But there wasn’t time to figure out the family bond between Ashley and Sal Gag: I had a plane to meet.
Heading south on I-5, I pulled into Sea-Tac Airport’s “cell phone parking lot.” It was a concrete pad that faced some freight terminals, and I found a spot between a silver BMW convertible and a dark green Suburban. In the SUV, children were jumping on the backseat while a pretty blond woman behind the wheel talked on her phone. The solitary man in the Beemer stared straight ahead, stiff as a crash-test dummy.
Turning off the engine, I leaned into my rearview mirror and pretended to put on lip gloss, while making sure there was no black Cadillac following me. But suddenly my mother stared back at me, the memory of how she always checked her lipstick in a compact mirror when we picked up my dad. She wanted to look perfect. The first time she did it was in the Richmond airport. I was seven years old, and until then my idea of long-distance travel had revolved around the Greyhound bus station. Each December we boarded a musty motor coach in Richmond and rode for hours to a remote part of North Carolina to visit my grandmother. The trips always felt long and sad, partly because my grandmother wasn’t a kind person, and partly because of the bus itself. The cloth seats smelled like other people’s beds, and when we arrived at the North Carolina station, nobody was ever there to greet us. On the trip my mother kept her Bible open while my sister, Helen, sketched pictures. I stared out the filmed window, taking in the winter’s bleak and deciduous landscape.
But when my mom married David Harmon, our lives changed completely. For one thing, we never rode the bus again. Instead, we went to the airport. And my mom started checking her makeup. The first time he left it was for some kind of judges’ meeting in Boston. He was gone three days, and I remember thinking that his time was spent walking around Boston in his black robe, carrying his gavel. On the fourth day, my mother drove us to Byrd Airport. We stood with a crowd of strangers, everyone staring at a door marked with one letter and one number.
When the door finally opened, the crowd pressed forward. The plane’s passengers streamed out single file, most of them looking slightly lost. They searched the crowd for familiar faces, until somebody would rush forward, calling out their name. Then hugs. Back slaps. Tears of joy.
My dad was among the last passengers out of the plane. When my mother saw him, she ran forward as though pulled by magnets, and he dropped his briefcase, right there, catching her in his arms and planting a luxurious kiss on her painted lips. When I came up beside them, I heard him humming. A husband harmonizing with his wife. Tuning in to her particular melody.
It was nothing like the Greyhound station.
My sister, Helen, said waiting at the airport gate was “tedious”—a pretentious word for a ten-year-old, foreshadowing of the woman to come—but I leaped at every chance to go. I couldn’t have articulated it then, but there was something about standing with all those people. Everyone breathless with anticipation. So very eager to see someone they loved come through that door. And then the person arriving from long distance, through the narrow gate, and hearing their name called out. Coming home. Tears of joy. Celebration.
Only later did I realize what it was: a hint of heaven.
But nobody waited at the gate these days. Not since nineteen Muslims followed Muhammad’s dictates to the letter and murdered more than three thousand “infidels,” flying our own airplanes into our own skyscrapers. The religious fascists robbed families of spouses, parents, grandparents, children, generations to come. And they turned our airports into charmless bus stations.
No more heaven, and too much earth.
But that was always part of evil’s strategy. Take away the reminders. Help us forget. Remove every indication that a homecoming waited on the other side, that people were pressing forward and we should be straining to hear the ultimate prize—our name called out upon arrival. Homecoming. Tears of joy. Celebration.
Evil wanted us to forget that.
And so I waited in the drearily named “cell phone parking lot” and tried to decide how DeMott could call me when he didn’t carry a cell phone. He’d have to find a pay phone after landing, and the complication sent a niggling annoyance into my neck. To avoid thinking about how much his arcane lifestyle bothered me, I applied another coat of lip gloss. And when my phone rang, I was still holding the gloss and my index finger was sticky, so I slid my pinkie across the screen.
I said, “Your timing is perfect.”
“That’s because I’m perfect.”
I cringed. Jack.
He asked, “How was the lie detector test?”
I glanced over at the Beemer. The driver held a cell phone to his ear, his elbow bent like a mannequin. Over on the right, the Suburban’s kids were pounding on the windows and the woman behind the steering wheel had laid her face in her hands.
