Free Fall

Twelve

Clear River, North Dakota

A few miles beyond town, a lone wooden hangar rose defiantly from the badlands.

A faint clink of metal against metal signaled life as Robert Cole halted his work on the radial engine of an aging crop duster and climbed down the stepladder.

He dragged his sweaty, greasy forearm across his brow, tossed his wrench on his cluttered workbench next to where he’d left the Minot Daily News. His face was creased with concern over the back-page article he’d read that morning.

Worry pushed down on him as he moved outside the hangar’s open doors to contemplate the earthen airstrip and search the eternal plain. But gazing at the horizon failed to ease his troubled mind about the news story and the direction of his life.

There was a time when he’d had everything. Now it was gone and he was alone with his sins, awash with guilt. A gust peppered him with dry dirt. In his mind, he heard his wife’s laughter, felt her touch and saw her face.

Elizabeth.

Help me. Please. Tell me what I should do.

He thought of her every moment of every day and now, standing alone in the crying, aching wind, he rubbed his dry lips. The bottle in his lunch bucket called to him. It would numb his pain.

That’s not the answer I need now.

He got into his pickup truck and drove through town, passed the strip malls, the municipal buildings, and the old storefronts that evoked the frontier days. Elizabeth had grown up here; her father was a doctor. This was her town and living here gave him some comfort.

He drove south over the rolling rangeland that stretched as far as he could see. Two miles later he turned onto a narrow, paved road that wound into a grove of trees overlooking a creek. A small sign identified the spot as the Riverbend Meadow Cemetery. He parked and made his way through the burial grounds, stopping at the headstone that read “Elizabeth Marie Cole, Beloved Wife and Mother. Died…”

He didn’t need to read further.

The truth hit him as hard as the granite that marked his wife’s grave.

I’m responsible for her death. I destroyed everything I had in this world.

He ran his fingers gently over her gravestone and a breeze rolled up from the river, carrying him through the moments of their lives.

They’d met at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where they’d bumped into each other at a bookstore, which had led to coffee and subsequent dates. She’d thought he was a looker, and he’d loved her smile. Her name was Elizabeth Hyde, and she’d had a scholarship to study medicine. He’d been in engineering. They’d both been reticent, nerdy bookworms.

After they’d graduated, Elizabeth had convinced him to take time off with a nonprofit international aid group. They’d spent a year helping people in poor parts of South America and Africa. When they’d returned, he’d taken her to a beach north of LA, and as the sun set, he’d given her an engagement ring. After they were married, they embarked on their careers. She became a doctor, and he became an engineer.

They got a house in Burbank and in the years that followed, they’d each put in long hours, dedicating themselves to their professions. They’d had trouble starting a family but after nearly a year of treatment, therapies and effort, Elizabeth had become pregnant with their only child, a daughter they’d named Veyda.

She was their miracle, their joy.

As busy professionals, the pressures of their jobs had been constant, but Elizabeth’s priority had been Veyda. He remembered when Elizabeth had stayed up all night when Veyda had had a fever; or when Elizabeth had rushed Veyda to the hospital when she’d fallen from her bicycle; or that time they’d driven through Glendale, at three in the morning, Elizabeth frantic and desperately trying to reach her daughter, who’d passed out drunk after lying about going to a party and missing her ride home.

Yes, Elizabeth and Veyda had had their battles. But Elizabeth had been devoted to Veyda and Veyda had adored Elizabeth. Her mother had been her hero and theirs had been an unbreakable bond.

Yes, and Veyda had loved him, too, coming to him for advice or help solving a problem. But he had tended to be away often, working on projects that demanded his attention 24/7. Even at an early age, Veyda had understood and respected his job. He’d smiled when he’d overheard her telling a friend, My dad’s an engineer. Not the kind who drives trains but the kind who builds planes and makes them fly, which is a lot harder.

Academically, Veyda had taken after her parents, excelling at school. She loved debating subjects, anything from veganism to eugenics, from politics to physics, from mathematics to rock-and-roll history. Her dream was to become a medical doctor, like her mother, and an aeronautical engineer, like her father.

First, I’ll follow Dad’s path and learn all about flight, Veyda had said.

They were so proud when she was accepted at Pepperdine then went on to UC Berkeley and then later to MIT.

But Elizabeth had missed her and lived for their visits, so she’d been ecstatic when Veyda surprised them with a call from Cambridge.

