Lindquist props her hands on the railing behind her and crosses her ankles. “Yes,” she says flatly. “His poor wife.”

“You don’t agree?”

She looks out to sea again and back. “Miss Everett, I wasn’t the only one who showed a different face to the world than the one I showed in private. Sam Mallory hid more of himself than I ever did. He gave more of himself, until he lost who he was, and I will never forgive myself that I cared so much about what the world thought, I let him go. I let him go to wander alone, right when he needed me most.”

Again she puts her hand to that scar on her face. Finally, I think. Finally we’re getting somewhere.

“But first, there was Hawai’i,” I suggest.

Lindquist pushes herself off the railing and walks back to me, except this time she plops herself right down on the wicker sofa, so close our knees knock together. I stare in horror at this point of incidental contact.

“I am going to tell you a story,” she says. “A story about a man and a woman who both married the wrong people.”

Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)

July 1928: California

In summer, the ocean current was considerably warmer, and dawn tumbled over the distant San Bernardino Mountains at about half past five o’clock. Irene liked to arrive at the beach before Sam did, though it took some discipline. Sam was an early riser, and he lived only a short way up the coast, in a tiny house overlooking the water.

But on the morning of the thirtieth of July, when Irene pulled over onto the shoulder of the road next to the beach, there was no yellow Nash parked there before her. When she emerged from the wooden shack in her surfing costume, it still hadn’t appeared. Nor did Sam arrive down the cliff path while she rode the waves, or when she came off the water and headed back up the hill into the full force of the sun, and Irene understood that he wasn’t coming this morning. Sometimes he didn’t. Some days he rose and drove straight for the airfield. Still, she would have liked to have a private moment with him, on this particular morning. She loitered another minute or two before she changed back into her dress and drove home.