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“Do you like flying?”
“It’s great. I’m pretty good, too, but I’ll never get better if Nick doesn’t stop trying to protect me. Of course, everyone in my family’s that way. I’m the youngest.” She made an infinitesimal adjustment with the pedals so that the helicopter tilted slightly to the right. “Look there,” she said, pointing out the side windscreen. “Elk.”
Kari watched a small herd leap away from the noise. “They’re beautiful. We don’t have much wildlife left back home in Florida.”
“This whole area, from Denver to Vail, is some of the prettiest country in Colorado. The area we’re flying over right now is the Lightning River Basin.” She jerked her chin downward and to the left. “Down there by the river is where my family originally settled when they came here. My grandparents were looking for someplace that would remind them of their home back in the Italian Alps.”
“Italian pioneers.”
Addy laughed. “That’s what my father claims, but I always thought they stopped here because facing the trip over the Rockies looked too intimidating.” She tilted her head at Kari. “So what’s so special about Elk Creek Canyon?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been there.”
Addy turned her head to see if she’d heard correctly. “What?”
“Are you familiar with Madison Churchill?”
“The writer? Sure. I loved Strange Disguises.”
“He was my father.”
“No kidding,” was all Addy said.
The magic of that famous connection received a brief ceremonial silence. Anyone Addy’s age probably knew of “Mad” Churchill. He’d been compared to Hemingway, and his books were that rare thing in the publishing world—both popular and well-respected. His stories were vivid, imaginative and bold. All his heroes were the kind of sexy, noble adventurers that men wished in their hearts they could be and women wished they could find and marry.
Well, all but the last one. The hero of Hours of Ice hadn’t been anyone’s idea of a Madison Churchill protagonist.
“Wow,” Addy said at last. “All those places he wrote about. You must have had some pretty fantastic vacations, traipsing around the globe.”
Kari ducked her head a moment, formulating her response. People often assumed that. You’d think she’d have gotten used to it by now. “Actually, no. My mother hated traveling, so we stayed home most of the time.” Waiting.
“But I remember reading that he was a stickler for research. That he liked to spend weeks and weeks in the places he wrote about…”
As though realizing that long absences from a husband and father could hardly have meant an idyllic home life for Kari, Addy stopped talking and began fiddling with a couple of the dials and switches on the pilot’s console.
“Elk Creek Canyon was the setting for his last book,” Kari said, trying to make the woman feel more comfortable.
“Hours of Ice.”
“You know it?”
“Of course. I have to admit, though, it wasn’t my… It was different than all his others.”
“That’s what a lot of people said.” And some had said much worse things than that, Kari remembered with a touch of bitterness.
“It sure made news around these parts. Not the book. I mean, what happened. That freak blizzard so early in the season. And then your father, such a famous guy, being lost all those weeks. Finally being rescued. Waiting must have been horrible for you.”
“I was out of the country at the time, working on a story. I didn’t even know he’d missed the date he was due back. My mother flew out here when the National Park Service called and told her that a full search was on. She had to go through most of it alone.”
“Poor woman,” Addy said sympathetically. “And then to lose him anyway. I mean, the fact that he…” Her words stumbled as she struggled with a better way to express herself. “It shocked everyone that he…”
“Never regained consciousness,” Kari finished for her.
Even in the fading light, Kari could see that Addy regretted bringing up the subject. Her cheeks were like twin beacons.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said. “Is it hard for you to talk about?”
Kari shrugged. “Not as much as it used to be. It’s been two years since he made the trip.”
“So you want to see where he got his inspiration for that book? Minus the blizzard, of course.”
“That’s one reason. There are others.” She grimaced. “I’m sure someone like your brother would find them foolishly sentimental.”
“Probably,” Addy agreed. “Nick’s not much for sentimental stuff.”
Kari could well imagine the truth in that statement.
“I’ve been to Elk Creek Canyon a couple of times,” Addy said. “I think you’ll be disappointed. It’s not very remarkable.”
“That doesn’t matter to me. I just want to see it. I had planned to have a long conversation with the park office first, get a better feel for my father’s itinerary and why he chose that particular place. But my last assignment ran longer than it should have and I had to rely on the newspaper reports I pulled from the Internet to pinpoint just where he camped.”
“So you’re a journalist?”
Kari nodded. “Magazine articles mostly, so I finally get to travel as much as he did.”
