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Back Her Last Flight
Chapters (48)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. Bardenas Reales, Spain
  5. I
  6. Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)
  7. Hanalei, Hawai’i
  8. Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)
  9. Hanalei, Hawai’i
  10. Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)
  11. Hanalei, Hawai’i
  12. Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)
  13. II
  14. Hanalei, Hawai’i
  15. Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)
  16. Hanalei, Hawai’i
  17. Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)
  18. Hanalei, Hawai’i
  19. Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett
  20. Hanalei, Hawai’i
  21. Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)
  22. Hanalei, Hawai’i
  23. Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)
  24. Hanalei, Hawai’i
  25. Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)
  26. Hanalei, Hawai’i
  27. III
  28. Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)
  29. Hanalei, Hawai’i
  30. Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)
  31. Hanalei, Hawai’i
  32. IV
  33. Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)
  34. Hanalei, Hawai’i
  35. Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)
  36. Hanalei, Hawai’i
  37. Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)
  38. Hanalei, Hawai’i
  39. Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)
  40. Hanalei, Hawai’i
  41. Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)
  42. Ki’ilau, Hawai’i
  43. Epilogue
  44. Hanalei, Hawai’i
  45. Author’s Note
  46. About the Author
  47. Also by Beatriz Williams
  48. About the Publisher

I continue. “Of course, some do the opposite. You go around falling in love with every last person you meet, hoping someone will take you in like some kind of stray animal and keep you fed and watered and warm. All depends on the person. But I’d say your wife is among the first tribe.”

“Takes one to know one?”

“You bet.”

Olle finishes the bourbon and heads for the bottle. He refills himself, tops me up a little, and sets the bottle down on the sofa table next to the cardboard box. He settles himself back down beside me—he’s a big man, solid Scandinavian frame—and says, “She won’t stop grieving him. I don’t think she ever will.”

“Can you blame her?”

“I fell in love with her the first time I saw her. I never thought she . . . I never in a hundred years thought I stood a chance with her. The day she married me, I was the happiest man alive. Of course, I knew I couldn’t compare to him, but I thought I could make her happy. I could be something else to her. She needed someone dependable, a reliable husband after what she went through. I thought I was that man. I thought I could accept being the second place in her heart, as long as I had some place there at all. As long as she was sleeping next to me at night, I thought I could win her over.”

“It was a nice thought.”

“She never talks about him. I wish she would. I’d know she was getting over him. Well, if you ask me, that fellow was no hero. Always taking risks, doing just what he wanted, never caring about anybody but himself. If you ask me—”

“Careful,” I say.

He turns to me and scrunches his eyebrows together, and I realize he doesn’t know. Lindquist hasn’t told him the truth.

I shrug. “You’re not an impartial observer, that’s all.”

“No, I guess I’m not. I hate the son of a gun and always will. All I have in this world is what he left behind.” He rises to his feet and sets down the empty glass. “I better see about the kids now.”

“I’m not sure that’s such a good—”

But he’s already lurching through the door, and I think it just figures, Lindquist would find another fellow who likes his liquor.