Sea of Fire

Chapter Seventy-Four

When Darling reentered the aircraft, he asked pilot Shawn Daniels to join him in the cabin. The captain exited the flight deck.

"Is everything all right, sir?" Daniels asked as he slipped on his cap and made sure his tie was straight. "Are you all right?"

"I am…" he said, but then his voice trailed off. How could he explain to this man what he had just lost? His empire. His dreams. His self-respect.

Copilot Kristin Bedard was already in the cabin. She was sitting with Jessica-Ann. The young girl was awake now and talking to the copilot. They were making up voices for the two prehistoric animals that made up the Darling Enterprises logo. The flying pterosaur and seagoing ichthyosaurus were painted on the bulkhead wall of the Learjet. It had always been Darling's notion that if you mastered the air and sea, you controlled the land.

Copilot Bedard rose when Jervis Darling arrived. He sat in the seat beside his daughter. Daniels and Bedard moved several feet away. They stood with their backs to the two. Darling touched the tip of his daughter's nose. He used to do that when she was a baby. He smiled as she twitched.

"Daddy?"

"I'm here," Darling said. "Did you have a nice sleep?"

The girl nodded. She gently scratched her nose with her forearm.

"I want to ask you something," Darling said. "I want to know if you are happy, sweetie."

The girl nodded again.

"What are you happiest about?" her father asked. His voice was soft, hardly more than a whisper.

She was silent. He could not tell if she was thinking or falling back to sleep. Then she suddenly said, "Frenchie."

"Your pony?" That was not what Darling had meant, but he went with her lead. "Frenchie is nice, isn't she?"

Jessica-Ann nodded once.

"And the thing that I'm least happy about are the dinosaurs," she added before her father could rephrase the question.

"Why?" Darling asked.

"They scare me," Jessica-Ann replied.

"They shouldn't," Darling said.

"They do."

"I told you that a lot of them were very peaceable. Do you remember which ones?"

"The plant eaters," she said.

"Right," he smiled.

"But they could step on you by accident," Jessica-Ann said. She was more animated now.

"They would never have done that," Darling said. "They had young ones all around. They were very smart, and they were very careful."

And they are all gone, he thought. They were so successful for so long. Many were large and powerful. Yet they were annihilated. It was an inevitability of nature.

Darling touched his daughter's cheek with the back of a finger. "I'm glad you like your pony, Jess. But I guess what I really want to know is if you have a happy life."

"You mean everything?"

"Yes," he smiled.

The young girl nodded vigorously.

"I'm glad," he said.

"Now can you tell me something?" she asked, looking up at him.

"Of course," he replied.

"Where are we going?"

Darling felt tears pressure the backs of his eyes. Tears crept around to the front. He nonchalantly touched them away with his fingertips.

"Actually, sweetie, I'm going somewhere," Darling told her. "I've got a big job for you."

"Okay." She made a face. Her brows dipped. "Daddy, I think someone's knocking on the door."

"Don't you worry about that," Darling said. "What I need you to do right now is go home with Shawn and Kristin."

"Go home? That's not a job," she said.

"It is," Darling said. "A very important one. You're to go home with them and tell Andrew something. Tell him that Daddy has to go somewhere, and you could not go."

"Where are you going?"

"Where do you think?" he asked.

Jessica-Ann thought for a moment. "To visit Mommy?"

Darling started slightly. That caught him off guard. The young girl looked up at him.

"What made you say that?" he asked.

"Your voice sounds the same as it did when you told me Mommy had her accident," the girl replied. "Are you going to her grave?"

"No," Darling said. "There's something else I have to do." He helped her sit up as he eased from the seat. Still holding her hand, he had her stand on the cushion. "Give Daddy a hug," he said as he put his arms around her.

She wrapped her lean arms around his shoulders and put her head on his chest.

Darling could smell the shampoo she had used the night before. Apricot, he thought. He remembered when Jessica-Ann was much younger. Her mother would frequently go out for the night, often longer, and he would give their daughter a bath. He would wash her hair. Then he would put her to bed. Now she was doing those things herself.

When had that happened?

What matters is that it did happen, he told himself. That was the wonder of growth and evolution. It took place even without a global cataclysm.

Jervis Darling hugged Jessica-Ann tightly. The changes he had wanted for her world would not transpire. Or she would have to make them happen herself. Perhaps she would. She was his daughter. Darling had been stopped by a man whom he should never have underestimated. Herbert was a functionary. A gear in a machine. But he won, the same way the dinosaurs had been undermined by the tiny mammals that moved underfoot. Darling's network would be uprooted and stopped. It was ironic. Here he was in his private jet, with the world before him. Yet there was really only one place for him to go.

Darling turned from his daughter without releasing her. He called quietly to Shawn Daniels. The pilot and copilot came over. Darling handed his daughter to the woman.

"I want you two to take her home," Darling said.

"Yes, sir," the pilot said. "Will there be anything else?"

Darling grinned humorously. "That remains to be seen."

He walked them to the door and leaned close.