From Out Of The Blue. Nadia Nichols
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discussion.”
There was another long silence as they both stared out the windshield, then her mother pulled a tissue out of the box and blew her nose. “I think that’s very selfish of you,” she said.
Kate exhaled an exasperated breath. “How so?”
“Think how much your father would have missed if he’d never known you.”
“That’s different. The two of you were in love. You were married. You wanted to have a child together. You planned me.”
“I can’t imagine you’d have slept with just anyone no matter how ‘sexually deprived’ you were at the time. You’re too smart and independent minded. Besides, if the worst happens, what are we supposed to tell your son when he asks us about his father? This is something we need to know, Kate. It’s important.”
“As soon as he figured out there was suppose to be a daddy in his life, I told him his father died in a plane crash. He never asks anymore, so you don’t have to worry.”
“Why didn’t you just tell him the truth?”
“That his mother hopped into the sack with a man she’d just met and hasn’t seen since that night? What point would that serve?” Kate felt her heart rate accelerate as she fought to keep her cool. “Okay, here’s the deal. You want to know who this guy is? I’ll tell you. His name is Mitchell McCray. He was a major in the air force when I met him, stationed at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska. I have no idea where he is now, but worst-case scenario, you could contact the base and find out. Just promise me you’ll never, ever hand my son over to a man you don’t even know.”
Her mother sat for a few moments, digesting this. “When were you in Alaska?”
“Well, Mom, we Navy types jump ship once in a while, especially when we’re feeling the need for…company.”
“And he never tried to contact you afterward?”
“He sent me one letter.”
“What did it say?”
“I don’t know. I never opened it.”
“Weren’t you the least bit curious?”
“No.” Kate felt her stomach muscles tighten as she recalled getting that letter at mail call one month into a blue water ops and just two days before the ship’s doctor had informed her she was pregnant. She’d seen the name and return address scrawled in the upper left-hand corner and felt a jolt of shock when she realized who it was from. The letter had been forwarded twice, the initial posting having been made three weeks earlier. She had stared at it for a few breathless moments, her cheeks burning as she remembered her shameless behavior with a virtual stranger, then flung it off the flight deck unopened. “It’s not like we had a long-term relationship, Mom. It was just one night.”
“Still, I think you should look him up.”
“Just call him on the phone, ask him if he remembers me, then tell him he has a son?”
“He deserves to know. You also need to find out his medical history and that of his family. That will be important information for Hayden to have.”
“What if he turns out to be a jerk?”
“I’m your mother, Kate. I know you. If this guy won your heart for even one night, he must have been something else. I suspect that’s also why you ran away from him so fast and never told him about Hayden and never opened that letter. A relationship would’ve complicated your life and distracted you from your goals.”
Kate opened her mouth to reply, then shut it again. She hated it when her mother talked to her in that tone of voice, but arguing with her would only prolong the lecture. She hesitated, then tried another approach. “It’s been over four years. He could be dead, for all I know.”
“I doubt that. Kate, your father is sixty-four and I’m sixty-two,” her mother continued. “By the time Hayden graduates from high school, we’ll be soaking our dentures in whitening solution and using canes and walkers to get around. We may not live to see him graduate from college. Then he won’t have any family to cheer him on or to fall back on in tough times. He’ll be all alone. Of course, we’ll take care of him if, God forbid, anything ever happens to you, and we’ll love him and cherish him and protect him for as long as we can, but that might not be for all that long.”
Kate fought to control her emotions, but realized she’d failed when the road ahead blurred and her mother handed her a wad of tissues.
“You told me this man wasn’t a part of your life, but Kate, if he hadn’t cared about you, he wouldn’t have written that letter. You still have the opportunity to give Hayden the father he deserves. Just think about it.”
THEY SPENT the final night in a little roadside motel and ate an early supper of burgers and fries at the adjacent diner. After her mother and Hayden had fallen asleep, Kate left the room and walked beneath the overhang to where the soda machine hummed and moths dashed themselves to death against the bare lightbulb burning above. She fed coins into the machine and pushed the button for iced tea. There was a crashing thump as the can landed in the dispenser, but she left it there because iced tea wasn’t what she’d really come out here for.
She’d come to think about what her mother had said about Hayden deserving a father and Mitch deserving to know he had a son. Why did mothers always have to be right?
Mitchell McCray. For years she’d tried not to think about him, but as her son grew, that became increasingly impossible. Hayden looked way too much like his father. She tried to forget how she’d behaved that night because a part of her just couldn’t believe Mitch had so easily, so effortlessly, swept her off her feet.
She’d been at Midway for a week of gunnery training and was planning to refuel at Adak en route to Mirimar when the winds became so severe they actually toppled a construction crane on the base. After she’d made two unsuccessful attempts at landing with wind gusts topping one hundred knots, Adak tower told her the only chance of putting her Hornet down was at Eielson. All of Alaska was snowed in by the storm and the weather was so bad no tanker was available for her to refuel, but they told her the winds weren’t quite as severe in the interior.
Good luck, they’d said.
She knew she’d need it. Eielson Air Force Base was 1,358 miles from Adak. She programmed the identifier for Eielson into her inertial navigation system and turned on the autopilot, realizing that if she made it there, it would be a miracle. A far more likely scenario was that she’d run out of fuel, eject from the plane and freeze to death before hitting the ground in her chute. Meanwhile, until that happened, she’d keep pulling the power back and climbing for altitude until it was time to start her descent to Eielson. The only thing in her favor was the wind. She was riding a jet stream of 160 miles per hour and, as it turned out, it was enough of a boost to get her to her destination just before engine flameout.
The landing was bumpy, and for a few moments after she brought the plane to a stop, she could do nothing more than slump in her seat while her heart rate slowed and the adrenaline oozed out of her. A man emerged from the nearest hangar and wrestled a yellow ladder through six inches of snow, pushing for all he was worth while twisting his upper body away from the bite of the wicked gusts. As he approached, she stirred herself back to life, popped the canopy and was un-buckling her harness when he climbed up the ladder to help her out of the cockpit. In the rapidly waning daylight she could see his dark hair whipping across his forehead.
“Welcome to the North Pole!” he called over the shriek of the wind. “You must be one of those fancy naval aviators we’ve heard rumors about. What happened? You lose your boat in the storm?”
He knew, of course, the reason behind her emergency landing at Eielson. He was just being a wiseass. When she pulled off her helmet and he realized he was talking to a woman, he backed away to read the name painted on the side of her canopy. “Well, Lieutenant K. C. Jones, that was one hot shit landing you just made in hurricane-force winds with zero visibility