The Way Home Read Free Page B

by the way people talked about it. But at age ten, she found it hard to imagine anything more impressive than what she’d just seen.
    She found a spot near a fence post at the edge of the field and watched as Tyler McKendrick got out of the first plane, stepping onto the wing and then jumping to the ground. He reached up to tug off the close-fitting leather helmet and goggles he wore, and the late-summer sun found blue highlights in the thick blackness of his hair.
    Meg was hardly aware of Jack Swanson’s plane coming to a halt just behind Tyler’s. She didn’t notice the way the sun turned his hair to polished gold or the warmth of his smile. If Lucky Lindy himself had stepped into sight at that moment, she still wouldn’t have taken her eyes off Tyler McKendrick’s tall frame.
    Helen McKendrick was the first to reach him. Meg wasn’t close enough to hear what she was saying, but from the agitated movement of her hands, it wasn’t hard to guess that she wasn’t happy about her son’s demonstration of his flying skills. Meg dismissed her worries as pure foolishness. Anyone could see that Ty had been in perfect control. It just wasn’t possible to think he might have crashed.
    He’d never be like Icarus, she thought, remembering the story she’d read in a book from the library. He’d be able to soar as high as he wanted and never fall. Meg wrapped one thin arm around the fence post and leaned her cheek against its rough surface, her eyes never leaving Ty’s lean figure.
    He was, as far as her ten-year-old mind was concerned, the epitome of masculine perfection. When he smiled, she thought that the sun shone suddenly brighter. She sighed unconsciously, her eyes growing a little dreamy. Her sister, Patsy, could sigh over Rudy Vallee and John Barrymore but, as far as Meg could see, neither of them held a candle to Tyler McKendrick.
    “Are you coming home now?”
    At the sound of his mother’s voice, Ty straightened away from the Jenny’s fuselage and turned to look at her. She was approaching across the dirt like an oceanliner steaming across the Atlantic. Such was Helen McKendrick’s presence that it took a moment for Ty to notice that his father was with her, trailing half a step behind, his expression resigned.
    “Mother. I thought you’d already gone home.” Ty leaned down to brush a dutiful kiss across her lightly powdered cheek, surprised, as always, by how small she was.
    “Your father and I thought you might need a ride home.”
    Nice of her to include his father, Ty thought, knowing perfectly well that it hadn’t been Elliot McKendrick’s idea to come back to the fairgrounds.
    “Actually, it’s going to be awhile before I’m ready to go,” Ty told her. “Jack’s parents left the Packard for him. He’ll give me a ride home later.”
    “I’d prefer it if you came home now, Tyler.” Helen’s eyes clashed with her son’s and Ty felt his temper rise.
    In his entire life, he’d never once seen his mother gracefully accept the possibility that she might not get her way. When he was a boy, he’d had little choice but to accede to her wishes. But he was not a child anymore. He was a man and perfectly capable of deciding when he wanted to go home.
    “I’ll be home shortly,” he said, making a determined effort to keep his voice pleasant.
    “You’re not going up in that thing again?” The words hovered somewhere between order and question.
    “I don’t know.” The truth was, he’d had no intention of taking the Jenny up again. The sun was low in the western sky. He was tired. His shoulders ached from the hours of flying he’d done that day, taking passengers up for a quick taste of flying. His ears still buzzed with the sound of the plane’s motor, and he hadn’t planned anything more vigorous than going home and having a hot meal, a bath, and a good night’s sleep.
    But he’d take the plane up and fly all night rather than give in to his mother’s iron will.
    It had been Jack