And now he was going to die at last, here in this wreckage in the middle of the Spanish badlands. He was going to get his wish. But Irene would live; that was the important thing. He had not also killed Irene. Instead of wishing Morrow to hell, he should have thanked him. Morrow would take care of her. Morrow would put Irene back on her pedestal in the center of his life, and he would revolve around her to the end of his days, which would be long and many, because Morrow had no death wish. Morrow was not reckless and impulsive and passionate. He would give her everything she wanted, a home and airplanes and probably children. Away from Sam, Irene would thrive. Like Pixie, who had found another father, a better father, and was better off without him. This was the right end, the just end, the only possible end.

God watch over them both, Pixie and Irene. The two living pieces of his heart. God keep them—

A thump shook the fuselage. Mallory opened his eyes.

“Señor Mallory?”

The thick bull shoulders of Velázquez appeared in the hatchway, framed by the sunlight. He had just laid something heavy on the metal deck, like a sack of flour, and now he climbed nimbly over this thing and grasped it under the shoulders and dragged it next to Mallory, without any apparent effort.

“Jesus Christ,” whispered Mallory.

Velázquez shrugged and crossed himself.

“I told the bastard if he tried to get back on my airplane, I would shoot him.”

Ki’ilau, Hawai’i

November 1947

Doris explains to me that they are here on a solemn mission, to scatter Sandy’s ashes on the sea below the cliffs, where her father died. Sandy loved Daddy best, she says. Sandy would drape herself on Daddy’s shoulders while he flew his airplane. She would leap on his lap the second he sat down and stay there, purring, for hours. Sometimes kneading her claws into his trousers, like this (Doris makes claws of her fingers). So this place is just where Sandy would want to settle a final time.

Irene holds the box as we descend along the path on the windward side of the island, where Mallory sometimes came to surf, because the wave on this particular stretch is legendary. That’s the word Lindquist uses, anyway, legendary, but to my mind the proper term is something more like suicidal. Maybe it’s the recent squall, but the surf arrives in giant curls of water that rise from the ocean like gods, sudden and enormous, a quarter mile away. The sight is unreal to me. If it weren’t for Wesley’s small, damp hand, tucked into mine, I think I might fall from the surface of the earth.