Read Online When She Flew by Jennie Shortridge - Free Book Online

creek ahead. Even though she’d worked with him for over a year, Takei was not forthcoming about personal details and she had no idea if he had a family, a wife, kids. Did Z? she wondered.
    Jess wished she had someone at home who would worry. She could call her mother, just in case something should go awry. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something was so different about this day, this place. Of course, she would first have to figure out how to tell Clara what was going on without causing her to freak out. Her mother had few other responses to anything in life.
    On the final day of Jess’s marriage, she’d made the mistake of calling her mother. Jess had never been more certain that her marriage was over, but her mother cried, worrying that Jess and Nina would end up broke and on the streets, imploring her to give Rick another chance, even after Jess told her what happened. He’d gone out drinking after work, even after he’d agreed to pick up Nina and her friend Blaine from the cineplex at the mall.
    Jess had been on duty that night. She called Rick to make sure he didn’t forget to go get them. She heard voices and the sounds of a public place in the background and assumed he was already there.
    “Oh, good, you remembered,” she’d said, and she could tell by his silence that he hadn’t.
    “Remembered—” he tried.
    “You’re not at the mall?” she asked, shaking her head. “Where are you then?”
    “I just needed to pull over and get some gas, hon. That’s all.”
    Jess took a deep breath. He never called her “hon.”
    “Those girls have been out of the movie for ten minutes. You need to get over there now.”
    In retrospect, what still killed her was that she knew he wasn’t at the gas station. The sounds were convivial, social. But she said, “You need to get over there now” instead of “Are you out drinking?”
    It sank in a half hour later, when the radio dispatcher requested a patrol car to respond to a bar fight out of her jurisdiction. A chill descended upon her, almost as if from above, and she radioed her commanding officer, told him she had an emergency at home, and could she take the cruiser? Of course, he said, but let me get someone out on the street to replace you first. She called Rick while she waited, parked behind a Safeway store.
    “Hello?” he answered, his voice rising too grandly at the end, and she knew. He was drunk.
    “Are the girls with you?” she asked.
    He laughed. “Yeah, of course they are. Geez, give a guy a break.” She knew he was mugging it up for Nina and Blaine, who probably weren’t in seat belts.
    “Where are you?”
    “We stopped for ice cream at the Dairy Queen by the high school. Neenie’s having a twist.”
    “Stay right there,” Jess said. “I’m going to take a break and meet you, okay? It’ll be fifteen minutes.”
    She didn’t want to tip her hand. He’d get angry and his driving would be even worse.
    “Really? Hey, Neen, Mom’s coming to meet us!”
    It finally hit her that the only time her husband ever sounded happy was when he drank.
    Her CO radioed back that she was clear to go, and she arrived at Dairy Queen within ten minutes. Nina and Blaine watched wide-eyed from their outdoor table as Jess got out of the car in her uniform, slammed the door, and strode over to Rick. He was the only one who didn’t see her anger.
    She leaned down and he thought she wanted to kiss him. He grabbed at her playfully, the reek of alcohol so strong she shuddered. She pushed him away and straightened up, finally accepting that she never should have married him in the first place.
    “You just lost your family,” she said.
    Nina looked like she’d been hit, her eyes wide and awful.
    “Come on, girls,” Jess said. “Let’s go for a ride in a police car.”

8
    A fter I ran back into the camp, Pater had a look on his face like he wanted to be sick, like the feeling I had after the vanilla milk shake. He wasn’t mad at me. He should have