Anise follows the women, leaving you alone with Peyton and John.
“You’re a lucky, lucky man, Chip,” Peyton says.
“I think we all are,” John adds agreeably.
“When does Cali come home from school for the summer?” Peyton asks.
“Oh, that’s still a month away. The Friday before Memorial Day weekend most likely.”
“Does she still have those seizures?”
“Rarely. But every once in a while, yes.”
Peyton nods and glances at John, but John doesn’t look up from his Syrah. He seems lost in thought.
“She spending the summer here in New Hampshire?”
“I wish. Nope, she is only here through the end of June. Then she’s off to the Southwest for just about six weeks. Desert plants, mostly.”
“There’s a lot to study there,” Peyton says.
“Indeed. She’ll be in Santa Fe, Sedona, Bisbee, Las Cruces—though not necessarily in that order. But it is a pretty packed itinerary.”
“Ah, to be young and to have all that energy,” John says, smiling and suddenly returning to their conversation.
“We do all right,” Peyton says.
“We do now,” says the older lawyer. This is, it seems, a small but important correction in his mind.
“Hear, hear. A toast to health and to youth!” Peyton says, raising his voice as if he were in a bar, and you hold the goblet under your nose and breathe in the fragrance from the wine. And you agree: You haven’t felt this young or this healthy since well before a plane hit some geese and fell from the sky. But even that now seems but a distant, nebulous recollection: the details that for a time you knew so well? Either vague or gone. It is a bit like the death of your daughter. Rosemary—though when she was alive, weren’t you likely to call her Hallie? Yes. Yes, of course. But somehow the image of a girl named Hallie floats in the heavens just beyond the reach of your memory.
Like so much else, apparently. Like all of those thousands and thousands of hours you once spent on the flight deck of an airplane.
“Chip?”
You glance up at John and his raised chalice.
“You seem to have your head in the clouds tonight,” he says.
“Not anymore,” you tell him, holding high your glass, “those days are gone.” Then, after you have taken a slow, comradely sip, you sigh.
Acknowledgments
Once again, I could not have written this novel without an enormous amount of help. First of all, there were the pilots who shared with me what their lives are like on the ground and in the air: John Weber, Carol Lynn Wood, and Judy Bradt (who is a shaman as well as a pilot, a rare combination indeed). In addition, I am grateful to J. J. Gertler, a thorough and uncompromising reader, and a font of all sorts of esoteric information about aircraft. And then there was William Langewiesche, one of the world’s great aviation experts and a wonderful writer, who examined the scenes in this novel that involve flying (and crashing) and gently pointed out my particularly egregious errors.
And when it comes to crashing—or, at least, ditching—an aircraft, I am not sure that there are many people who know as much about surviving that sort of disaster as Maria Hanna and Richard Martin at Survival Systems USA in Groton, Connecticut. May I never need to use all I learned that day in the dunk tank, when the simulator was turning me upside down on the flight deck and I had to find my way to the surface of the water.
I learned an enormous amount as well from the shamans: Mary Alexander, Anthony Patrick Pauly, Jr., and Hilary Raimo.
And then there were the doctors, psychiatrists, and EMTs: Dr. Mike Kiernan, Dr. Richard Munson, Dr. Marc Tischler, and James Yeaton.
The books that were my Emergency Information Cards while writing this novel included Medicine Woman by Lynn V. Andrews; The Unquiet Dead by Edith Fiore; Fly by Wire: The Geese, the Glide, the Miracle on the Hudson, by William Langewiesche; and Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters, by Chesley Sullenberger and Jeffrey Zaslow.
And, of course, I am deeply indebted to the whole team at Random House and at Gelfman Schneider. First at Crown: Domenica Alioto, Shaye Areheart, Andy Augusto, Patty Berg, Cindy Berman, Sarah Breivogel, Jacob Bronstein, Whitney Cookman, Jill Flaxman, John Glusman, Kate Kennedy, Christine Kopprasch, Jacqui LeBow, Matthew Martin, Maya Mavjee, Donna Passannante, Philip Patrick, Tina Pohlman, Catherine Pollock, Annsley Rosner, Jay Sones, Molly Stern, Kira Walton, and Campbell Wharton. At Gelfman Schneider: Jane Gelfman, Cathy Gleason, and Victoria Marini. And no list would be complete without Arlynn Greenbaum at Authors Unlimited and Dean Schramm of the Schramm Group.
Finally, there is my lovely bride of a quarter of a century, who reads all my work in more drafts than anyone should have to endure, Victoria Blewer.
I thank you all so very, very much.
About the Author
CHRIS BOHJALIAN is the author of thirteen novels, including the New York Times bestsellers Secrets of Eden, The Double Bind, Skeletons at the Feast, and Midwives. His novel Midwives was a number one New York Times bestseller and a selection of Oprah’s Book Club. His work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages and have twice become movies (Midwives and Past the Bleachers). He lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter.
Visit him at chrisbohjalian.com, find him at facebook.com and goodreads.com, and follow Chris on Twitter.
Chris Bohjalian, The Night Strangers
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