“Hang on a sec.” I climbed out of the Ghost and walked across the lot, to where it overlooked the air freight terminals. A dozen brown UPS trucks lined up outside a corrugated steel building while cargo planes painted the same brown color waited on the other side, ready for takeoff. I turned a slow circle, scanning the parking lot. No black Caddy.
“Harmon?”
“The polygraph was ruled inconclusive.”
“Thank me later.”
“For what?”
“Those exciting thoughts. I know that’s what did it.”
I hated lying. I really hated it. But no way this side of heaven would Jack Stephanson hear that he crossed my mind while I stared at that sunset-in-the-mountains poster. Especially when my fiancé was arriving in—I glanced at my watch—six minutes. My heart valves seemed to clutch at each other. I took a deep breath, trying to relax.
“The test came back Deception Indicated. The arson investigator is now convinced I had something to do with that fire. You want me to thank you for that?”
“Speaking of deception,” he said, “Dr. Freud called. He says you tried to skip today’s appointment. He wanted OPR to know.”
A jet came roaring down the runway. I covered my open ear and watched the thing lift off the tarmac. The tail wing had an Eskimo on it, Alaska Airlines.
“Harmon?”
I could barely hear him over the noise. “What?”
“Where are you?”
I watched the small wheels folding into the plane’s underbelly, while another plane came in for a landing on the next strip. The reverse thrust roar rattled the air, raising the hair on my arms.
“Harmon.” He paused. “Are you at the airport?”
Technically, no.
Technically, I was in the cell phone parking lot next to the airport. And the truly pathetic thing was that my life had become so twisted that I kept finding new ways to justify every lie. This time I decided to shut up, hoping sins of omission weren’t as serious as sins of commission.
“Are you all right?” Jack asked.
“I’m fine.”
“You sound stressed.”
I wondered whether I should tell him about the black Cadillac. But what good would that do? It would only add to the things OPR could use against me; they would probably allege it was my fault somebody was tailing the Ghost. “Really. I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not,” he said. “But I can cheer you up.”
I closed my eyes. The irony was, I liked Jerk Jack better. It took more effort to dislike Genuine Jack, the guy who kept peeking from behind the Stephanson facade, pretending to care. That Jack showed up on the cruise ship, a lot. But I wasn’t about to get suckered. It was like making friends with a scorpion. Eventually it was going to sting you.
“I had a little chat with McLeod yesterday,” he was saying. “Seems his wife hauled him to a wine-tasting event. Right there, it’s funny. McLeod, surrounded by Seattle wine snobs. But it gets better. He told me he liked one of the wines. A chardonnay. Because it had a flagrant bouquet.”
I bit my lip, refusing to give him the satisfaction of laughing. “I need you to call the state lab. See if O’Brien has any updates on the forensics.”
“Done,” he said. “McLeod also told me the wine expert was a huge suppository of information.”
I bit down harder. “Ask if they found any clay inside that tube.”
“Got it. And you will be going to your appointment.”
“With Freud?”
“Harmon, you already missed one. The hospital stay was a legitimate excuse. But he says you wouldn’t give a reason why you were canceling tonight. I told him you’d be there.”
I sighed. He was right. Skipping another appointment would heap more misery on me. “Fine. I’ll go. But not tonight. Tell him three o’clock.”
“Okay. Good. But don’t let him see you this stressed out.”
He hung up.
Much as I hated to admit it, McLeod’s malaprops had cheered me up. It reminded me that the suits in charge of my life were human. But after watching airplanes come and go for another fifteen minutes, the good vibe did its own takeoff. Finally, I called Delta and learned that DeMott’s flight from Atlanta was delayed, dropping my mood even further because he had suggested that I check for delays before driving to the airport. And I didn’t. And I knew if he were here right now, we would start arguing about it.
I closed my eyes and sent up prayers that wove between the jets’ sonic roar. Desperate for help. Vulnerable. I confessed everything, honestly. And when my cell phone rang again, my fingertips felt tingly, numb, falling asleep from the tight clasp of my hands.
“Hello?”
“I’m here,” DeMott said.