I don’t think my stepfather quite realized what kind of effect this statement might have on me. He wasn’t a man of much imagination, so he couldn’t have understood what it was like when your father made his living in an airplane, flying stunts, flying races, flying for daring distances over water, just flying, all the time, every day, so that his daughter would lie awake at night and pray and pray that his airplane would not crash, that her father would return to her and cradle her in his arms just one more time, that was all I asked of God. When Mr. Everett told me that my worst nightmare had come to life, that my father’s beloved body had gone to earth and been destroyed, I felt not sadness but relief.

Finally, there was no need to worry that he would be killed, because he was already dead.

Except that Sam Mallory was not dead yet. Just imagine my astonishment when I left home and got out in the world and discovered that he was still alive and kicking in 1936, the year before my stepfather popped my cherry on the Chesterfield sofa of his private office. Just imagine my guilt that I hadn’t succeeded in escaping that day when I was thirteen, that I might have found my father and saved him if only I’d been more intrepid, more clever, more determined.

Just imagine my fury at the woman who had stolen him from me, who had known him when I had not, who had won his heart and kept it for her own exclusive use.

Anyway, I’m telling you now, better late than never. I was born Eugenia Ann Mallory of Oakland, California, daughter of Samuel and Bertha Mallory. My father was the greatest pilot the world has ever known, and I am here to find out how and why he came to die on the badlands of northern Spain, at the exact moment I needed him most.

Lindquist flies by moonlight and what she calls dead reckoning, and when we land we make only the softest of bumps before rolling to a stop in the middle of the night grass. She takes me to the same place we had our picnic. The moon stands above the horizon and strikes a luminous path across the ocean before us. Lindquist sits right at the edge of the cliff, and after a second or two of hesitation I join her, even though I’m dead scared of heights. Did I mention that? Something to do with my fear of airplanes, probably. I don’t look down, that’s all. If I do, the vertigo will overcome me, because I’m already a little dizzy. My heart thumps in my chest like a dynamo. Lindquist doesn’t speak, so I pipe up in order to break this terrible silence. I ask her how she figured out I was Mallory’s lost daughter.