13

“You know, Laura, I don’t think either of us really knew what courage meant that day,” Sunny wrote to Laura Mann. “We were a couple of little kids lost in the dark, each one hanging on to the other, near dead with fright and both shouting how brave we were. To Page, courage was the strength to do what he thought was right. To me, courage was the guts to do what I knew damn well was wrong. (By conventional standards, at least). We were at opposite ends of the pole, too proud to meet halfway.”

* * *

Sunny left Page’s apartment that night with Page asleep from the effects of a sedative the doctor had given him. She went home in a taxi. There had been no verbal understanding between her and Page. It seemed as though the more they talked about their problem, the farther they drew apart. They traveled away from each other on the wings of their own words.

But when they kissed or clasped hands or stood and shared a lingering look, words were unnecessary. They had made love this time, they had been so close to one another that Sunny began to hope the future wasn’t all black.

Page had told her with his hands, his eyes, his mouth, how much she was cherished. No matter how wrong and painful and misunderstood their speeches were, they never misunderstood each other’s kisses.

She spent the next few days expecting him to call her, and when nearly a week went by and he didn’t, she was gravely hurt.

What does he expect me to do, make all the advances? she wondered. I’ve swallowed my pride. Let him swallow his this time.

* * *

It was in a downcast mood that Sunny went to Dr. Settick for her six-month check-up. She sat in the examination room, staring at the white gown that covered her and trying not to think of Page. She hardly heard the doctor enter.

He walked around in front of her, pulled her chart out of a folder, and checked her weight without a word of greeting. Total gain for six months: two pounds. He noted it, still silent, and turned to look her over.

It was so unlike him to keep quiet that she glanced up at him. “Am I all right?” she asked anxiously.

“I don’t know,” he said, straightening up. “Are you all right? You tell me.”

“I feel all right,” she said.

“How does your husband feel?” He eyed her closely.

“He had a slight accident last week,” she answered. “I imagine he’s still pretty uncomfortable.”

“Oh? You wrung his neck, I hope. Sunny, you’re badly underweight. The baby seems to be all right. His heart is strong and he’s growing. But frankly, you worry me. The first time I saw you in here you were smiles all over, just like your name. And when I told you you were going to be a mother you nearly floated out of here. Now you’re moody, gloomy, listless....” He sighed. “I’m the last guy to make predictions, but I don’t like what your husband’s been doing to your state of mind.”

“It couldn’t be helped,” she said shyly.

“Well, something had better be done about it,” Settick said, “if you want me to take responsibility for delivering that baby in good condition.”

“Is it that bad?”

“It could be. It depends on how much pressure you’re under and how strong you are to resist it. This is your first baby and there’s no way of telling.”

“What can I do?” she asked. “If anything happens to my child—”

“Do you ever see your husband?” the doctor asked.

“Now and then.”

“Does it upset you a lot?”

“I guess it does,” she admitted with restraint.

“Then you shouldn’t see him at all,” Settick told her. “I mean that, Sunny. You’re in no shape to fight and argue and whatever the hell else you do with the guy. I’m telling you honestly: forget him till after the baby comes. Don’t call him and don’t let him in. Tell him it’s doctor’s orders and if he gives you a bad time tell him to call me. I think I have good medical grounds for asking you to do this.” He stepped closer to her, though there was a careful lack of intimacy in his manner.

“Sunny, you’re such a damn sweet girl,” he said. He leaned his weight on the examination table behind her, his eyes averted. “You ought to be the way you were the day I met you, and instead you’re coasting downhill. There’s nothing physically wrong, nothing I can prescribe any more pills for. But it’s obvious your husband’s making you miserable, and if he doesn’t quit it’s my professional opinion he may injure this child you’re carrying. Or you. I don’t know how I can make it any stronger.”

“I don’t know if I can stop seeing him,” Sunny said.

“Well, okay, it’s your choice,” Settick said, shrugging. “You can choose between husband and baby. At the moment, I think baby comes first. You can square things up with your husband later.”

Sunny breathed deeply and fought her tears. To make it easier for her, Dr. Settick pretended not to notice and re-aligned the papers in her file.

“If I can’t see him at all, I think I’d better get out of the city,” she said when her nerves steadied. “Because if I’m still here and he’s still here, I’ll see him, Doctor.”

