Page 3 of Landing Love

“Lieutenant Jones will see you now. Follow me.”

Ann hugged Junior tightly and followed through the busy, winding office corridors.

Entering Lieutenant Jones’s office, she stifled a sigh of disappointment. The lieutenant was younger than she was. How could he possibly help? He turned to her with the harried, helpless look of an underpaid, overworked bureaucrat. “Mrs. Prince?”

“Yes, my name is Ann Prince. My husband was Roger Prince, a member of the Air Service AEF.” She took a seat, and Junior stirred. Dear Lord, let him stay asleep for the next ten minutes!

Lieutenant Jones opened a folder. “Yes, my secretary gave me his file. I’m so sorry for your loss, Mrs. Prince.”

She did her best to smile through the hollow condolences. “Thank you, Lieutenant. I’m hoping you can help me. I lost Roger four months ago, and I received his life insurance, but I’ve been unable to arrange for new housing until now, and I’m afraid the entire sum has been eaten up. I just inherited a house from my mother, who passed last month from a fever, but the house is in disrepair. I need eight hundred dollars to repair the roof to make it livable. I have no choice but to move. I can’t afford to stay where I am. Is there anything you can do?”

It was a relief to make it through her little speech without breaking down into tears. But she was made of sterner stuff than anyone thought, and a display of grief wouldn’t help her here in the least.

The Lieutenant took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “I wish there was, Mrs. Prince. The Army can’t pay out more than the amount allotted for every family in your situation. I’m very sorry.”

She bit her lip, needing the sharp pain to hold back her tears. “Do you know of any charitable organizations I might turn to? I have no family to support me. There must be somewhere I can turn for help.”

He looked up at her, a flash of what appeared to be genuine sympathy showing in his eyes. “As it happens, I just learned of a new organization that was formed to assist in just this sort of situation. It’s called the Pilots’ Benevolent Association or PBA, and it’s run by Evelyn Carnegie and Aurora Belmont. Would it be all right if I passed along your contact information to them so that they can reach out?”

“Yes, please.” The Princess of New York! Imagine that! Perhaps her mother’s magazines would come in handy after all. A tiny shoot of hope sprung up within her. “I would appreciate it greatly. I don’t like asking for charity, but with a new baby, I can’t afford to let pride stand in my way.”

Lieutenant Jones handed her a clipboard with a list of names and addresses along with a pen. “If you put your information down here, I’ll see to it that it gets to the PBA. They are doing outreach now, so expect to hear from them within the next two weeks.”

She added her information to the list, hoping against hope that this wasn’t yet another dead end. Maybe this list was his way of placating her and getting her out the door, but she had to try if there was even the slightest hope.

“Thank you so much. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this,” she said, carefully standing with her sleeping baby and taking her leave.

As she left the office, she idled by a newsstand to look for the latest gossip headlines. Sure enough, big bold letters announced, THE WEDDING IS OFF, with a picture of Aurora Belmont and Senator Windham. The man who ran the stand shooed her away before she could read more.

“If you want to read it, buy it,” he called after her.

As if she’d be caught dead purchasing one of those trashy periodicals. Nonetheless, it was good to know she shouldn’t congratulate Miss Belmont on her upcoming wedding if she happened to meet the woman when making her plea. But surely, the Princess of New York had someone to interview applicants for funds for her. It was highly unlikely she was going to meet the famous heiress.

Still, she couldn’t help but chuckle at the irony that all her hopes rested on the last woman she would have thought to approach. Against all her expectations, a socialite from the scandal sheets was her best hope of making a safe and sound home for her son. She could practically see her mother’s smug smile from beyond the grave.

Ann turned her gaze upward, as if she could see her mother sitting on a cloud with a halo hovering above her. “Thanks for looking out for me, Mama. I love you, and I miss you,” she whispered to the sky.

“Watch it, lady!” A man in a rumpled suit tromped past her, bumping her in the shoulder and bringing her out of her revery.

It was past time to get Junior home and make some dinner. This wasn’t a neighborhood she should linger in. Stepping to the curb, she flagged down a cab. Another extravagance, but it couldn’t be helped. The jostling of the subway would certainly have woken up Junior, and she was too exhausted to deal with a squalling infant in a packed train car.

As she gazed out the cab window at the bustling city, a tenuous hope began to take hold. She might not know what the future held, but if she could only get her roof fixed, she was certain she could figure out the rest. She would find a way to make a life for Junior, whatever it took.

2

Bill knew he should have shut up before he started talking, but he never could stop himself from running off at the mouth. “You should have seen the woman I was with last night, Hawley. Her name was Edith, and she had the most luscious lips, so full and ripe. And her curves⁠—”

“Enough, O’Donnell.” Hank rubbed his hand down his rugged, film-star face. The man looked like Douglas Fairbanks, and it wasn’t fair. The ladies fell all over themselves trying to get Hank’s attention, and Bill was eternally relegated to the position of sidekick.

They took their usual seats at the bar in the Gold Bug Hotel, nodding at the other denizens with their flight caps and goggles still perched on their heads. The pianist played ragtime beneath a broken propeller of a Golden Flyer that hung like a trophy from the ceiling. Photographs of every airplane Glenn Curtiss had produced lined the walls. The place was owned by his father-in-law, after all. And when Curtiss built an airplane hangar across from the hotel, the place had swiftly turned into the principal watering hole on Long Island for pilots. Bill loved the aeronautical ambience and the company of fellow flying lunatics.

Hank signaled the bartender for two whiskeys. “We came here because I’ve fallen for a woman I can’t have. I don’t need tales of how much fun you’ve been having. By the way, how close are you to having enough money to start that luxury passenger flight business you keep talking about?”

Bill’s ears burned in a way they never did when he talked about ladies. He’d only ever told his sister and Hank about his secret dream. “Two more years of saving up, and I should have enough to buy a Lawson C-1, barring any surprises.”

“An enclosed cockpit. Can you imagine? Beats the hell out of the Army hand-me-downs we fly.”

Yes, it did. In his mind’s eye, Bill lovingly traced every detail of the ten-passenger, twin-engine biplane with five wicker armchairs lining either side of a slim, center aisle. The rich and famous would flock to his interstate air taxi service. He’d serve his passengers champagne and then take them soaring up into the stratosphere.