The Way Home Read Free Page A

from walking barefoot.
    Leaving the road, she wiggled under the fence that bordered Pettygrove’s field and cut across the sweet green grass to the other side. After slipping under the second fence, she ran to where Ty had been fishing.
    The handkerchief he’d dampened so she could wash her face still lay draped over the rock where he’d put it to dry. Meg picked it up, her brows coming together. Maybe she should have said something. Maybe he’d want the handkerchief back. Her small fingers tightened over it. Surely he wouldn’t miss one handkerchief. Didn’t Patsy always say that folks that lived on the Hill was all rich as sin?
    Feeling guilty, she folded the square of linen hastily and thrust it into the pocket of her dress. If n he wanted the handkerchief back, she’d give it to him. But maybe he wouldn’t miss it and then she’d have something to keep — a keepsake, Mama would call it, though Meg knew she wouldn’t tell her mother about today.
    Casting a last glance toward the willow tree where her doll was buried, she ran back to the fence, slipping under it and hurrying across the field. If she didn’t get home lickety-split, she might be late for supper and then Daddy’d be mad again.
    She was breathless by the time she reached the road but she didn’t slow down, her short legs pumping as she ran. She’d lost Mary and that still hurt, but she’d never in all her nearly five years spent such a wonderful day. And if she never saw Tyler McKendrick again, she’d have the hanky to remind her.

     

CHAPTER 2
     
     
    SIX YEARS LATER
     
     
    Ty caught the white gleam of Jack’s smile beneath the visor that protected his eyes. Though they flew almost wingtip to wingtip, the solid roar of the engines made communication possible only via hand signals. Jack pointed down and then lifted his thumb in a good-luck sign. Ty returned the gesture before angling the Curtiss Jenny downward and away from Jack’s plane.
    Below he could see the fairgoers, hardly bigger than ants at first, gradually increasing in size as he descended toward them. He waited until the last possible moment before rolling the Jenny over and finishing his descent flying upside down. Ffeeling the blood rush to his head, Ty sent the plane roaring along the edge of the field upside down and barely ten feet off the ground. Seeing the blur of green that marked the edge of the field, he pulled the plane up, skimming the tops of the trees before righting the plane. Though he couldn’t see it, he knew Jack would be right behind him, repeating the maneuver like a winged shadow.
    Ascending into the pale-blue sky, Ty felt the same rush of exhilaration he did every time he flew. There was no other feeling like it. It was as close to heaven as a man could possibly get. Laughing with the sheer joy of it, he pulled the Jenny’s nose up in a loop before heading for the ground again, this time to land in a more decorous fashion.
    Standing on the ground, Meg Harper craned her neck to watch the two planes in the air. Everyone around her was doing the same, all eyes glued to the airplanes as they looped above, first one and then the other inscribing a graceful circle against the cloudless blue of the sky. It was only when the first plane started to land that people began talking again.
    The crowd drifted toward the field where the planes were now touching down. They looked like big, oddly graceful birds, Meg thought as she allowed herself to be swept forward. She heard some people mentioning Charles Lindbergh. Hadn’t he flown over Regret just a few short months ago? Daniel Peterman had painted the town’s name on the roof of his barn in big white letters so the famous flyer would know that Regret, Iowa, appreciated what he’d done and welcomed him.
    Meg knew what Lindbergh had done, of course. No one had talked about much else for days last spring. She guessed that flying all the way across the Atlantic alone must be a pretty impressive thing to do, judging