Settick folded his arms on his chest, and shook his head at her. “Brother,” he said. “You sure are a case. The guy makes you sick and you adore him for it. If you love each other so much why aren’t you happy? It doesn’t make sense.”

“I guess it doesn’t,” she agreed.

“I don’t mean to pry,” he added. “But if you have to move out of New York, move quickly. I suggest California.”

“Why California? It’s so far away.”

“That’s exactly why,” he said. “Ever been there?”

“No.”

“That makes it even better. He won’t suspect it. He’ll think you went home to Mama. And when he finds out otherwise, he won’t know where to look. My brother Brian lives in Los Angeles,” he went on. “I told you about him. He’s an obstetrician too. I want to keep close track of you, Sunny, and give you the best medical care. Brian is the best ... Could you finance the trip?”

“I think so, Page puts money in the bank every month.”

“Wait till the last minute and then close out the account. You’ll like the coast,” he added reassuringly. “Brian’s wife will show you around.”

Sunny couldn’t help being touched and grateful for his concern. “I’d only do this for the baby,” she said. “I don’t care about myself.”

“What happens to you happens to Junior. Think of it that way.”

“All right, then.” She had made a momentous decision; now she felt tired. After a minute she became conscious of the silence and glanced up at him. “May I go now?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, but there was an avalanche of words piled up and waiting behind that ‘yes’ for some gesture of Sunny’s to release them. “I’ll call you when I’ve made the arrangements,” he said. “You can go home and pack.”

“Thank you.” She paused. “If I weren’t so tired I wouldn’t let you talk me into this, you know.”

“That’s the first time I’ve been glad to see you tired,” he grinned.

She smiled, letting him help her down from the table, and found herself standing right in front of him, suggestively close. Oddly immobile, whether from weariness or a desire to be comforted she never knew, she stood there until she felt his arms go around her. She had known they would, and her behavior actually encouraged it. She even knew he would kiss her, and she didn’t want his kiss. But she wanted to be held; she wanted to be caressed and reassured by a man’s gentle strength, and she was willing to pay for it.

It was a chaste kiss: the kind a man gives a woman he reveres; a woman he can’t have and yet can’t give up. It surprised Sunny, who thought the young doctor would make the most of this chance to rouse her sexually. But he seemed to know that such a move could only repel her then. Instead he touched her lips lightly with his and kissed her forehead. And then he wrapped her in the strong embrace she yearned for and rocked her tenderly.

He was so kind, so careful to control his fascination with her lest he offend her, that he won her over. She clung to him and let herself cry into his starchy clean coat.

“Sunny,” he said, afraid of breaking the spell but more afraid he’d never talk to her again. “I have no right to say this, but—”

“Don’t then, please,” she pleaded.

“Let me. Just listen for one minute. I have no claim on you. You belong to another man. You love him. For some reason he sees fit to torment you—”

“You’re being unfair!”

“Okay, I’m unfair. I don’t know all the facts.” He held her closer. “But I do know you’re bitterly unhappy because of him and you’re making yourself sick over it. Every time I see you I want to take you in my arms and brush away the tears and make you smile. Sunny, I haven’t been very subtle about this. I guess it’s no secret that ever since you’ve been coming here I—I’ve had a special interest in you.”

“Dr. Settick—”

“My name is Richie,” he said gently. “Let me finish. For want of a better word let me say I’m infatuated with you. If you weren’t married I’d call it something much stronger. I’d want you for my own.”

“Richie, I didn’t mean to start this,” she said, pressing away from him. But he held her firmly.

“Just one last thing,” he said. “I know I can’t have you. But please let me help you. I can’t tell you what it would mean to me to see you safely through this pregnancy. If I thought we could get away with it I’d certainly keep you here where I can watch over you myself. The next best thing is to put you in Brian’s care. And when the baby’s due I’m coming out there to deliver it. I want you to promise me—”

“I can’t ask you to drop everything and—”

“You don’t have to ask me, I want to do it.” He looked down at her and she could see in his serious clean-featured face that he meant it. “I’ve been planning a couple of weeks off later in the summer anyway. I’ll be in close touch with Brian. And I want you to write me, too. Sunny, let me do this. Don’t be embarrassed by my feelings for you. Don’t even think about them. I’m a good doctor, and I’ll take good care of you. Please. It’s all of you I can ever have.”

The rush of words stopped. Sunny was tempted simply to resign her will and be cared for. She needed it so much and he wanted so much to do it. Was it wrong to accept his help, just because he loved her? He was a doctor, he was trained to care for people.

