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forgiveness? Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee, and . . .
    She snorted a laugh, out loud, and the passengers glared at her, as one. Mary covered her mouth in embarrassment, remembering how her younger sister had always recited that she was partly sorry for her sins until someone pointed out her error just before her confirmation. It fit Maryann perfectly, because she, in fact, was only partly sorry.
    Stop this. Do it right. Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended . . .
    Flowers held the controls and McGowan was ready to jump in. The engines sounded perfect. All instruments checked out.
    At 26,000 feet, they hit again. Their angle of descent was steeper this time and the violence even greater. The airframe groaned and screamed in pain as the plane was twisted along its length and slammed constantly. Inside, an intense white light suddenly hovered just above their heads. Amid the torturous racking, the light seemed benevolent, welcoming, kind and caring. Mary smiled, and thought dying wasn’t so bad. Pleasant, actually. The passengers, screaming their terror a moment ago, now mirrored her serenity in the white light.

Chapter 15
    Flowers couldn’t hold on any longer. At 60, he wasn’t the boy who had wrestled the crude fighters up and down through crosswinds and bucking decks. He turned to Jim, who saw it was his time. “Your aircraft,” Flowers said. This was what McGowan was hungry for, the impossible situation that he alone had the visceral gifts to handle. He took the yoke firmly in his hands and slid his feet onto the pedals The light enveloped him now, and told him that it was okay, that they’d be home soon. He embraced it and leaned into the controls. Every vibration coursed through his body and was accounted for. Shifts in heading and altitude were sensed, instruments checked in his peripheral vision. These were the highest and best moments of his life and he would grow old savoring them.
    “Eastern 106, say your altitude.”
    “Eastern 106. We’re at approximately 24,000, heading 345 and we’re declaring an emergency at this time. Must continue descent to pass through extreme turbulence of unknown origin. Please clear the airspace around us and advise an IFR heading to the nearest airport. Damage unknown. Will need emergency equipment upon landing.”
    “Eastern 106 continue your descent. Your altitude floor is 1500. Set IFR to 93.700 for Macklin Air Force Base. Will alert to your emergency. Meet Macklin control at frequency 106.55.”
    Then, the wrenching, shuddering, falling ceased. The white light ebbed away and Eastern 106 reentered the world. Mary Dalton’s eyes moved about the passenger compartment and saw a collective hope and calm, a legacy of the warming light. And she felt their loss of something shared and unknown.
    Around the world, hundreds of aircraft were hitting the same turbulence and passing through, safely, in the light.
    Eileen sat in the rockers with Margaret Mann on the delicious porch of the Victorian. The meticulously enameled floor felt like polished glass under her bare feet. The breeze drifted over them from precisely the right direction. It was a place that you attached yourself to as though you would never choose to leave. An island of perfection. They stared out blankly at the lawn, overly green from the intense watering needed in the semi-desert climate. They felt the rhythm of the Linden trees, their leaves twinkling in the wind. It was an altogether perfect moment and Eileen felt that and smiled to herself. How odd to feel this instant of joy displace her gnawing pain for Luke.
    She saw now what he had meant about the sky as he mumbled his way into sleep last night, a sleep he now sought as his only escape from the dreadful feeling that had taken up residence in his chest and in a place behind his eyes.
    Margaret broke their comfortable silence. “The sky. I’ve never seen it like this.”
    “I was just thinking that. And Luke was