Chapter One
Early June 1923
North of Saint Louis, Missouri
“What do you mean, you’re cancelingourfamily’s flying circus this year?” The words tore from Mattie McAdams like shrapnel ripping through the canvas wing of a biplane.
“We’re out of cash.” Her brother Jake looked uncharacteristically sheepish as he helplessly shrugged.
Mattie squeezed her eyes shut as she painstakingly gathered her patience to deal with not one butthreeolder brothers. In her younger years, she would have just exploded. Now, she at least tried for a bit of calm.
“I knew we were having money troubles, but I didn’t know it was that bad,” Mattie finally managed to grind out with an evenness she didn’t feel. Her other two siblings shifted uncomfortably in their hard straight-backed chairs. Beside them sat their family’s star performer, Leo Ward. The flying ace kept his posture rigid, his boyish features as incongruously stoic as always. Yet Mattie thought she caught a hint of guilt in her former friend’s cobalt-blue eyes. Her father, Walt McAdams, attempted a comforting smile, but even with the bill of his ever-present flatcap obscuring half his face, he couldn’t hide his weariness.
“We didn’t want to worry you, Swift,” her father admitted. The old nickname triggered a poignant ache.
Mattie drummed her fingers against the rough wood. Her father had built the dining set from a hickory tree that he’d felled to clear the original airstrip. Normally touching the solid slab gave her a sense of comfort. The furniture was as stout and steady as the man who’d created it. Mattie had expected her pa’s current overprotective behavior from her brothers but not from him.
“We thought we could turn it around, and we didn’t want you to fret,” Otto, her middle brother, admitted ruefully. Like Mattie, he had their mother’s red hair. He tried to smooth his wavy locks with petroleum jelly, but the stubborn strands always escaped. Today, one curl looped over the middle of his forehead, giving him a comically earnest air. Unfortunately, Mattie was not in the mood to be amused.
“Fret!” Mattie burst out, crossing her arms over her hand-me-down shirt that used to belong to her brother Will. “I don’t fret! It’s the lot of you who act like a bunch of mother hens, always worrying aboutme.”
Her brothers exchanged looks among themselves and then glanced toward Leo. Mattie groaned and beat out an even faster tattoo along a gouge in the hickory wood.
“If we’d told you about the difficulties, you would have tried to fly crazy stunts to bring in an audience.” Will leaned back in his chair, as if his statement explained everything.
In a way, it did. But not how he’d intended.
“Of course I would have!” Mattie jumped to her feet with such force the heavy hickory chair toppled backward. “Flying circuses aren’t as rare as they used to be before the war! We need more dramatic stunts, not less. This was Alfred’s dream. We can’t let it die too.”
Almost unthinkingly, she stopped by her twin’s old chair. The empty one. The one nobody ever used. The one they even avoided looking at. Instead it sat as a dusty, silent monument to their loss. Rarely acknowledged but always there.
A lump swelled in Mattie’s larynx. Swallowing hard against the physical pain, she gripped the back of Alfred’s seat, wishing once again that her twin were still here. He’d understood her. He’d supported her. And he never would have allowed the circus that had permitted both of them to soar through the skies to flop over into financial ruin.
“Mattie,” Leo’s voice came, soft and steady. He rarely spoke during the McAdamses’ discussions, especially the heated ones. The fact that he did so now shocked Mattie as much as it disheartened her. This Leo, this shell of her former friend, would never again champion her desire to perform stunts like he had before the Great War.
“Yes, Leo?” Mattie spoke more sharply than she’d intended, but her frustrations had collided with her old grief, making her raw.
He did not react to her tone—at least not outwardly. But Mattie sensed his momentary pause. As a flight instructor, she’d learned to detect her students’ masked misgivings. Leo had always hidden his trepidations the best, yet somehow, she could still read him the easiest.
When he spoke, his voice was steady, neutral, perfectly balanced despite its hollow ring. “Alfred wouldn’t put you at risk to save his circus.”
A sizzle of rage blazed through Mattie. She was tired, so tired, of being mollycoddled. “I seem to remember Alfredhelpingme sneak into the hangar so I could take one of the planes out when Jake, Otto, and Will said no. In fact, I also recallyoubeing the designated lookout.”
Leo rubbed the back of his head—the only outward indication that her words had meant anything to him. “We were just kids, Mattie. We didn’t fully understand the risks.”
Mattie started striding up and down the room again, feeling trapped inside the wooden structure, as if the thick overhead beams were prison bars. “My comprehension of physics is just the same as it was then. You forget thatIwas the one who taughtyouhow to fly.”
Leo moved his hand even more vigorously against his scalp, causing the chestnut-brown strands to stand up. Fortunately, he didn’t use the popular brilliantine, or his hair would always look an unruly mess.
“I’m not denying your skills as a pilot, Mattie, or that you showed me how to make a bird soar. I still admire what you can do in the air. That hasn’t changed. But I’m not the same fellow who used to pull pranks with you and Alfred before the war.”
No. Leo wasn’t. Very little of the handsome, athletic man before her now reminded her of the scrawny, rawboned kid who’d turned up one day at the flight school offering to do odd jobs in return for her teaching him how to fly. But he’d filled out during his time overseas and now had the muscles to complement his height. But the greatest change hadn’t been physical. Although Leo had always been quiet, he’d returned even more withdrawn. His rare laughter had become a mere wisp of a memory, and worse, he seemed to have assigned himself as her personal protector.
“No,” Mattie said, her voice as jagged as her emotions. Long-buried angry words bubbled forth from Mattie, brought to the surface with the pain of watching her twin’s dream die too. “You’re not the boy I taught to fly, Leo.Thatboy would have allowed me to properly honor my brother in the airplane procession dedicated to Alfred’s memory.Hewouldn’t have ratted me out and got me grounded from the flight.”
“Swift, it was Jake who made the decision not to let you take the stick that day, not Leo.” Mattie’s father broke into the conversation. He rubbed one finger against his chin, his expression more haggard as he once again assumed the role of peacekeeper for their rowdy family.
“Leo was right to tell me that you intended to do a stall maneuver during the memorial service.” Jake folded his arms over his broad chest, ever the oldest sibling.