“Richie,” she said awkwardly, “I’m grateful to you—”

“Then don’t turn me down.”

“I ... I can’t turn you down. I need you too much. But you mustn’t expect me to leave my husband. I can never thank you enough for what you’re doing for me, only—”

“I’ll never take advantage of you, Sunny.”

She smiled at him then. “You make me feel terribly selfish,” she said.

“I’m the selfish one.”

She put a hand on his arm. “I want you to know about Page. It’s never been a question of love between us, Richie. That’s the only thing we’ve been sure of in all this mess.” She remembered suddenly that she was clad in a loose gown with nothing underneath it. He brought it to her attention inadvertently, being extremely close to her as he was. With a deep blush she said, “I’d better dress.”

“Sunny, have dinner with me tonight?”

It would be nice to have some company, some laughter. She relented without a struggle. “All right, if you’ll let me cook it for you,” she said. “I haven’t cooked a meal for a man in months. Seven o’clock?”

“You’ve got a deal,” he said with a grin.

* * *

She got a roast on the way home and some squash and fresh broccoli—the sort of things that take a little doing when they’re spiced and wined and buttered right, things women never fix for themselves. It felt good to be busy in the kitchen, even though the bother wasn’t for Page.

She wondered once, briefly, if Page would choose that evening to come over. He’d blow a fuse, she thought. But it was too late to change things: already quarter to seven.

Richie arrived ten minutes later, with a spray of yellow roses and a bottle of champagne under his arm. “I thought as long as we were doing it, we might as well do it right,” he said handing them to her. He looked very handsome in his dark suit. He was fair, like Page, but heavier set and shorter. His features were fuller, more emphatic than Page’s: one might say a little coarser, though coarse only by comparison. He was a sensitive, intelligent man, and he was pleasant company that evening.

The champagne eased Sunny’s apprehensions about Page and she relaxed and enjoyed herself. Richie talked about himself at her insistence, telling her about the medical school he had attended and why he had specialized in obstetrics. “I just like women and babies, I guess,” he laughed. “Not a very scientific reason.”

She laughed with him and listened with interest, and he found himself growing expansive with her attention on him and the champagne in him.

“It’s a pleasure to talk like this,” he told her when the dinner was over and they were drinking their coffee with Page’s prize Drambuie. “I spend so damn much time every day listening.”

“That’s why you’re so popular,” she said.

“You think so?” he chuckled. “I used to have an old professor who insisted the bedside manner was half the cure. Any time you want to let me practice it on you, I’d be delighted.”

The time went much too fast. Sunny was surprised and disappointed when Richie got up to go a few minutes past eleven.

“I’m afraid I kept you too long,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you really?”

“No,” she admitted with a little smile. “I’d keep you longer if I could.” But when he reached toward her she added quickly: “But just to talk. Nobody else can make me smile these days.”

He let his hands fall back. “When you take up medicine you give up normal hours for the rest of your life,” he said. “You have to sleep wherever you can and whenever you get the chance.”

She saw him to the door, getting his coat from the hall closet. There was a clumsy little silence after he had put it on and stood there in front of her, hesitating. She hoped, suddenly self-conscious, that he would not try to kiss her.

But he only said, “Thank you, Sunny, for a beautiful evening. Everything was perfect. Especially you.”

She surprised herself and him both by kissing his cheek, a swift, soft, tip-toed peck. “That’s for taking such good care of me,” she said.

He couldn’t help kissing her then, and she wondered, while he held her, what might have happened to her life if she had met him before she met Page. It was idle conjecture, really; she loved Page with her whole heart. But Richie Settick was a fine man; strong, intelligent, attractive. And while he respected her feelings for her husband, he was not sorry she admired himself and liked him and needed him. He would do nothing to discourage her.

He squeezed her one last time. “I’ll call you tomorrow, after I’ve talked to Brian,” he said, gave her one long look, and left.

* * *

Richie’s call came just five minutes after unpredictable Page had walked in on his wife, and Sunny was so flustered on the phone, trying to warn Richie without making Page suspicious, that Richie finally caught on.

“Is your husband there?”

“Extremely!” she said and he muttered, “Oh, God. Well, I’d better call you back.”

“No, I’ll call you,” she said, afraid he might call again before Page left. Or perhaps Page had no intention of leaving. She couldn’t guess what he had come for.

