that’s happened to you?”

  William answered without thinking. “Being born rich.”

  Jackie gave a low whistle. “You’d think that was the best thing that had happened to you.”

  “It is. It’s the best and the worst.”

  “I think I can see that.” She was thinking about this as William poured water from a canteen onto a handkerchief and, with his hand cupping her chin, began to clean the wound on the side of her head.

  “What’s your deepest, darkest secret, something that you’ve never told anyone?” he asked.

  “It wouldn’t be a secret if I told.”

  “Do you think I’d tell anyone?”

  She turned her head and looked up at him, at the shadows the firelight cast across his handsome face: dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin, that long Montgomery nose. Maybe it was the unusual circumstances, the dark night surrounding them, the fire at the center, but she felt close to him. “I kissed another man while I was married to Charley,” she whispered.

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s pretty bad in my book. What about you?”

  “I backed out on a contract.”

  “Was that really bad? If you changed your mind…”

  “It was a breach of promise, and she thought it was very bad.”

  “Ah, I see,” Jackie said, smiling as she wrapped her arms around her knees. “What’s your favorite food?”

  “Ice cream.”

  She laughed. “Mine too. Favorite color.”

  “Blue. Yours?”

  She looked up at him. “Blue.”

  He came to sit by her, dusting off his hands. When Jackie shivered in the cool mountain air, he put his arm around her shoulders, as naturally as breathing, and pulled her head to his chest. “Do you mind?”

  Jackie couldn’t even speak. It felt so good to touch another human being. Charley had always been cuddly and affectionate, and she had often sat on his lap, snuggling in his arms, while he read some airplane magazine aloud to her.

  She didn’t realize she was drifting off to sleep until his voice jolted her awake.

  “What’s the biggest regret in your life?” he asked sharply.

  “That I wasn’t born with a few Mae West curves,” she answered quickly. She used to whine to Charley that the guys treated her like one of them because she looked like them: an angular face, with a square jaw, broad shoulders, straight hips, and long legs.

  “You are joking, aren’t you?” William said, his voice full of disbelief. “You’re one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stopped dead in my tracks as I watched you walk down the streets of Chandler.”

  “Really?” she said, now wide awake. “Are you sure you know who I am?”

  “You are the great Jacqueline O’Neill. You’ve won nearly every flying award that is given. You’ve been everywhere in the world. You once were lost for three days in the snow of Montana, but you managed to walk out.”

  “Actually, I rolled down a mountain. It was only by luck that I landed at some cowboys’ camp.”

  He knew she was lying, for he’d read everything written about her at that time. After crashing in a snowstorm, she had made her way out, climbing down the side of a steep mountain by using dead reckoning, by navigating with the faint sunlight during the day and the stars at night. She’d kept her head, often leaving huge arrows made from tree branches in the snow so airplanes looking for her could find her. Smiling, he tightened his arm around her shoulders and was pleased when she moved closer to him.

  “Ah, how do I walk?” she asked tentatively, not wanting to sound as though she were asking for a compliment, which was just what she was doing.

  “With long strides that eat up the earth. Grown men stop what they’re doing just to watch you walk, your shoulders back, your head held high, your beautiful thick hair catching the breeze, your—”

  Jackie started to laugh. “Where have you been all my life?”

  “Right here in Chandler, waiting for the day you would come back.”

  “You might have had to wait forever, because I never thought I would return. I was so restless back then. All I wanted was to get out of this tiny, isolated town. I wanted to move, to go places and see things.”

  “And you got to do that. Was it as good as you thought it would be?”

  “At first it was, but after seven or eight years I began wanting things, like a flower box. I wanted to plant seeds and watch them grow. I wanted to know for sure that where I went to sleep was going to be the place where I woke up.”

  “So after Charley died, you came back to dreary old Chandler.”

  “Yes,” she said, smiling against his chest. “Boring old Chandler where nothing changes and everyone knows everyone else’s business.”

  “Are you happy now?”

  “I—Hey! why am I doing all the answering? What about you? Why haven’t I met you before? But that’s right, it was not a ‘significant meeting.’ I don’t think we have met before, because I would have remembered you.”

  “Thank you. I take that as a compliment.” He moved away from her to throw more wood on the fire. “How about something to eat? A sandwich? Pickles?”

  “Sounds delicious.” She could tell that he didn’t want to discuss their original meeting, and she figured it was because she’d probably snubbed him. She used to do that to men; it saved her pride. She’d tell a boy she wouldn’t be caught dead at a dance with a bullfrog like him rather than tell the truth—that she couldn’t afford a new dress.

  She’d grown up in Chandler. After her father died when she was twelve, her mother, who considered herself a southern belle, had prostrated herself on a fainting couch and spent the next six years there. They had insurance money, and her mother’s brother sent them money, but it was barely enough. It had been left up to Jackie to see that the decaying old house at the edge of town didn’t fall down on top of their heads. While other girls were learning to wear lipstick, Jackie was spending her weekends hammering the roof back on. She chopped wood, built a fence, repaired the porch, built new steps when the first set wore out. She knew how to use a hand saw, but had no idea how to use a nail file.

  One day when Jackie was eighteen an airplane flew overhead, a long banner tied to its tail announcing an air show the next day. Jackie’s mother, who was as healthy as a dandelion in a manicured lawn, decided to have a fainting fit on that day because she didn’t want Jackie to leave her. But Jackie did go, and that was where she met Charley. When he pulled out of town three days later, Jackie was with him. They were married the next week.

  Her mother had gone back to Georgia where her brother refused to put up with her hypochondria and put her to work helping with his six children. Judging from the letters Jackie received until her mother’s death a few years ago, that had been the best thing for her. She had been very happy after she’d left Chandler and gone back to her own people.

  “Twenty years,” Jackie whispered.

  “What?”

  “It was twenty years ago when I left with Charley. Sometimes it seems like yesterday and sometimes it seems like three lifetimes ago.” She looked up at him. “Did we meet back then, before I left with Charley?”

  “Yes,” he said, smiling. “We met then. I adored you, but you never even looked at me.”

  She laughed. “I can believe that. I was so full of youthful pride.”

  “You still are.”

  “Pride maybe, but no longer am I youthful.”

  At that, William looked at her across the fire, and for a moment Jackie thought he was angry at her. She was about to ask him what was wrong when he briskly stepped around the fire,