“No aspirations to be a novelist, too?”
“Unfortunately, I don’t seem to have my father’s flair for fiction.”
“Tough shoes to fill.” Addy smiled at her with kindness. “But maybe someday…right?”
“Maybe,” Kari said, wondering if she still believed that. She had a drawer back home full of rejection letters. It had been a long time since she’d tried to write her father’s kind of story. Or any fiction, for that matter. In the deepening silence between words, where the truth lived, Kari thought she suddenly knew the answer. No. I’ll never be good enough.
Dusk was settling, coming fast. Even if the helicopter compass hadn’t been positioned almost directly at eye level, Kari would have known they were flying north. The Rockies were a dark, jagged barrier to her left, and behind them the sun had stopped playing hide-and-seek and had disappeared completely.
Addy looked her way again. “So, if you don’t mind me asking, why did you wait two years to make this trip?”
A tremor went through Kari as she remembered the two years since her father had died. How unbearable her mother had found the idea of her coming here. There had been so many tears. Countless arguments. And through most of them, Kari suspected that her mother’s fears had nothing to do with her at all. Forgiveness. Acceptance. Laura Churchill had never been able to find any of that in her heart for the man she’d loved, the man she’d lost long before that final, fatal trip.
Kari cleared her throat. “My mother passed away six months ago. I couldn’t have gone before then. She was pretty…frail…after Dad died. It would have upset her too much.”
Addy arched an eyebrow her way. “Are you sure you’re going to be all right out there? Even without a blizzard, the backcountry’s not a place to fool around, and Elk Creek Canyon is pretty remote. I guess you already know that, though, considering what your father went through.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Still…I don’t want to be flying this chopper for search and rescue when you fail to check in on your due back date.”
“I’ll only be out there a couple of days. I have an assignment waiting for me in New Zealand that I can’t miss.”
“I assume we’re the ones picking you up.”
Kari nodded. “If your brother has forgiven both of us by then. Tuesday. Nine o’clock. Sharp.”
They both laughed at her attempt to mimic Nick D’Angelo’s inflexible instructions. “Oh, he’ll rant and rave for a while,” Addy told her. “But he’ll come around eventually. He doesn’t hold grudges.”
“I’ll count on you, then,” Kari said. She glanced out the left side of the helicopter to see ominous dark clouds rolling over and around the mountain range like boiling ocean waves crashing around a ship.
It occurred to her that she should have checked the weather report for the area. But as usual, she’d been running late. “Should we be concerned about those clouds?”
“There’s rain behind them. The weather service didn’t indicate the storm was moving so fast.”
“Is that a problem?”
“No. But it might make the flight a little bumpy. We can withstand forty knots easily. I should have checked one last time before we left,” Addy admitted. “Hold on a minute.”
Addy pressed a switch on her cyclic stick, which allowed her to radio the nearest airport. Through her headset Kari could hear the low response between ground control and pilot. The news that a storm was quickly coming over the Front Range gave Kari an unpleasant moment, but Addy didn’t seem overly concerned.
In another few minutes rain started to hit the windscreen in a steady pattern, and Kari could feel the wind begin to buffet the aircraft. Addy turned on the overhead cabin light. She made corrections on the controls constantly, seeming to know how to react to the slightest shift in their position. It wasn’t until they started to see lightning in the clouds that she looked at all worried.
Kari glanced at the numerous dials spread across the cockpit console, but in spite of all the traveling she did, she didn’t know that much about helicopters or how they operated. Nothing looked like a radar screen, or anything that remotely seemed as if it could pinpoint their location.
She gave Addy a hopeful smile. “I suppose you have radar or something to tell you where we are exactly? Just in case.”
Addy shook her head. “Sorry. We rely on V.F.R.”
“V.F.R.?”
“Visual Flight References.” She pointed downward and smiled. “We check out the ground and see what looks familiar.” Kari’s reaction to that comment made the woman laugh. She added, “Don’t worry, we won’t get lost. I know every light on the mountain.”
But suppose she couldn’t see them because of the rain?
“Why don’t we head back?” Kari suggested. “If it’s raining this hard, I won’t be able to set up camp anyway.”
“We could set down and try to wait it out.”
Just then lightning strobed the sky, flashing eerily into the cabin. When the thunderclap followed it, Addy muttered a curse as Kari clutched the side of her seat. She said nothing, her mouth suddenly too dry to utter words. She should never have pushed for this. Never have taken advantage of this woman.