Sunny hung up and followed Page into the kitchen, where he had gone while she was on the phone. She found him with his head in the refrigerator, sampling the previous night’s leftovers.

“Boy,” he mumbled through a full mouth. “Good, honey.” He waved a piece of roast beef at her.

“Is that all you have to say to me?” she said, half-joking, half-dismayed.

“No.” He glanced at her almost bashfully, and turned away, finding a knife in the kitchen drawer to cut the meat. The sight of him with a blade in his hand made her gasp.

“It’s all right,” he said hastily. “I just want something to eat. I always thought I married a crackerjack cook.” He gave her a smile that seemed more like a cover-up for something else. He was too casual, too much the sophisticated spouse calling on his estranged wife to chat. She half-expected a polite inquiry on the health of her lovers.

“How is your hand, darling?” she asked. The wound was one week old.

“Okay,” he said.

“I’ll bet it hurts a lot,” she said. “What did you do with the finger, Page?”

He blinked, humiliated by the discussion. “Threw it in the garbage,” he said briefly.

“But it was a part of you,” she protested. “I know it sounds silly, but—”

“It certainly does,” he said, refusing to look at her and eating a chunk of beef. “What would I do with the thing? Pickle it?”

“I guess not,” she admitted. She put a cautious hand on his shoulder. “Page? Why are you here?”

“To see you.”

“Don’t be so damn matter-of-fact about it,” she cried. “This is the first time you’ve come to see me since this thing happened. Page, put that meat down and talk to me.” She snatched it from him and re-wrapped it in aluminum foil.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“What did you come for?” She faced him with her hands folded over her bosom and he knew he would have to do battle to get them down again. She wasn’t going to give him any help.

He made a fuss over his sticky hands and spent some minutes cleaning them up.

“How are you feeling?” he said lamely. “I mean, what does the doctor say? I mean you scared me last week. You were so thin and white. You looked so beautiful, honey, but too damn skinny. Are you all right?”

He delivered this halting speech, full of love and embarrassment, without looking at her. She decided not to answer till he looked at her. Eventually, in the ensuing silence, he had to.

“Darling?” he questioned softly. “Are you all right?”

“No, I’m not.”

He paled. He blushed easily when he was self-conscious and conversely went white with alarm. Sunny’s reactions were identical, and it touched her to see the trait in Page, even though it was another physical proof of their blood tie. “Are you really sick or are you trying to scare me?” he said.

“I’m really almost sick. Dr. Settick says I have to get out of New York for a while. He doesn’t want me to see you any more.”

She hadn’t stopped to think that her words would be antagonistic. She meant to spite him and instead infuriated him.

“You tell that bastard he can take a flying jump at the moon!” he exploded. “Who is he to tell you if you can see your own husband?”

“My ex-husband,” she reminded him. “Be consistent, Page. He said it because I get so upset he’s afraid it will affect the baby’s health. And mine. He said if my depression lasts he can’t answer for the baby’s safe delivery. He said it would be on your conscience.”

She hadn’t intended to tell him that. She meant to slip away on her trip and leave him a reassuring note. No recriminations. But the way he gnawed on that roast beef, maligned Richie, avoided her, with such a show of casual sophistication, incensed her. She knew he was trying to hide his love, to prevent a burst of uncontrollable desire for her. But it made her want to tear down his cool self-righteousness.

“Page, I wish I could make you come to me on your knees,” she cried. “I wish I could make you feel what I feel when I crawl to you and beg you to kiss me and need me and—” She broke down and cried.

Watching her, his anger melted. “Don’t go away,” he began. “Please, Sunny. I couldn’t live in this town if you weren’t here. Just knowing I can see you if I have to—”

“If you have to!” she shouted. “That’s too big an ‘if,’ Page. Either live with me as my husband or consider the annulment official and leave me forever. Make up your mind.”

“Darling, I can’t. Don’t force me—”

“Well, which is better?” she asked brokenly through her tears. “This piecemeal love-making? This frantic once-a-month stuff that exhausts us both? Or making up our minds we have to have each other anyway, and so living together? Page, I can’t take this and neither can you.

“You say it’s wrong for us to sleep together because we’re brother and sister. Well, why do we do it, then? Why don’t we say good-by and get it over with? This installment-plan passion is just as immoral as living together and a lot more agonizing. You say you have principles. All right, stick to them!”

