In even more thrilling news, there was also an honest-to-god bookstore—she parked in front and peered into the windows to be sure—and she took careful note of their hours. The last time she’d lived in a town with a bookstore she’d been in college.

When she got home she did another round of form on the deck just because she could. The deck here had fewer nail pops and warped boards and so was less prone to trip her up during Fair Ladies Work at Shuttle. She showered and dressed, and thought about going down to Blue Sky Air and introducing herself. She felt strangely reluctant to do so, and wondered at herself.

Maybe it was that she’d never had a vacation before. Her adoptive parents had been very strict about earning one’s way in life and she’d been brought up to work. In college she’d always had full time jobs between semesters, and after she’d started Nushugak Air she was determined never to turn down a job. Summers were naturally her busiest season, what with flying fishermen and processor workers back and forth, the occasional flightseeing charter, and that one year she herring spotted for that asshole Cecil Wolfe. But fall kept her hopping, too, hauling hunters into and out of their camps and lodges. Winter, although the dark reduced flying hours, still saw an increase in local travel, school trips, shopping trips, basketball games, any distraction to hold off cabin fever. It was great for business, especially since in her Cub she could get into and out of the most rudimentary strips. It made hers the go-to flight service for a lot of folks between Newenham and Togiak, which was what she’d been aiming for, and helped her pay off both aircraft in record time, another goal. Wy hated owing money.

And regular customers could be very unforgiving. If you missed a pickup or a drop-off, it didn’t matter if you had a perfectly valid excuse, like a hundred year storm blowing in off the Bering, or someone else pranging their plane at the Newenham airport and halting all air traffic for hours. If someone in Port of Call missed their Alaska Airlines flight in Newenham because you didn’t pick them up on time, you could kiss that customer and all their future revenue goodbye.

Put it all together and owning and operating an air taxi made the prospect of time off a joke. This was a new experience for her and she didn’t know quite what to do with herself.

Fortuitously, at just that moment the phone rang. It was Liz at Sunset Heights. “Sybilla wanted me to call to make sure you were coming to lunch today. Noon.”

“I thought that was tea on Sunday.” Wy could almost hear Liz shrug. “Tell her I’ll be there.”

It was an hour until noon and she decided to drive down to the airport and check on her aircraft. Both were snug at their tie-downs, and she took the time to give them a critical once-over. After the trip from Newenham the Cub was coming up on its annual inspection. The Cessna had another six months to go. It was time to replace the headsets and both could use new paint.