After a few moments Addy said, “It’s probably better if we do turn back. I’m sorry, Kari.”
“No, that’s fine. I shouldn’t have been so insistent.”
The woman swung the helicopter in a sharp turn. How dark it was outside, Kari thought. In spite of the landing lights cutting through the night, there seemed to be nothing beyond the front windscreen. Not a flicker of light anywhere.
Except for the lightning that glimmered sullenly within the clouds.
CHAPTER THREE
WITH THE FLICK of a finger on his control box, Sam D’Angelo moved his wheelchair out of his son’s way.
They were in one of the lodge’s downstairs suites, Nick’s and granddaughter Tessa’s temporary lodgings until their cabin was habitable again. The plumbing crisis had been dealt with—at least to Nick’s satisfaction—but Sam, who had once handled these kinds of little emergencies, couldn’t help feeling the need to make sure.
“You turned off all the valves in Number Ten?” he asked for the second time. “Just to be safe.”
He hated that he couldn’t get up the stairs in his own home, his own business. When he’d come back from the hospital, he should have insisted that they put in an elevator. He could have seen the damage upstairs for himself.
Nick was bent over the sink, washing his hands to remove the grease he’d encountered from taking a look at Rosa’s stove. “I did, Pop,” he said without turning around. “Tom Faraday’s on his way. I think a crack in the tank is the culprit, but he’ll be able to tell us for sure. Stop worrying.”
“You know what water can do to wood when it seeps through tiny crevices?”
Nick straightened, wiping his hands dry. “Gosh, no,” he said with a grin. “Not since the last time you put me through Plumbing 101 class.”
Sam narrowed his eyes. “Your mother is right. You are becoming a very disrespectful son.”
“And you’re turning into a bigger worrier than she is.”
Sam gave him a severe look.
Nick grabbed the edges of his shirt and pulled it over his head, then slipped on a fresh white T-shirt. From his wheelchair, Sam watched in silent admiration. Nick had inherited Sam’s build. His torso was tanned, broad and powerful. A man’s chest, the way a man’s chest should be. The way Sam’s had once been years ago.
He couldn’t help it, a little twist of envy jolted through him. Bad enough that age took its revenge so soon. That sickness could whittle you down until there was almost nothing left of the person you had been. Sam had cheated death. It had whispered in his ear, but he had refused to listen. He had lived, and for that, he thanked God. But he was only fifty-eight. He missed that lost energy, that effortless strength. He wondered if his son understood how lucky he was to have it.
Nick went to the closet, pulled out his sneakers and sat on the bed. He was halfway through knotting one shoe when the lace popped.
He held the broken piece in front of him, shaking his head. “Perfect,” he said. “Just perfect.”
Toeing off the sneaker, he kicked them both out of the way and went to the closet to root around for another pair. “I’m telling you,” he said as he scooped up his hiking boots. “I don’t care if a whole family of skunks have taken up residence in the cabin. Tomorrow, Tessa and I are moving back in.”
Sam cocked his head. “Why are you in such a black mood?”
“I’m not in a black mood. Brown, maybe. You wouldn’t believe—”
He broke off as they both became aware that Tessa stood in the open doorway. Sam’s granddaughter was a beauty even at fourteen. Glossy black hair like Rosa’s had been when he’d first met her. And the eyes—like dark fire. Unfortunately the fire lately had all been directed at Nick. Even now, as she addressed her father, her eyes were smoldering.
“Nonna Rosa said to tell you that we’re all eating sandwiches tonight ’cause of the stove. Everything else is for guests. She also says the kitchen is closing early and don’t either of you touch the zabiglione in the fridge.”
“Donnaccia! We live under the rule of a petty tyrant,” Sam said dramatically, hoping to get a reaction out of the girl. Tessa was his pet, his favorite companion. Surely he could make her smile.
The child had no time for him. Tight lips declared her grievances against her father. She lowered her head, setting her chin. “Can I eat dinner in my room?” she asked Nick.
“I suppose.” Nick pulled on one hiking boot. “Still mad about the dress, huh?”
Now his darling grandchild’s eyes shot daggers. “I took it back like you told me. That doesn’t mean I think it’s fair.”
“Tessa…”
The girl flung herself away from the door and disappeared.
Nick sighed and looked at his father. “If I’m in a mood, would you really wonder why?”
