Anita Shreve - The Pilots Wife

Copyright 1998 by Anita Shreve

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Originally published in hardcover by Little, Brown and Company, 1998 First Back Bay paperback edition, 1999

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Excerpt from Antrim by Robinson Jeffers from The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, Three Volumes, edited by Tim Hunt. Reprinted with the permission of the publishers, Stanford University Press. Copyright 1995 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.

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First eBook Edition: July 2007

ISBN: 978-0-316-02567-6

Book design by Julia Sedykh

ALSO BY ANITA SHREVE

The Weight of Water

Resistance

Where or When

Strange Fits of Passion

Eden Close

For Christopher

This is an entirely fictional story about a woman whose husband goes down with his plane. The characters are not drawn from life and do not resemble anyone I know or have ever heard about.

I would like to thank the following people at Little, Brown and Company: my editor, Michael Pietsch, for his sharp eye, his love of editing, and his quiet wisdom; my publicist, Jen Marshall, for the ease with which she appears to be able to solve any problem that comes her way; and Betsy Uhrig, for the clarity and care she brought to the task of copyediting this book.

I would like to thank as well my daughter, Katherine Clemans, for helping to shape the portrait of Mattie; Alan Samson of Little, Brown and Company, U.K., for reading the manuscript and for his continuing support; and Gary DeLong, for sharing with me details about the harsh reality of the grieving process.

As ever, I am grateful to John Osborn, who always has first look at any manuscript and who consistently manages to steer me ever so gently in the right direction.

And finally, though certainly not least indeed, she is the linchpin of all my books I would like to thank my agent and friend, Ginger Barber, for her excellent criticism and unwavering graciousness.

SHE HEARD A KNOCKING, AND THEN A DOG BARKING. Her dream left her, skittering behind a closing door. It had been a good dream, warm and close, and she minded. She fought the waking. It was dark in the small bedroom, with no light yet behind the shades. She reached for the lamp, fumbled her way up the brass, and she was thinking, What? What?

The lit room alarmed her, the wrongness of it, like an emergency room at midnight. She thought, in quick succession: Mattie. Then, Jack. Then, Neighbor. Then, Car accident. But Mattie was in bed, wasnt she? Kathryn had seen her to bed, had watched her walk down the hall and through a door, the door shutting with a firmness that was just short of a slam, enough to make a statement but not provoke a reprimand. And Jack where was Jack? She scratched the sides of her head, raking out her sleep-flattened hair. Jack was where? She tried to remember the schedule: London. Due home around lunchtime. She was certain. Or did she have it wrong and had he forgotten his keys again?

She sat up and put her feet on the freezing floorboards. She had never understood why the wood of an old house lost its warmth so completely in the winter. Her black leggings had ridden up to the middle of her calves, and the cuffs of the shirt she had slept in, a worn white shirt of Jacks, had unrolled and were hanging past the tips of her fingers. She couldnt hear the knocking anymore, and she thought for a few seconds that she had imagined it. Had dreamed it, in the way she sometimes had dreams from which she woke into other dreams. She reached for the small clock on her bedside table and looked at it: 3:24. She peered more closely at the black face with the glow-in-the-dark dial and then set the clock down on the marble top of the table so hard that the case popped open and a battery rolled under the bed.

But Jack was in London, she told herself again. And Mattie was in bed.

There was another knock then, three sharp raps on glass. A small stoppage in her chest traveled down into her stomach and lay there. In the distance, the dog started up again with short, brittle yips.

She took careful steps across the floor, as if moving too fast might set something in motion that hadnt yet begun. She opened the latch of the bedroom door with a soft click and made her way down the back staircase. She was thinking that her daughter was upstairs and that she should be careful.

She walked through the kitchen and tried to see, through the window over the sink, into the driveway that wound around to the back of the house. She could just make out the shape of an ordinary dark car. She turned the corner into the narrow back hallway, where the tiles were worse than the floorboards, ice on the soles of her feet. She flipped on the back-door light and saw, beyond the small panes set into the top of the door, a man.

He tried not to look surprised by the sudden light. He moved his head slowly to the side, not staring into the glass, as if it were not a polite thing to do, as if he had all the time in the world, as if it were not 3:24 in the morning. He looked pale in the glare of the light. He had hooded eyelids and a widows peak, hair the color of dust that had been cut short and brushed back at the sides. His topcoat collar was turned up, and his shoulders were hunched. He moved once quickly on the doorstep, stamping his feet. She made a judgment then. The long face, slightly sad; decent clothes; an interesting mouth, the bottom lip slightly curved and fuller than the upper lip: not dangerous. As she reached for the knob, she thought, Not a burglar, not a rapist. Definitely not a rapist. She opened the door.

Mrs. Lyons? he asked.

And then she knew.

It was in the way he said her name, the fact that he knew her name at all. It was in his eyes, a wary flicker. The quick breath he took.

She snapped away from him and bent over at the waist. She put a hand to her chest.

He reached his hand through the doorway and touched her at the small of her back.

The touch made her flinch. She tried to straighten up but couldnt.

When? she asked.

He took a step into her house and closed the door. Earlier this morning, he said.

Where?

About ten miles off the coast of Ireland.

In the water?

No. In the air.

Oh.... She brought a hand to her mouth.

It almost certainly was an explosion, he said quickly. Youre sure it was Jack?

He glanced away and then back again.

Yes.

He caught her elbows as she went down. She was momentarily embarrassed, but she couldnt help it, her legs were gone. She hadnt known that her body could abandon her so, could just give out like that. He held her elbows, but she wanted her arms back. Gently, he lowered her to the floor.

She bent her face to her knees and wrapped her arms over her head. Inside her there was a white noise, and she couldnt hear what he was saying. Consciously, she tried to breathe, to fill up her lungs. She raised her head up and took in great gulps of air. As if in the distance, she heard an odd choking sound that wasnt exactly crying because her face was dry. From behind her, the man was trying to lift her up.