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“You can’t imagine how bad the nights are, Georgeanne.

The nightmares he gets.” This was Helen’s way of staking out her territory, George understood.

The wife got the hardship, the real meat of the marriage, not just the frivolous dessert.

George would have taken the nightmares, too, but Frank never offered them to her.

This was also Helen’s way of letting George know she was no fool.

For the sake of appearances, Helen would keep quiet, if, for the sake of appearances, Frank and George remained discreet.

Which they did. They kept their meetings sporadic, unpredictable. The girls in school, Tom up in the air somewhere. Adele surely knew, but she never said a word.

Helen and George still partnered at bridge.

They attended the Women’s Club together.

They sat on the same Garden Club committees.

Along with their husbands, they ate dinner at the club every other weekend, and if Tom was flying, they sometimes even went as a threesome.

Though George often skipped those occasions, pleading fatigue or evidence of an impending cold for herself or one of the girls.

“Those poor girls—always coming down with something,” said Helen.

“Frank Jr. never catches a thing. But then my father had the constitution of an ox.” George would hang up with a pang of longing for her own father and try not to dwell on what he’d think of her now.

She didn’t fault Helen for any of this. Helen behaved with remarkable decorum, considering.

Maybe it was time to stop this nonsense.

Her next “lunch” with Frank would be the last, she told herself sternly.

More than once. Then he’d walk through the door, run a hand through his dark hair, turn his midnight eyes on her.

Give her that smile that made her feel twenty again, with all her choices still arrayed before her.

Her life not narrowed down to being a wife, a mother, a small-town matron.

How could anyone begrudge her this happiness? With Tom gone all the time and Helen still calling her up regularly to go shopping, she convinced herself she and Frank weren’t hurting anyone.

She clung to this fiction even as the marital chill between herself and Tom deepened by the week.

She was grateful for the flight assignments that kept him away for nights at a time.

She had Frank, but then, she never fully had Frank.

She had her daughters and her mother. She had Vivian, but she sometimes wondered, at what cost?

Vivian’s request for a loan had hit her like a physical blow.

Hadn’t she known all along there would be a price?

No one gave away a child without asking for something in return.

Hadn’t she always known she’d have to pay?

She was utterly willing. She’d buy Vivian ten planes if it meant she could keep her daughter.

Vivian made sporadic payments on the loan. Every time one arrived, late and for less than the agreed-upon amount, Tom was ready with an “I told you so” smirk. The next time Vivian visited, bringing gifts for the girls, he said, “She’s just buttering you up for the next ask.”

Every visit, George prayed that Vivian wouldn’t ask for a dime.

She resisted her own “I told you so” smirk when Vivian departed without asking for a thing.

But about once a year, a letter arrived.

Landing fees had increased. Or the Beechcraft needed new wheels.

Or Vivian wanted to advertise in the local paper, just to get her flight school off the ground.

George opened her checkbook again and again, piled up more secrets to keep from Tom.

Their marriage worked better in the car.

Maybe it had something to do with a shared focus—a destination.

Maybe it had something to do with the compressed space—the confinement forced them to behave themselves.

At home, when they argued, Ruth and Ivy faded away, silent ghosts drifting off to their bedroom.

So she and Tom and the girls went on lots of outings.

They drove miles to peer over the edges of canyons, to swim in lakes, to float down rivers, to picnic at splintery tables alongside rusting playgrounds.

George liked to think they were showing their girls the world.

They were showing them that—regardless of how things sounded at home—the Rutledges were a happy family.

As they glided along the smooth new interstates, illusion became, at least temporarily, reality.

George sometimes believed it herself. They stopped for burgers and milkshakes, for roadside flea markets.

For the tallest tree here, the boulder that looked like Abraham Lincoln there, the waterfall just another mile downstream.

For a caged bear in one county and the last known wolf, also caged, in the next.

For anything that kept them all on the road another hour, that wore them all out a little more, made it that much more likely they’d make it until morning without hissing at each other.

