Page 34 of Big & Lily

We pull into the gravel field that is both the runway and the parking lot of McCarthy Airport—a place I was hoping not to have to see again so soon—and Xavier points to four small planes lined up at the edge of the airstrip. Each in bright primary colors with oversize tires and a long flat wing stretched over the cockpit. They remind me more of the models Cameron glued together when he was twelve than anything capable of holding a human body safely in the air.

“We’re going to fly in one of those?” the teen asks, bright with enthusiasm.

“We’re going to fly in one of those?” I whisper to Luna with a very different intonation.

“To mangle Robert Frost,” says Brick, “?‘the only way in is over.’ The lake is gorgeous and secluded—no roads to where we’re going.”

“Who’s Robert Frost?” asks Xavier, and half the van groans.

“Don’t make us feel so old.” Luna laughs.

While everyone is giggling over old poets and miniature airplanes, I am tense and anxious. For starters, when I woke up thismorning with my sister wrapped around me, I was torn. I wanted to be pissed, mad at the things she said, the commotion she’s causing, the punching bag I have become for her. But with the tears on my collarbone and my sleeve bunched in her hand like a security blanket, my heart broke for her all over again.

Who am I to say how Lily should behave after her husband not only callously cheated on her, but also callously threw a truck-size monkey wrench into her plans for the future? Plans that she’d been working toward for years. Plans that, despite the show of joie de vivre, are deeply rooted in a long-held desire. In short, my sister really wants to be a mother. Eric, damn him, screwed it all up.

What would I do if I were in her shoes?

It’s hard to imagine it happening to me and Tim. Dependable, stalwart, reliable Tim. He was one of the kindest guys in the construction company where we both worked, me as an inefficient, albeit diligent, office manager, him as an affable carpenter. He was quick with a nail gun and a hand for anyone who needed it. I loved that Tim seemed so much wiser, calmer, gentler than the other guys who did their work with precision but put as much effort into goofing around and letting off steam. All work and no play, and all that. No dull boys in that group. Except Tim. Which was so appealing to me. To me he wasn’t dull at all. He was mature, reliable, honest. In short, he was all the things my own father wasn’t.

Turns out reliability has its costs. We might not have the flair and excitement that Lily and Eric had, the gregarious couple, always adding to the dynamics of any party, quick-witted, “on” at the right times. Tim and I, over the years, settled into something more comfortable for both of us. Boring? Not to my husband and me. We knew what to expect, we appreciated the lack of drama between us, we were a team, on the same side, taking a pragmatic (he more often than I) approach, a united front when the histrionicsof others—my mother and Lily always topping that list—swirled around us.

I’m not saying I made a better choice than Lily. Hell, before all this, I liked Eric as much as anyone. He wasn’t my cup of tea, but he certainly seemed like Lily’s. They were well suited. He could keep up with her, which wasn’t always easy. I don’t have a clue why he’d risk it all the way he did. And I could just kill him for it.

My sister wasn’t my only roadblock this morning. When Heidi pulled into the camp to set up breakfast, she gave me the bad news. Carrying a cardboard box holding a toothbrush; a package of brand-new granny-style underpants a friend of hers, who happened to be flying in from Fairbanks, picked up for me; and a few things from her own closest.

“Your luggage is now in Miami,” she’d said. “But take this. Just hang in there a little longer. The airline promised me it will be here tomorrow.”

“You are an angel,” I’d said, hugging the box of my new worldly possessions to my belly.

Now here we are, back at McCarthy airport, lined up in front of the planes, waiting to be assigned to one. “We gotta split you up by weight, so you might not be able to dance with who you came with, which I hope isn’t a problem, because there’s only one passenger seat. Half of you are going to have to ride on a lap,” Brick says, clasping his hands. “But it’s a short flight. Jace and I will take two groups. My buddies Loni and Kyle here are top bush pilots. Think of them like Alaskan Uber drivers. Except faster and safer. And the traffic’s a lot lighter too.”

I’m happy not to have to dance with Lily as long as it doesn’t mean sitting on Dane’s lap.

“Let’s have Ian and Luna, Mimi and Lily. Dane and Bridget. Xavier, you pulled a lucky card, you get your own seat in with me.”

“Nice!” says Xavier.

“Wait. Are you sure you did the math right?” I ask. “I don’t think the weight is evenly distributed.” The group looks at me as if they are expecting me to announce I have a PhD in aerodynamics and physics from MIT.

“The math is sound,” he says, as he waves me toward Jace’s bright-red plane.

I’m not going to make a scene. I’m not going to insist on a new dance partner, but I haven’t forgotten that the last thing I said to the man whose lap I am about to sit on was “fuck off.”

Dane walks past me and hops into the plane.

“Need a leg up then, yeah?” Jace asks me, as he stands in front of the airplane’s tiny door under the wing, cupping his hands as if he’s going to hoist me onto a horse. “Reach up to this bar, put your foot there.”

“It’s like climbing on a jungle gym,” I grumble. Jungle gyms weren’t my strong suit in school, thanks to the famous Ackerman lack of upper body strength.

“The Piper Cub is a bit like a climbing frame, as we called it in the Old Blighty, yeah. That’s it, hang on and heave yourself in.” He grabs my foot. “On my count.” I am waiting for one, two, three, GO, but he goes on THREE, so our timing was off, and I stumble into the plane and land in Dane’s lap. He lets out a groan and an “oomph,” which turns me a fiery red thinking about what I’ve landed on.

“Sorry, sorry,” I mumble. I straighten my back and slide as far forward as I can as the actor and I do our best to share a seat and keep a demilitarized zone between us.

“There’s only one set of headphones, yeah.” Jace tucks our backpacks and the bag of kayaking gear under my feet. “And one seat belt. Sorry ’bout that.”

This is like whatever the opposite of a rom-com meet-cute is. “No parachutes?” I ask. I may need one.

“I haven’t lost a passenger yet,” he promises. “But there is a sick bag in the back of my seat, just in case.”