Chapter 9
The helicopter stayed where the pilot had put it down, on a flat cut of grass beside the coastal highway. The wind off the ocean still hit it sideways. Richard didn't let go of my elbow as we walked toward the parking lot. His hand wasn't tight like it had been in the cabin. It was guiding, performative. Like a husband helping his pregnant wife over uneven ground.
We had no car. The pilot had already called his company. Richard had already told him we would handle our own ride.
"I've got an executive car coming," he told me, not looking at me. "Twenty minutes. We'll drive back together and figure this out calmly."
I didn't answer. I kept my hand on my belly. The beige trench coat had dust on the hem from the rotor wash.
The black SUV pulled up and Richard opened the passenger door for me. That was the choice. He stood there holding it, smiling for anyone who might be watching from the road. I could have stepped back. I could have said no and stayed by the helicopter with the pilot.
I got in. The door shut with a solid thump.
Highway One unrolled north, two lanes with the ocean on our left and cliffs dropping off right past the guardrail. Richard drove with both hands on the wheel, ten and two, exactly the speed limit. He turned on the climate control. He turned it off.
"I love you, Olivia," he said after five miles of silence. His voice was even. Practiced. "I know what that looked like up there. You have to let me explain."
I looked out at the water. I didn't answer him. In the pocket of my trench coat, my phone was awake. I'd opened Voice Memos before we pulled away. The red bar was running at the top of the screen. I kept my hand in my pocket with my thumb resting near it, so it wouldn't lock.
He tried again. "You were scared. I was scared. When you said that thing about changing everything, I didn't understand. Talk to me."
I kept watching the white lines. The phone kept recording the wind through the vents and his hands shifting on leather and my own breathing. I wouldn't give him a new sentence to use against the one I already had on file. Silence was safer.
After another twenty minutes he pulled off at a gas station with a diner attached. Miller's, with a hand-painted sign and three sheriff's cruisers in the lot at lunchtime. The kind of place where everybody saw who came in together.
He parked by pump four. "You need the restroom? You should eat something. For the baby."
I needed both. I also knew what that lot offered. I could walk straight into the diner, ask the woman behind the counter to call someone, and not get back in his car. The door to the diner opened and a family came out, kids in soccer uniforms.
Richard got out and came around to my side. He didn't grab me. He just stood close enough that it would be clear we were together.
I unbuckled slowly. My legs were stiff. Inside the gas station, the air smelled like coffee and fried potatoes. I went to the restroom and checked my phone. The memo was at eighteen minutes and still running. I tapped my cloud photos to make sure the pictures from the field were still syncing. Signal was weak but the little arrow was spinning.
When I came out, Richard was at the counter buying two bottles of water and a pack of cheese crackers. He paid with his card and handed me a bottle like a normal husband.
"You want to sit for a minute?" he asked, nodding toward the diner booths. "We can talk where it's warm."
I shook my head. "We should get to town before traffic."
That wasn't the reason and he knew it. If I sat in that diner and told the waitress I was afraid, it would become a he-said she-said in a booth. I had the pilot's statement. I had photos with the placard and the open door and the cliff. I had eighteen minutes of him driving me and saying I love you like it could overwrite what happened. I needed a fourth piece: him still controlling the ride into a place where I chose the building we walked into.
Back in the SUV, he pulled back onto Highway One. He talked for most of the last thirty miles about the foundation, about the board meeting next week, about the house. Like we were driving home from a normal weekend.
I answered in the shortest sounds I could. Yes. No. I kept my hand on my belly and my other hand in my pocket, keeping the phone alive.
The town came up with its water tower and its main street and the little brick building where my attorney kept her office two doors down from the sheriff's substation. Richard didn't know that was where I was taking him. He thought we were headed to his office like we always did, where his assistant would smooth everything over.
When the speed limit dropped to thirty-five and the streetlights started, he finally exhaled and loosened his hands on the wheel.
"See," he said, almost smiling now. "We got home fine. We'll go somewhere quiet and fix this."
May you like
He believed he still had the narrative. That the helicopter was a misunderstanding. That the drive proved we were fine.
I let him believe it as he turned onto Main.