She finished with a small cry of dismay. She had delivered an ultimatum to him by mistake. All the pent-up wrath of the preceding months boiled out of her and she couldn’t stop it.

“That doctor’s been brainwashing you!” he said.

“He’s been telling me the truth.”

“He’s trying to turn you against me! And he’s probably in love with you.”

“Yes, he is!” she fired back with vindictive pride.

“Oh, God!” he cried. “And I suppose you’ve invited him over here—to my apartment—”

“My apartment,” she corrected him. “You forfeited your right to it months ago.”

“I suppose that roast beef was for him.”

“You don’t think I’d cook all that for myself, do you?” she said in a voice made unsteady with tears. “He’s a lot better company than you are, too.”

“Don’t you leave this city,” he warned. “I’ll have that bone-picker jailed for alienation of affections!”

“Can you sue if the affections belong to your mistress, not your wife? Since we’re getting technical, let me remind you as you keep reminding me: we’re not married. And I’m no more sleeping with Richie Settick than you are with your secretary.”

They stared at each other. Page dared not relent for fear of crushing her in his arms and forgiving her everything, even the things she only did in his imagination—and those were the worst of the lot.

“You think I let him make love to me, don’t you?” she said.

“No,” he said and the admission surprised her almost as the sudden quiet of his voice. The starch in him washed out suddenly.

He went to her, hesitant and ashamed of his outburst, expecting the frigid reception he deserved. But she moved toward him and he caught her, holding her tightly as if he meant to keep her there forever.

“Every time I shout at you I get myself in trouble,” he said unhappily. “I’m so damn jealous I’m acting like a five-year-old. If I can’t have you I don’t want anyone else to. But you see Settick too much and you like him too much. No wonder he’s in love with you. He’d have to be blind not to be. And he’s too damn available.”

“But darling, the man I want is so unavailable.”

He kissed her mouth, long and tenderly. She only said one word when he released her: “Stay.”

But he wasn’t ready; not yet. He was thinking, he was suffering, he was even softening. But it was still beyond his courage to commit himself.

He left her moments later. Sunny didn’t beg, she didn’t cry. She sensed a new attitude in him, a new gentleness, and she didn’t want to frighten it off. He was trying to control the emotions that had mastered him so often in the past, and, for the first time, he was taking a cautious look at her side of things.

An hour later she called Richie Settick back on the phone.

“You have a reservation on a jet flight to Los Angeles for Thursday, honey,” he told her. “Tessa, Brian’s wife, will pick you up at International Airport. She’ll have an apartment for you, too; something small, near Brian’s office. They wanted to take you in themselves, but I told them no. They have four little kids and it’s a madhouse.”

“Thanks a million, Richie,” she said. “I’d better let my parents know where I am.”

“Wait till you get out there,” he said. “And don’t let them tell Page.”

“I’ll say it’s a trial separation,” she said. “They don’t even know I’m pregnant and they’re awfully fond of Page. They’d be heart-sick if they thought we were breaking up.”

“This won’t be half as bad as you think, Sunny,” he comforted her. “I’ll drive you out to Idlewild Thursday.”

“Thanks, Richie.”

“Now get yourself packed and get your money from the bank,” he said. “And don’t do it all at once and wear yourself out. That baby’s still got almost three months to go, and we don’t want him coming early. Might louse up my vacation.”

She obeyed him; she was too tired to argue. Richie was efficient and strong and he simply took over, helping her pack, running last-minute errands for her, getting things in order. She told him about Page’s visit.

“And you told him you were leaving? You shouldn’t have done that, Sunny.”

“I don’t know why I did, except that he made me so angry. I wanted to see him really afraid of losing me.”

“But my God, he’ll be after you all the time,” Richie said. “I’m surprised he hasn’t barged in already.”

“Not that boy,” she said with weary sarcasm. “I told Page I was leaving, yes,” she added. “But not when or where. I’ve stuck it out all these months and he just figures I won’t leave now. And I wouldn’t, except for the baby.”

She sat down glumly on a suitcase. “Maybe I ought to stay,” she whispered, almost to herself. “He really tried to understand a little.”

“A little isn’t enough. Now forget it. Don’t think about him,” Richie ordered her. “Think about that instead.” He indicated her small belly.

“I don’t see how there’s room for a mouse in there,” she mourned, looking down at herself, “let alone a baby.”

“Some of the smallest girls have the biggest babies,” he said.

