“But it was Alfred’s signature move and his favorite one!” And it was Mattie’s too. She loved pitching the nose of her plane toward the sun and climbing ever skyward until the magnificent machine slowedto the point where it no longer had sufficient air moving over the wings to maintain control. The craft would stop midair, flop to its side, and begin a glorious, mad spin toward the earth, like a maple seed caught in a tornado.
“It’s a dangerous stunt, even for a man,” Otto said. He was the sibling who looked the most like Alfred, but he had even fairer skin, which tended to flush at the slightest provocation. Right now, he looked redder than a fresh tomato straight from the garden. “You’re our sister, and we don’t want to see you hurt.”
Mattie stopped midpace. “Why is it that if I want to do something, it is nonsense, but if you boys do the same thing, it is bravery?”
“Mattie, you’re a girl.” Will sank his hands into the front of his scraped-back locks, causing the strands to break loose from the petroleum jelly holding them in place. He’d be rearranging his coiffure as soon as he caught sight of himself in the mirror.
She placed her arms akimbo. “So?”
“You should be doing girl things, not purposely stalling your Jenny.” Will tugged on his forelock again, making it even more bedraggled.
Mattie held back a frustrated cry and instead channeled her disgust into a particularly cutting look that she first leveled at the youngest of her surviving brothers and then the older two. “The three of you always say you don’t want me riskingmyneck, but when it comes to performing your own tricks, you have no problems risking yourmanlyones.”
“Stalling a plane is disorienting to every pilot.” Leo spoke quietly, unlike her hotheaded brothers, his voice so annoyinglyreasonable. “I saw more than one ace crash that way during the war when he used the maneuver to fool the enemy into thinking that he’d been hit.”
Mattie threw her hands into the air as she returned to striding through the room. “I always maintain my focus. If you all planned more stunts like that for me, we wouldn’t have the problem drawing crowds. Think of the publicity we could get with a female headliner! I could take over Alfred’s old role instead of Leo.”
Will scratched his temple, breaking more strands of red hair free from their greased confines. “I don’t reckon that a girl flyer would have more draw than a war hero, especially one with Leo’s popularity.”
At the reference to his fame as a daring balloon-busting pilot, Leo cleared his throat uncomfortably and went back to rubbing the back of his head. Mattie knew that he didn’t like the attention he still received from his exploits in the Great War. Even the national papers covered his career. Only her knowledge of Leo’s patent discomfort kept Mattie from angrily striking back at Will’s comment.
“Children,” Mattie’s father interjected, his voice calm yet unyielding as he pushed back on his cap. “This bickering isn’t doing anything but stirring up ill will. It’s not going to fix the matter at hand.”
“I amtryingto offer a solution to make the circus more popular so that wecansave it,” Mattie protested.
“Mattie, we don’t have enough funds to pay for the fuel to get to our second tour stop,” her father admitted as he removed his hat entirely and molded it in his hands. “If we don’t find sources of steadier income, we’re going to lose the flight school too. We’re about to default on the loan.”
Not the flight school.Not the place that held so many memories, where sometimes she swore she could still hear Alfred’s voice when she worked by herself repairing an engine. Not the airfield where she’d first taken to the skies and later executed her first loop. Not the home her father had built himself, where they’d received the news of Alfred’s fatal crash. Not the hangar where the best photograph of her twin hung beside his war medals.
“We can’t let that happen.” Mattie forced the words through suddenly numb lips.
“That’s why I am going to take a job with the US Airmail Service designing mail routes,” Otto said, his skin now flushed in fierce resolution. “It’ll bring in steady dough.”
“I’ve signed on to be an airmail pilot,” Will added as he patted his hair in an attempt to fix the mess he’d made. “Jake is going to be a mechanic on the ground like he was during the war.”
“I’m looking for a job as a test pilot,” Leo said. “I’ll make sure to send money back to help keep the flight school afloat.”
An incongruous mix of frustration and gratitude filled Mattie. Of course Leo would have chosen the most dangerous option, even if it also was the most lucrative.
“Where does that leave me?” Mattie asked, pausing between Leo’s chair and her father’s.
Her father reached up to pat her hand reassuringly. “You and I will run the flight school. It’s about time we started offering classes in the summers again.”
Of course she would be stuck here in Missouri! Just like she’d been during the war. Oh, she’d tried to join as a pilot, first in the French Lafayette Escadrille and then in the US Army Air Corps, but neither country had wanted a female aviator, no matter how talented.
“You can work on your radio designs,” Leo offered.
Tinkering with gadgets and engines was Mattie’s second love. Lately, she’d been trying to figure out how to harness radio signals to improve communications. But too much frustration pumped through her to allow her to concentrate on anything engineering related.
“Just so I can receive another rejection letter from a manufacturer?” Mattie bit out. “No one is interested in a woman’s designs, and they are even less inclined to hire me.”
That was the crux of it. Unlike her brothers and Leo with their military backgrounds and sheermaleness, she was unemployable in the professions that she excelled at.
Suddenly, the pressure of everything—losing the business, losing her main opportunity to dance through the skies, losing her tight-knit family, losingAlfred’s dream—became too much for her. She needed to escape.
“But perhaps you are right,” Mattie added. “Perhaps my designs will produce the miracle we need. It is, at least, one thing that I can try. I need time to think things over, and I do my best considering when I’m tinkering.”
Mustering a smile that she didn’t feel, Mattie nodded toward the assembled McAdamses and Leo and then ducked out the door. She had just started down the long covered passage that connected the main house to the hangar when she heard her name—soft and low, but no less intense for all its quietness. Even if Mattie hadn’t recognized Leo’s voice, she would have known who had followed her. They’d always been able to anticipate each other’s moves.
