I can’t reply to that. I mean, I could, but it would come out all wrong, and I don’t want Leo to be upset with me. He doesn’t deserve to be upset, and I don’t think I could stand it. So I comfort him the only way I can, in the only language I really know, the only thing I have to offer him, which others may call a sin but to my way of thinking is a gift, this body of mine, this appetite for intercourse, this instinct I have for giving and receiving pleasure. I figure the only thing is to ride him to exhaustion so he goes right back to sleep, and an hour later that’s what he does, tucked inside the cradle of my arms and legs, lips still moving like he’s trying to tell me something. I’ve broken another rule, I guess, but by now I’ve broken so many, it doesn’t seem to matter.

I have only a moment or two to hold him close before somebody knocks on the door. I reach for Leo’s shirt and pull it over my head. On the other side of the door, Lindquist gives me a withering look. She holds a cardboard box under her arm.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“I need to speak with you.”

“At this hour?”

“It’s the only time we have. I want this to be the two of us.”

“What? Why?”

She stares at my face for a second or two. There is some faint light from the porch, and a moon that’s nearly full in the western part of the sky, so I guess she can see me all right.

I shift from one foot to the other and cross my arms. “Well?”

“I think it’s time to tell you about what happened to your father in Spain,” she says. “Pixie.”

Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)

April 1937: Spain

Four and a half hours after taking off from the airport in Alexandria, Irene landed in perfect weather at the El Carmoli air base on the southeastern Spanish coast, near Cartagena. Nobody stopped her or tried to intercept her, even though this was one of the major Republican air bases and the location of the high-speed flying school for fighter pilots. It was a landing strip in the middle of the desert, bleak and brown, tufted with long, skinny grass. The airplanes, lined up in motley rows, were years out of date. As she rolled toward a hangar, she felt all the amazed eyes on the airplane’s skin, and still not a single soul moved from the buildings or the shadows to stop her. Maybe they were all taking a siesta or something, Irene thought.