William Krueger - Heaven's keep

“I could’ve told her I love her, Rose.”

She looked with great compassion into his eyes. “Oh, Cork, you think she doesn’t know?”

The phone rang. Mal looked at caller ID. “Owl Creek County Sheriff’s Office.”

“I’ll take it.” Cork wiped at his eyes. “O’Connor,” he said, and then he listened. “Thank you.” He returned the phone to its cradle. “The wind’s quit. Once the runways are clear, they’ll have planes in the air.”

His daughters arrived near dinnertime, pulling up to the curb in Jenny’s old Subaru Outback. They hurried up the walk in the blue of twilight, and Cork greeted them at the door with his arms wide open. It felt good to hold them.

They were different from each other in many ways. Jenny was a scholar and a scribbler, in her senior year at the University of Iowa, where she hoped, on graduation, to be accepted into the Writers’ Workshop. She had her mother’s beauty, the same ice-blond hair and ice-blue eyes. For Annie, studies had always taken a backseat to athletics. While she was growing up, her big dream had been to be the first female quarterback for Notre Dame. That hadn’t happened, but she’d been offered a scholarship to play softball for the University of Wisconsin. Tragedy in her senior year of high school had altered her life course dramatically, and she’d declined the scholarship in favor of enrolling in a small Catholic college in northwest Illinois, where she was preparing herself in all the ways she could for a life that would be devoted to serving God and the Church. Annie wanted to be a nun, which was the other dream she’d had since childhood. Physically, she looked more like Rose, with hair the color of a dusty sunset and freckles. And, like Rose, she had something calm in her eyes that made people trust her immediately.

They stood on the porch in the dying light. “Has there been any word?” Jenny asked.

“The weather’s finally broken and they’ve started the search,” he said. “So that’s good.”

“But they haven’t found anything?”

“As far as we know, not yet.” The evening air was cool, and Cork said, “Let’s get inside and we can talk more. Rose and Mal are here.”

“Where’s Stevie?” Annie asked, looking past him into the house.

“It’s Stephen these days,” Cork said. “He took Trixie for a walk. He needed to get out for a while.”

“Stephen?”

“He’s been reinventing himself lately,” Cork said.

“How’s he doing?” Jenny asked.

“Not good. But then who of us is?”

Inside, Rose and Mal hugged them both, and they all said the things meant to bind them in their mutual concern and to offer comfort.

“It smells wonderful in here.” Annie looked at her aunt. “Chicken pot pie?”

“Bingo. Get your things settled. Dinner will be ready soon.”

Jenny paused at the bottom of the stairs. “Dad, we heard on the radio that the pilot had been drinking.”

“At the moment, it’s only an allegation. We’ll know the truth soon enough.”

It was dark by the time Stephen came home from walking Trixie. Cork had begun to worry and was watching the street from the living room window. He saw his son shuffling along the sidewalk, head down, face in shadow as he passed under the streetlight. Stephen paused at Jenny’s Outback, but the prospect of seeing his sisters didn’t seem to raise his spirits at all. Even Trixie, often a little too exuberant to suit Cork, seemed to have been infected by Stephen’s mood, and she walked subdued at his side. They mounted the front steps, and Cork opened the door.

“I was beginning to get a little concerned,” he said.

“What for? I was just walking,” Stephen said.

“Dinner’s been ready for a while.”

“You could’ve eaten. I wouldn’t care.”

“Stevie!” Annie shouted, coming down the stairs. She threw her arms around her brother.

“It’s Stephen,” he said in sullen reply.

Jenny came from the kitchen, where she’d been helping Rose. “Stephen,” she said and hugged him with a purposeful courteousness.

Cork’s son suffered their attentions grudgingly and was clearly relieved when they both stepped back from him. Trixie was much more enthusiastic in her welcome, and she danced around the girls in a joyous frenzy of barking and tail wagging that got her tangled in her leash.

Stephen freed her. “I thought it was time to eat,” he said. He turned away and went to the closet to hang his jacket.

Dinner was an odd affair, surreal. So much family gathered, and still the dining room table felt empty. Cork left the television on in the living room, tuned to CNN in case there were any new developments. They tried to carry on conversation in a normal way. Then Cork made a mistake, though he didn’t think of it that way at the time. He asked Annie a simple question about her faith.

“What I see when I look at the world, Dad, is challenge and opportunity. Everywhere I turn I’m confronted with challenges to my faith. And at those same places I’m given the opportunity to be an instrument of God’s truth.”

Without looking up, Stephen, who sat slumped over his plate, said, “That’s such bullshit.”

“Stephen,” Cork said.

“So what’s the big holy truth in what’s going on with Mom?” he said. “Why did God do this to her?”

“You think God struck her plane out of the air?” Annie asked.

“Well, he sure as hell didn’t keep it from falling.”

“We don’t know what’s happened with her plane,” Cork said.

“I do,” Stephen shot back. “I checked out plane wrecks on the Internet today. I know exactly what happens when a plane slams into a mountain.”

“Why are you so certain that’s what’s happened?” Jenny asked.

Stephen aimed at her the dark fire of his eyes. “Am I the only one who sees things the way they are? If the plane didn’t crash, we’d have heard from Mom by now. If it did crash, it crashed in those big fucking mountains and ended up in little fucking pieces, and if anybody survived they’re fucking Popsicles by now.”

“Watch your language, Stephen,” Cork said.

“My language? Mom’s dead and you’re worried about my language. Jesus Christ.” He yanked his napkin from his lap, threw it on the table, got up, and left. Trixie, who’d been lying nearby, rose as if to follow, then seemed to change her mind. She simply watched him stomp up the stairs toward his room.

“He’s scared,” Annie said.

“And he’s thirteen,” Jenny added.

Cork slid his chair away from the table. “I’m going up to talk to him.”

Upstairs, he knocked on Stephen’s bedroom door.

“What do you want?” his son called from inside.

“To talk.”

“I don’t want to talk.”

“We need to. Open up, Stephen.”

The wait was long and Cork was beginning to think he’d have to assert his parental authority to barge in, but Stephen opened the door at last. He turned away immediately and went back to his desk. The only light in the room came from the computer monitor, which was full of pictures from a website, images of a plane wreck.

Cork sat on Stephen’s unmade bed. “I can’t imagine that’s pleasant,” he said.

“It’s not supposed to be pleasant.” Stephen looked at the monitor. “Did you know that they’ve changed the instructions for crash position? They don’t want you to stick your head between your legs anymore. Know why? It’s not because you have a better chance of surviving but because there’s a better chance of keeping your teeth intact so they can use dental records to identify the remains.”

“You found that on the Internet?”

“Yeah. And worse.”

“And you believe it. And you think there’s no hope.”