“What’s going on?” she asked. “Who are these people?”

“Just a few friends I’ve invited for dinner. To welcome you back.”

“I don’t want to see anybody. That’s the last thing I want to do. I want to eat and go to bed.”

“It’s just a few hours,” he said, in the same tone he had earlier said It’s just a few miles. Nothing at all, dear, you can do it. You’re Irene Foster, you have a public, you simply have to do these things whether you enjoy them or not, it’s part of your job.

George got out of the car and lifted her kit bag from the back seat. Irene sat and stared through the windshield at the garage door, washed in orange. Her hands still gripped the steering wheel. George came around and opened the door.

“Can I at least bathe and change before saying hello?” she said, and somehow George missed the irony in her voice.

“Of course you can, darling. I’ll keep everyone happy with cocktails.”

So Irene went around back with her kit bag while George came in the front door and played host to these guests he’d invited over. The master bedroom opened out to its own patio, and Irene let herself in through the French doors. George had filled the bedroom and sitting room with flowers, vases and vases of them, roses and fragrant stargazer lilies, her favorites. He was good at gestures like that. Irene bent to sniff a bouquet on her nightstand. There was a note beneath in George’s elegant handwriting. You’re home safe, and that’s all that matters. Love, G.

She thought about that note as she bathed in the giant white porcelain bathtub, taking care not to dislodge the sling provided for her by the doctor in Fort Worth, who had asked for her autograph afterward. That’s all that matters. Was it really? Because she also remembered George’s words on the way to the airfield, the morning of the start of the derby. You’ve got to win this, darling. Not second or third. We need another victory, or the new lecture tour is going to bust. So the state of her health was important, but it wasn’t the only thing that mattered, not by a long shot, at least to George. Flying was expensive. They had to fill those lecture halls next month, and to fill lecture halls you needed the public’s fascination, you needed to be on the cover of twelve different magazines, looking dashing and triumphant, and gorgeous didn’t hurt, either. You needed rapturous column inches and newsreel footage of you roaring down an airfield driveway behind the wheel of a Hudson roadster.

Most of all, though, you needed a photograph in which you waved triumphantly from the cockpit of your silvery Rofrano Sirius, having just beaten the boys to win the 1936 Coast-to-Coast Air Derby.