Free Fall. Rick Mofina

a lot harder.

      Academically, Veyda had taken after her parents, excelling at school. She loved debating subjects, anything from veganism to eugenics, from politics to physics, from mathematics to rock-and-roll history. Her dream was to become a medical doctor, like her mother, and an aeronautical engineer, like her father.

      First, I’ll follow Dad’s path and learn all about flight, Veyda had said.

      They were so proud when she was accepted at Pepperdine then went on to UC Berkeley and then later to MIT.

      But Elizabeth had missed her and lived for their visits, so she’d been ecstatic when Veyda surprised them with a call from Cambridge.

      I’ve got a break. I’m coming home for a week!

      Elizabeth had adjusted her schedule for the unexpected visit and had hoped he would do the same, but the timing couldn’t have been worse for him. He’d been overwhelmed by the deadlines for a major project, one of the most challenging he’d ever faced. But he’d also wanted to see Veyda as much as possible, so he’d made what adjustments he could to get away from work.

      Veyda’s visit had been a happy time. It’d been months since they’d all been together. They’d decided to drive up the coast to a pretty restaurant they liked near Santa Barbara.

      Before leaving, he’d checked with work. Serious problems with the project had arisen, but for the moment he’d believed they were manageable, although senior management had just launched a surprise in-depth review of a critical aspect.

      Hang on to your hat, Bob, one of the other engineers had texted him just before they’d left.

      During the drive, his phone had vibrated with texts, but he’d ignored them. When they got on the 101, his phone had begun to vibrate even more, which had concerned him.

      Elizabeth and Veyda had been so deep in conversation that they’d never heard his phone, so he’d decided to do what Elizabeth had forbade: he checked it. He’d done it surreptitiously, taking it out of his left pocket and lowering it on his left side between his left leg and the door. He’d needed to know what management had been saying on the project. Carefully, he’d scrolled through the messages, and he remembered the moment Veyda had said, Oh my God, Mom, the winters in Cambridge are absolutely cruel... Then Elizabeth was shouting, Robert! They’d drifted across another lane and the rear of a slower-moving car had loomed instantly in their windshield, giving him less than a second to register it, twist the wheel violently and stomp on the brake... They’d missed the slower car, but suddenly theirs was lifting, rising and twisting in the air... The car had rolled. His seat belt had cut into him. He remembered Elizabeth and Veyda screaming then air bags exploding, and Elizabeth flying from the car amid glass shattering and metal crunching. The car had rolled and rolled, until it had finally come to a stop, and he’d heard a hissing and smelled gasoline. He’d crawled from the wreck, disoriented, unable to find Elizabeth or Veyda. The car had come to a stop on its roof, and he’d seen...Elizabeth’s shoe...her hand... She’d been pinned under the car. He’d tried lifting, but the car wouldn’t move... Elizabeth had been making gurgling sounds. He’d dropped to his knees, taking her hand the way he’d held it on their first dates...at their wedding...at their daughter’s birth... As he’d held her hand...she’d cried out.

      Veyda!

      Mom! Veyda had been crawling to them, the whites of her eyes piercing him from between the blood webbing her face.

      Elizabeth had squeezed his hand.

      Stay with me, Elizabeth! I love you! Stay with me! Please!

      Mom!

      Veyda had collapsed some ten feet from her mother as he’d felt his wife’s hand going limp... He’d heard sirens...shouting...a helicopter... His family was in pieces and everything was turning black...

      * * *

      Robert Cole was on his knees before his wife’s headstone.

      Elizabeth had wanted to be buried here. She’d told him that, years before, when they’d made their wills. The aftermath of the accident and the funeral were a fog of agony. He remembered Veyda kissing her mother’s casket, casting a single rose. She was still scarred and bandaged, standing like an apparition at the grave.

      Her glare burned into him, an accusation.

      It was all in the police report. He’d been negligent and had committed vehicular manslaughter. Elizabeth’s seat belt had come undone as she’d turned from the passenger seat to talk to her daughter. The driver of the slower car ahead of them—a witness got the plate through dash cam video—had been driving without a license and with alcohol in his blood. Cole had been charged, but his lawyer had got the charge reduced to a misdemeanor and he’d received a light sentence. No jail time. The defendant has suffered a monumental loss by his own hand and will live with the consequences all the days of his life, your honor, his lawyer had said.

      Cole never recovered from the tragedy. Elizabeth’s death was like an amputation. Veyda had undergone therapy before returning to school in Massachusetts, but the accident had irrevocably changed both of them.

      He’d sold their home in California and moved to North Dakota.

      Something had pulled him here, something calling him to be near his wife, to watch over her and to find a path to redemption.

      Maybe today he’d found it, he thought, driving back to the hangar.

      He picked up the Minot Daily News and reread the article with the interview of the captain of the troubled, New York–bound plane.

      It was from one of the newswires.

      Yes, this is it.

      Cole mixed whiskey into his cold coffee.

      The thing he’d feared, the secret thing that had tormented him in the seconds before the car wreck that destroyed his life had now become a reality.

      Now he had his answer.

      He knew what he had to do.

      Thirteen

      Manhattan, New York

      The next afternoon Kate’s subway train rumbled south out of the 125th Street station.

      As it cleared the platform, she took a subtle inventory of her car’s passengers, without staring, then focused on her reflection in the window.

      As the drab tunnel walls raced by, her pulse quickened. Living here still excited her; the people, the smells—cologne to urine to grilled food from the street vendors. Even the traffic—she’d once seen a guy stomp right over a cab that was blocking a crosswalk—and the sirens. The power, the glory and the majesty that was New York—she loved it all.

      Kate checked her phone.

      This was her day off but Chuck wanted her to come in. He’d promised more time off later and said it was okay to be in by 1:00 p.m., but he needed her in to produce a follow-up to her exclusive interview with the captain.

      We have to keep hitting this one, Kate, Chuck had texted.

      The train swayed and grated. Station after station flashed by as Kate ran through some ideas. She could contact a lawyer she knew who specialized in aviation litigation. Maybe he was hearing something on the grapevine about the Richlon-TitanRTs.

      The brakes creaked and her car lurched as they came to Penn Station, her stop. She threaded through the vast, low-ceilinged warren under Madison Square Garden. When she surfaced, she headed to the Newslead building, picked up a coffee and an oatmeal muffin in the main-floor food court. That was lunch.

      At her desk, she reviewed Newslead’s summary of the pickup of yesterday’s story. The suggested headline from the copy desk had been: “Pilot of Troubled EastCloud Buffalo-to-NYC Flight: Malfunction Puts Passengers at Risk.”

      Pickup was rated “strong.”

      Her exclusive interview with Captain Matson was used by 1,149