Matt stowed his gear aboard the four-seater plane and climbed into the cockpit. Inside his bag was his black parachute and a lightweight wet suit that covered his torso only. He planned to wear the suit when he jumped from the plane—not during his scuba instructions—in the event he missed the boat and ended up in the sea. February water was ghastly. The suit could keep him from hypothermia, make the difference between life and death.

Using the plane’s foot pedals, he crept out to the runway where he was given permission to take off. Getting the Cessna airborne was a snap—student pilots did it on the first day of instruction. He merely had to align the plane with the runway and pull the throttle all the way out. When his speed reached sixty miles an hour, he eased back the yoke and the plane was airborne. Even after so many hours in the air, it always struck him as a miracle when he left the ground.

LAX and its crowded airspace usually dictated his course when he took off from the relatively small Santa Monica Airport. The flight to Catalina should have taken a mere twenty minutes, but he had to steer south of the international airport before he could even turn toward the water. The actual flight to Catalina always took him forty minutes. Greg, his scuba instructor, would be waiting for him.

Soon he was out over the ocean. The plane practically flew itself. He had a visual on Catalina. He stabilized his altitude and speed. Once again, like on the boat, he had too much idle time.

His thoughts returned to the only real vacation they had ever taken together. It had been to Bryce Canyon National Park, where he turned her on to rock climbing. Initially she resisted the sport, but when he finally got her up on a stone wall a deep inhibition broke inside and she began to laugh and couldn’t stop. That afternoon they scaled several cliffs; and that night, lying naked beside her in their sleeping bag under the stars, she told him that she had never loved anyone so much as she loved him.

Just one month before he had caught her with David.