“It's gonna be over too soon, you know that, Cass. I thought of that when we got here. Zip… it's over… gone… you plan and practice and sweat for a whole year, and then whoops… ten days… it's over.” They were almost halfway there already, and Cassie felt sad thinking about it. She didn't want the trip to end so quickly.
They walked slowly back to their hotel after that, and she said something to Billy that surprised him. “I guess I should be grateful to Desmond for all this… and I am… but in a funny way, it doesn't seem like his trip now. He told all those lies, and did all his scheming, but it's our trip. We're doing it. We're here. He isn't. Somehow, all of a sudden, he doesn't seem all that important.” It was a relief for her, and Billy was glad she wasn't tormenting herself about the rotten deal she'd gotten from her erstwhile husband.
“Forget him, Cass. When we go back, all of that will be history. You'll have all the glory.”
“I don't think the glory is ever what I wanted,” she said honestly. “I just wanted the experience, to know I could do it.” But not enough to ruin someone's life for.
“Yeah, me too,” he agreed, but he was also realistic about the hullabaloo that would come later. “But the glory won't be bad either.” He smiled boyishly and she laughed, and then looked at him seriously.
“I was going to file for divorce before we left, but I decided to wait until after the trip, just in case some nosy reporter got wind of it. I didn't want to screw things up by moving too soon. But all the papers are ready and signed.” She sighed as she remembered going to the lawyer's office. It had been a painful experience telling him what had happened.
“What are you going to get him on?” Billy asked with interest. He could think of at least half a dozen things, none of them pleasant, starting with adultery, and ending with breaking Cassie's heart, if that was officially grounds for divorce now.
“I guess fraud, for a start. It sounds terrible, but the lawyer says we have grounds.” And then of course there was Nancy. “I think we're going to try to come to some quiet, mutual agreement. Maybe a divorce in Reno, if he'll agree to it. At least then it would be over quickly.”
“I'm sure he will,” Billy said wisely. And then they left each other for the night, and met again over breakfast on the terrace the next morning.
“What do you say we tell them they can have their plane back, and we just stay here?” He smiled happily at her, eating an omelet and croissants, and a big cup of strong French coffee, all served by a sixteen-year-old native girl with a breathtaking figure in a pareu.
“You don't think you'd get bored?” She smiled as she sat down next to him. She liked it here too, but she was excited about moving on, to Pago Pago, and then Howland Island.
“I'd never get bored,” he said, smiling up at the girl and then glancing happily at Cassie. “I think I'd like to end my life on an island. What about you?”
“Maybe.” She looked unconvinced, and then she smiled at him over coffee. “I think I'll probably end my life the way I started it, under the belly of an airplane. Maybe they could build me a special wheelchair.”
“Sounds great. I'll build you one.”
“Maybe you'd better check out the
“You mean I can't lie on the beach all day?” He pretended to look shocked, but half an hour later, they were both going over the plane with a fine-tooth comb in all seriousness. The jokes were over. And predictably, the photographers, and the visitors, came to watch them.
They were carrying a huge load of fuel on the
They shared a quiet dinner that night at the hotel, and watched an extravagantly gorgeous sunset, and then they took a walk on the beach and went to bed early. And the next morning, they took off for Pago Pago.
They made it in four and a half hours, and this time broke no records. But it was easy flying, all except for a small noise Billy thought he heard in one of their engines. It was the same thing he'd heard the day before, and it was oddly persistent.
Pago Pago was a fascinating place, though they only spent one night, and they spent most of it at the airport. Billy wanted to find the cause of the noise that had been bothering him, and by midnight he thought he'd located it. It was annoying him, but he was still convinced it wasn't a major problem.
