The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [31]
He chuckled conspiratorially. “You bet.”
Annie began pacing the hallway. “The final papers are at your lawyer’s, Brad. You sign them.”
“I’m never home.” He laughed again. “I just sold a jet in Charleston and I’m headed your way.” Brad, retired from the Navy and now in the Reserves, was the figurehead of Hopper Jets, the highly successful Atlanta-based private aircraft company that had been founded by his grandfather and was actually run by his mother and his twin sister Brandy. “Anyhow, Georgette just told me Sam called your party off because of the weather. It’s not so bad.”
Annie stared out the window, where she saw Clark out in the yard, bent over by the wind, tying the barn doors shut. The wind blew the tall man’s yellow slicker sideways like a big flag of surrender. “You’re crazy, Brad. It’s very bad here. Georgette told you it wasn’t bad?”
“Yeah, well, you know she’d love to see me.” Brad, whose mother had persuaded him that he was the apple of the world’s eye, had always theorized that Georgette had a crush on him; he’d felt sorry for her as a result. “Sam sent me an invite to your party, so I wasn’t like crashing or anything.”
Annie grimaced at her aunt. “Sam sent you an invite?”
“She’s my bud.”
“Apparently everybody is.”
“So weather’s really bad there?”
She pushed away the balloons. “Major storm. Stay where you are, Brad.” Watching Sam, who was rereading the letter Jack had sent, she added, “I may be leaving town anyhow. I just found out my dad is dying.”
Brad was surprised. “No way!”
“He wants me to bring him the King of the Sky to St. Louis tonight. I’m thinking I should go because if he is dying, maybe he could tell me something about my mom.”
“Your mom? You don’t have a mom.”
“Everybody’s got a mom. I’d like to know who mine is.” Sam looked over at her. Annie, checking her watch, made a face at the phone. “Brad, even your mom’s better than none at all.”
“Ah, A, come on.” Brad hated for Annie to make cracks about his mother. It was an old argument.
“Fine. Bye. I’ve got to go deal.”
“Go deal. It’s bizarro, babe. But I’m sorry your dad’s sick. See, I’m nice about him.”
Annie couldn’t stop herself. “I’m nice about your dad.”
“My dad’s dead.” He sighed.
“I was nice about him when he wasn’t dead. Later, Brad.”
“Okay, later, A.”
She hung up with a decisiveness that she knew reminded him of his mother, Spring Hopper, the real estate mogul. Annie had always understood that Brad feared and admired the cut-to-the-chase take on life that she shared with “Mama Spring,” who hated her (and vice versa). Brad had kept photos of the two women in his wallet, separated by a divider. The one of Annie was one that she disliked, from the local newspaper, titled “Emerald’s Young Top Gun,” a picture of her in her Navy flight suit, arms folded, with her helmet stenciled “Lt. Annie P. Goode” with the black eagle, standing in a starry sky with a vacuous grin as if she’d just successfully straightened out the Milky Way. In the photo her fake smile (she had to admit) looked rather like Mama Spring’s.
Sam had hung this same photo of Annie, proudly enlarged, on a big posterboard headlined, “My Niece Lt. Anne Samantha Peregrine Goode!!!” The board sat in the window of Sam’s movie store so that everybody in town could keep up with Annie, whether they wanted to or not. Annie found the window display embarrassing and asked Sam to remove it. Sam refused. “Love means never being sure you won’t be totally mortified by the people who love you.”
“No fooling,” Annie replied.
She had separated from Brad immediately after walking into their bedroom and finding him having sex with their squad leader’s wife. She told him then that she was never again going to make herself so vulnerable. “It’s over, Brad. You need to know that.”
“I don’t know it, A. I don’t want to know it.”
Clark, who’d never thought Brad a particularly wise choice, had tried not to say I told you so. But after the separation, when Brad began begging her to come back, her uncle warned her, “Take