I’ve got a break. I’m coming home for a week!

Elizabeth had adjusted her schedule for the unexpected visit and had hoped he would do the same, but the timing couldn’t have been worse for him. He’d been overwhelmed by the deadlines for a major project, one of the most challenging he’d ever faced. But he’d also wanted to see Veyda as much as possible, so he’d made what adjustments he could to get away from work.

Veyda’s visit had been a happy time. It’d been months since they’d all been together. They’d decided to drive up the coast to a pretty restaurant they liked near Santa Barbara.

Before leaving, he’d checked with work. Serious problems with the project had arisen, but for the moment he’d believed they were manageable, although senior management had just launched a surprise in-depth review of a critical aspect.

Hang on to your hat, Bob, one of the other engineers had texted him just before they’d left.

During the drive, his phone had vibrated with texts, but he’d ignored them. When they got on the 101, his phone had begun to vibrate even more, which had concerned him.

Elizabeth and Veyda had been so deep in conversation that they’d never heard his phone, so he’d decided to do what Elizabeth had forbade: he checked it. He’d done it surreptitiously, taking it out of his left pocket and lowering it on his left side between his left leg and the door. He’d needed to know what management had been saying on the project. Carefully, he’d scrolled through the messages, and he remembered the moment Veyda had said, Oh my God, Mom, the winters in Cambridge are absolutely cruel… Then Elizabeth was shouting, Robert! They’d drifted across another lane and the rear of a slower-moving car had loomed instantly in their windshield, giving him less than a second to register it, twist the wheel violently and stomp on the brake… They’d missed the slower car, but suddenly theirs was lifting, rising and twisting in the air… The car had rolled. His seat belt had cut into him. He remembered Elizabeth and Veyda screaming then air bags exploding, and Elizabeth flying from the car amid glass shattering and metal crunching. The car had rolled and rolled, until it had finally come to a stop, and he’d heard a hissing and smelled gasoline. He’d crawled from the wreck, disoriented, unable to find Elizabeth or Veyda. The car had come to a stop on its roof, and he’d seen…Elizabeth’s shoe…her hand… She’d been pinned under the car. He’d tried lifting, but the car wouldn’t move… Elizabeth had been making gurgling sounds. He’d dropped to his knees, taking her hand the way he’d held it on their first dates…at their wedding…at their daughter’s birth… As he’d held her hand…she’d cried out.

Veyda!

Mom! Veyda had been crawling to them, the whites of her eyes piercing him from between the blood webbing her face.

Elizabeth had squeezed his hand.

Stay with me, Elizabeth! I love you! Stay with me! Please!

Mom!

Veyda had collapsed some ten feet from her mother as he’d felt his wife’s hand going limp… He’d heard sirens…shouting…a helicopter… His family was in pieces and everything was turning black…

Robert Cole was on his knees before his wife’s headstone.

Elizabeth had wanted to be buried here. She’d told him that, years before, when they’d made their wills. The aftermath of the accident and the funeral were a fog of agony. He remembered Veyda kissing her mother’s casket, casting a single rose. She was still scarred and bandaged, standing like an apparition at the grave.

Her glare burned into him, an accusation.

It was all in the police report. He’d been negligent and had committed vehicular manslaughter. Elizabeth’s seat belt had come undone as she’d turned from the passenger seat to talk to her daughter. The driver of the slower car ahead of them-a witness got the plate through dash cam video-had been driving without a license and with alcohol in his blood. Cole had been charged, but his lawyer had got the charge reduced to a misdemeanor and he’d received a light sentence. No jail time. The defendant has suffered a monumental loss by his own hand and will live with the consequences all the days of his life, your honor, his lawyer had said.

Cole never recovered from the tragedy. Elizabeth’s death was like an amputation. Veyda had undergone therapy before returning to school in Massachusetts, but the accident had irrevocably changed both of them.

He’d sold their home in California and moved to North Dakota.

Something had pulled him here, something calling him to be near his wife, to watch over her and to find a path to redemption.

Maybe today he’d found it, he thought, driving back to the hangar.

He picked up the Minot Daily News and reread the article with the interview of the captain of the troubled, New York-bound plane.

It was from one of the newswires.

Yes, this is it.

Cole mixed whiskey into his cold coffee.

The thing he’d feared, the secret thing that had tormented him in the seconds before the car wreck that destroyed his life had now become a reality.

Now he had his answer.

He knew what he had to do.