“Do you remember when I brought you out here a month or so ago?”

“Do I ever.”

“Well, I had my suspicions. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Your hair’s dark, for one thing, and what I remember most about Sam’s little girl was her bright blond hair—”

“My mother loved that hair. Started to go dark right after Dad came back from Australia. Stood to reason, I mean she was a brunette herself. But she was real disappointed. She had her heart set on a blonde.”

“Did she? I guess I’m not surprised. Nothing that woman could do would surprise me.” She crosses her legs, Indian style. “Still, every time I looked at you, I heard bells dinging in my head. You look like him. Your eyes are alike, and you have his jaw, just a little softer, but I only recognized that later. It was your gestures, your way of speaking. The way you sit and look at the person you’re talking to. So I thought I’d bring you out here, away from all the distractions. I watched you while you ate and talked. And I just knew. You were like Sam reborn as a woman.”

“Except I hate to fly.”

“That’s no surprise. It must have terrified you as a child, the way he kept crashing and getting hurt.”

I pull my cigarettes from the pocket of my jacket. “You’ll excuse me.”

“That’s another thing, the way you smoke like a chimney.”

“I do not.” I light the cigarette. “I only smoke when absolutely necessary.”

“My God.” She puts her face in her hands. “My God. I can’t do this.”

I’m calmer now. My heart has settled back into something approaching its usual rhythm. In my other jacket pocket hangs my pistol. I don’t know if I mean to use it. Depends on what Lindquist has to say, or what she means to do with me, Sam Mallory’s last remaining issue, as we dangle from this cliff in mutual desperation.

“Can’t do what?” I ask.

“I haven’t told a soul. That’s the only way you survive, you keep it locked away so you can’t think about it. If Olle knew . . .”

“Not even Olle?”

“This is off the record, do you hear me? This doesn’t go in your book. I don’t care how you end it, you can’t write this.”

I wet my finger and hold it in the air. “Scout’s honor.”

“I’m only telling you because you’re Sam’s daughter, and you have a right to know. Nobody else does. Nobody else has the right to know a thing about him.”

I flick some ash down the side of the cliff. Below us, the water churns against the rocks.

Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)

May 1937: Spain