“But they stick out, don’t they?” She lifted her sad face for his reassuring reply and he kissed it instead. She murmured wryly, “Enter Page, twirling mustache. Sunny screams. Gallant doctor draws pistol and defends virtue of wronged damsel. Duel follows. Everybody drops dead. Justice is served. Fanfare. End of story.” She glanced at Settick. “Maybe we’d all be better off dead,” she said.

“The hell with that noise,” he retorted cheerfully. “Nobody’s better off dead.”

“Not even the screwballs? The queers and the criminals?”

“Not even them. Not in my book.” He was kneeling with one leg on her other bag, forcing it shut. “There’s always a chance the square peg will find a square hole.”

“How about the people who make love to corpses? Or their own sex? Or their own brother?”

There was a small bemused pause. “You have a morbid imagination, honey,” he said, smiling.

“You mean you condone all those things?” she said, feeling an almost compulsive need to talk about it. “Murder? And sodomy? And—incest?”

“No,” he said calmly. “I don’t condone. And I don’t condemn. I try to correct. I had a patient a few months ago—can’t remember which one, they all ask questions—who wanted to know about incest.” His look made her heart skip.

“What did you tell her? Sure, go ahead? Incest is better than nothing?”

“No. She wasn’t committing it, she was asking about it,” he said.

“How do you know?” Sunny felt as if she were playing dangerously near the cliff of confession: one slip and over she’d go. Or was confession unnecessary? Had he already guessed? She didn’t think so, because she felt he would have asked her about it if he had.

“Well, come to think of it, I don’t know whether she was or not,” he answered. “Stranger things have happened.... There you are, all packed. We have three hours to get the plane.”

“What did you tell her, Richie?”

“About the incest? She wondered if it would affect the children. Why?”

“Maybe it was her own baby she was worried about.”

“Maybe it was.” He stared at her. “My God, maybe it was. Why am I so dense about these things? Damn. Takes a woman to see through another woman, I guess.” He kept staring at her and she had the sudden premonition that he would remember at any second.

She got up lightly. She was sweating nervously and longed for him to drop the subject. He did, at once, almost as if he knew it embarrassed her. If she had trusted herself she would have dismissed it with one last silly crack, to throw him off. But her composure was riskily thin and she was afraid it showed.

Just don’t let him put two and two together, she prayed.

* * *

He drove her out to the airport. They didn’t talk much until they got there and checked her bags and went to have a drink.

“Do you really want me to have a martini?” she said.

“Sure. One won’t hurt you. Might do you some good.”

When their drinks came, Sunny said, “Richie, Page will find out I’ve gone sooner or later. I didn’t leave any note or address, but he knows your name. And it won’t take him long to find you, once he knows I’m not in New York. It might be tomorrow or a month from tomorrow, I don’t know. But I do know he’ll think it’s all your fault.”

“Don’t worry about it, Sunny. I can handle him. If he really loves you, I’ll use his love to convince him. After all, you aren’t leaving forever. Once the baby is safely delivered and you’ve got your health back, there’s no reason why you can’t see him again. He wouldn’t hurt you, would he? Physically?”

She shook her head. “I feel as if I’m dreaming,” she said. “This place, those big planes roaring out there. I’ve never even flown before. Did I tell you that?”

“It doesn’t scare you, does it?” he asked.

“No. I feel sort of numb. I’m glad; I don’t know if I could go through with it otherwise.”

He took her to the gate and handed her ticket to her. She turned to thank him, with the wind whipping her hair, and found herself crying. Richie put his arms around her and held her so hard she thought he meant to crack her ribs. But she returned the embrace without protest. At last she lifted her head and said, “Thank you.” It was all she had composure for, but he could see in her face how much she meant it.

“I wish I were free to tell you how much I love you,” he said.

But she put a restraining finger on his lips and gave him a warning smile. “When you see my frantic husband—and he’ll be pretty frantic, believe me,” she said, “—will you please tell him for me that I love him ... very much?”

“I’ll tell him,” he said, as if to atone for his declaration of a moment before. “And remember, Sunny, no matter what happens, I’m going to deliver that baby. I’ll see you in a couple of months. Take care.”

Sunny smiled. She went through the gate and walked to the plane, up the ramp, and inside.

Settick stood and watched her disappear, then found her when she took her seat by a window toward the back, and stood with his hat in his hand, waving and cursing silently the name of Page Pringle, until she vanished in the clouds.