Toward the end of one of these golden family-fun days, the girls drowsing in the back seat, Tom’s hands tensing on the wheel, and George’s shoulders hunching toward her ears as they neared Enid, she gazed toward the horizon in anticipation.

As if she knew she was about to see something wonderful, a distraction from their impending homecoming.

Perhaps both of their brains detected the engine noise before they saw the planes.

Perhaps that was why they knew where to look.

Or maybe it was just luck. Lord knew they were due for some luck.

In any case, when the planes coursed over the horizon line, flying wingtip to wingtip, she and Tom both gasped.

Tom pulled to the side of the road. They got out of the car, leaned into the wind, toward the aircraft.

Two Jennies. They flew one atop the other.

Then they split off in beautiful chandelles before coming back together again, splitting, reuniting, splitting and shooting up-up-up, and then, stalling out, falling into breath-catching flat spins before righting themselves, then shooting back beyond the curve of the earth, out of sight.

George and Tom stared at the horizon until it was evident that the planes weren’t returning. They stared a few minutes longer, just to make sure. They got back in the car, and Tom started the engine. “Barnstormers,” he said, shaking his head with wonder. “First plane I ever saw was a Jenny.”

“First plane I ever flew in. I paid three dollars for that ride, with a woman pilot, believe it or not.”

Tom chuckled and said he believed her on both counts. Then he said, “George, you could fly, you know. Out at the airfield. I know you miss it.”

She’d thought of this herself, and then dismissed it. Some nights she dreamed she had the controls of an A-24, or she was testing the limits of a BT-13. She could lease time in a Piper Cub, but she feared it wouldn’t feel like enough.

“I know it wouldn’t be the same,” said Tom. “Trust me, what I fly now isn’t anywhere near what either of us flew in the war. But it would be something.”

Maybe, thought George. “But the girls,” she said, and waited for Tom to point out that she had reliable babysitters, whom she ought to call more often than she did.

Then she would point out the value of economizing, Tom would mention the loan to Vivian, and they’d hiss at each other until the girls stirred in the back seat.

But Tom didn’t follow the script this time.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Adele all alone in that old house. It needs a new roof. The chimney leans north. And don’t say it always did.

You know it’s getting worse. She talks about having central air put in, but I don’t even want to think about the state of the wiring.

She should sell it before it falls down around her.

She could move in with us, help you out a bit. You two could keep each other company.”

And George, stunned by not one but two unexpected gifts from her husband in one afternoon, thought maybe , then yes.

Yes, because in addition to the obvious benefits of having Adele around, she and Tom would have one more powerful reason (the girls not quite being powerful reasons enough) to behave themselves.

When his parents passed, the Bridlemile property went to Frank.

His brother had died at Bastogne. His sister had left Enid for Dallas at eighteen and wanted nothing more to do with the Bridlemile land.

It was worthless acreage. No oil. No good for wheat.

Even cattle failed to thrive on it. But Enid was growing.

Vance Air Force Base was expanding. Military families moved in, bringing merchants and tradesmen in their wake.

The Bridlemile parcel was spitting distance from the base, and Frank wanted to build houses on it.

“Nothing fancy,” he told George. “Three-bedroom homes on midsize lots. Good for young couples with kids. I’ve sketched out floor plans myself.

” The next step was finding investors to fund the utility infrastructure, the street platting and paving, the finalization of the drawings.

“How much?” she asked, thinking of her Ector money, sitting cold and silent in the bank. Thinking of Frank’s warm arms around her.

“No, Georgeanne. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.”

“Why not? You’ve got a sound plan. I see the way the town is growing. I’ll make more money with you than by leaving it in the bank.”

“Tom wouldn’t go for it,” said Frank, violating one of their rules: that in bed they never, ever mentioned Helen or Tom. Even the children were out of bounds.

“It’s not Tom’s money. It’s mine.”