“Swift, you might just need to resign yourself to the fact that we might have to shut down the school. We all have to face the truth.”
“No.” She shook her head for emphasis, even though no one could see her. “I’ll figure out a way. I have to.”
“Mattie, sometimes it’s all right to fail. It’s how you pick yourself up afterward that matters.”
“No, we can’t lose the flight school.” Mattie was now whipping her head back and forth. Some of her hair caught in her mouth, but she barely paid attention. “Alfred wouldn’t want it to leave the family, any more than he’d allow the circus to shut down permanently.”
“Mattie, what your brother wouldwantis for you to live your life,” her father said. “He wouldn’t wish for you to be tied down to any place—any job. You know that, don’t you?”
Mattie ignored her father’s question. The school and the circus were the two things that kept Alfred’s memory alive. “I don’t know if there will be time now for me to create a marketable design and sell it for enough money, but I’ll keep trying. And I’ll figure out other ways to make money.”
“Now don’t go risking yourself or Leo,” her father warned.
“Leo? I wouldn’t ask him to take any risks,” Mattie said, confused as to why he’d been brought into the discussion.
“If you barrel headlong into danger, he’ll be racing to head it off before it can touch you,” her father warned.
“Well, then Leo should just let me stand my own ground. He doesn’t need to play the knight-errant. I’m perfectly capable of fighting myself.”
Her pa was quiet for a moment, and when he finally did speak, he changed the subject. “Is Leo nearby? I should tell him the news too.”
Mattie ran her finger down the cord as she gazed up the stairs and down the hallway to the circular steps that led to the turret where she and Leo were staying. “He went to bed a little early. We have our first show coming up, and I don’t think he’s been sleeping well. You know Leo; he doesn’t say anything, but the skin under his eyes looked a tad dark.”
“Hmm,” her father said, as if he understood something about Leo’s insomnia that Mattie did not. “Well, don’t wake him. You can let him know tomorrow.”
“I will,” Mattie promised. “I need to talk to him anyway about me adding some elements to our act.”
“What elements?” her father asked, his tone cautious but not outright dismissive.
“I don’t know yet,” she admitted as she gazed up at the bronze sculpture of the trapeze artist dangling high above her head. “Something big. Something that will attract attention. Leo and the boys have made some decent money with endorsement deals. Maybe it’s time I got one of those myself.”
“Mattie, don’t go getting yourself killed.”
Had her father—her father—just chided her about beingkilled? They all knew the dangers of aviation and had secret, unspoken fears of dying, especially in a fiery crash. Yet it seemed her family only voiced this hidden concern when it pertained toher, as if she were somehow more vulnerable to gravity and flames.
“Have you just turned into one of my brothers?”
“Mattie, I’m just asking you to exercise some caution, just as I would them.” Her father sighed, his voice soundingreasonable. Mattie hated reasonable.
“Pa, I can’t afford to hold back. We need me to perform better than I ever have before. I also have to soar for the Flying Flappers. We’ve had so many negative articles written about us, including one today, that we have no choice but to take even more risks than a male circus does.”
“Chasing glory often leads you to the opposite place that you thought you were going to go,” her father said sagely. But Mattie was in no mood for advice—sage or otherwise.
“Pa, I am tired, and it has been a long day. Good night.” It was the closest she’d ever come to hanging up on him. Unlike with Jake, she couldn’t click the receiver down on her father, no matter how mad he’d made her. Taking a deep, steadying breath, she slowly hung up the telephone. She took another gulp of air before she marched up the grand staircase. By the time she reached the circular steps leading intothe tower, she was almost running. Tearing up the narrow passage, she’d just reached the landing by Leo’s door when a hoarse, rasping moan stopped her.
Leo’s nightmare began as they all did.
With him alone.
It was a bitter winter in New York, and the cold seeped into the small closet-like space where he’d been locked up for some transgression or another by the head of the orphanage. The Reflecting Room, it was called, a dark, unpleasant place. He’d been forgotten again, left inside the blackness. He knocked, but no one came. A sense of urgency filled him. He was missing something. Not something.Someone.He had to find this person. He had to get free.
And then suddenly he was. But he still wasn’t safe. He was in a poorly lit alley, sleet hitting him—or maybe it was hail. Whatever it was, ice bit into his skin. He was trying to get somewhere. Trying to reach that same person. Angry footsteps thundered toward him, and Leo pressed into an alcove, making himself as small as possible.
Then the dream shifted again. It was dusk now, heading toward twilight. Yet despite the additional illumination, the sense of danger and loss had only intensified. Bullets whooshed by him. The red-nosed airplanes of the elite Jagdgeschwader seemed to surround him. He’d blundered into a trap. Leo turned in the cockpit, trying to findhim, trying to locate Alfred. But all he saw were more and more Fokkers opening fire. He tried to swerve around them, but he had no choice but to engage. He fought like a madman to reach his friend before it was too late. But for every German he downed, there was another in his way, ready to pounce.
Finally, he broke free, only to spy Alfred’s familiar Nieuport zooming in the wrong direction, the plane clearly damaged as it limpedawkwardly through the air like a bird with a broken wing. Even though Leo knew Alfred would never hear him, he shouted out his name. Once. Twice. Thrice.
Then the Albatroses appeared like demons bursting from the setting sun. They winged toward Alfred, all fury, vengeance, and death. The bullets ripped through Alfred’s fuselage, and his nimble craft burst into flames.
