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She felt suddenly lonely. Ivy and Frank Jr. were gone. Some days she felt like the only remaining child of her generation. And far from childhood too. She hurried to the annex to change into her dress.

“Everything all right out there?” asked Vivian as Ruth entered the dressing room.

“The Quigleys just sat down,” said Ruth.

“Ah, good. I was hoping they’d make it.”

“I wish ...” Ruth trailed off. Ivy and George and Adele had shadowed her all day, all the way to Hahira and back.

“I wish they were here, too, sweetheart. It’s my biggest regret about not doing it sooner.”

Ruth quickly changed into the sea-green dress Helen had advised her to buy.

(“Brings out the flecks in your eyes,” said Helen.

“Mm-hmm, sure does,” agreed Frieda.) Vivian looked elegant in a slate-blue suit of shantung silk.

Soignée. A word Ruth associated with Ivy, the two of them getting ready for Spring Fling in their shared bedroom, each in a new tea-length dress.

Ivy had been in a good mood—perhaps she hadn’t yet tired of the boy who was taking her.

Ruth pictured her sister so clearly, swishing the skirt of her dress and saying, “ Très soignée . ”

“ Très soignée ,” Ruth said as she fastened George’s pearls around Vivian’s neck and smoothed the shoulders of the suit.

“I have no idea what that means,” said Vivian, “but I like the way it sounds.”

“Just something Ivy used to say.”

Vivian ran a finger along the pearls.

“Mom’s parents gave her these,” said Ruth, grazing the smooth pearls with her own fingers. “For her seventeenth birthday. She would have gotten them at sixteen, Adele always said, but that was the year she asked for the plane.”

“A plane at sixteen and pearls at seventeen. George had it okay, didn’t she?”

“She did,” agreed Ruth. “You look beautiful.”

“So do you.” Vivian turned and placed her hands on Ruth’s shoulders. “You sure you’re okay with all of this?”

A gentle tap at the door and Frieda, in a flowered dress with butterfly sleeves, poked her head in. “The preacher says ready when you are.”

“Don’t you look lovely,” said Vivian.

“Thank you. Helen nodded at me, so I knew I looked okay.”

“Better than okay,” said Ruth, delighting at the pink that rose in Frieda’s cheeks.

“See you at the reception,” said Frieda. “Break a leg, Miss Shaw!”

“It’s Vivian, and you know it.” Vivian smiled. It was impossible to scold Frieda.

Frieda would struggle with that directive, Ruth knew.

She’d been raised better than to call anyone from a previous generation by their first name.

But at least she had options. Vivian had stopped being Ruth’s “aunt” the day she told Ruth everything.

If Ruth had to introduce her to someone, she said, “This is Vivian Shaw.” If an explanation was required, she added, “My mother’s friend.

” She found it remarkably easy to get by without labeling their relationship.

And since no label seemed quite right for the woman standing before her, Ruth usually avoided using one at all.

“You asked if I was okay with it all,” said Ruth. “And I am. I’m happy you’re getting married, and I’m really happy that you’ll be close by.”

Initially, she’d been thrown by Vivian and Don’s plan to move to Enid.

Did that mean she had to stay? What if she felt drawn to someplace more exciting?

“Then you’ll go,” Vivian had said. “We’ll still see each other.

We both own airplanes, after all.” But for now, Ruth had decided, Enid was home.

Not because she grew up there. Not because of the comfort of a known landscape or familiar voices. Enid was home because Frieda was there.

At the back of the chapel, Ruth took Vivian’s hand. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

The organ sounded. “All right. Let’s go.” She almost added Mom , but stopped herself.

The guests stood. The past reared up within her. Ivy and George and Adele pressed close, urging her forward. Maybe another day she would call Vivian Mom. For today it was enough to take slow, deliberate steps as she preceded her up the aisle.

The reception. Smoked salmon canapés, mushroom vol-au-vents, and pineapple chicken at the country club.

The catering arranged by Helen. The champagne paid for by Ruth.

Every direction she turned, another waiter bearing a tray of the stuff.

Tongues and ties loose with it. Vivian and Don dancing.

Guests knotting up and then untangling, so much to say, so many years gone by.

Quiet corners sought and abandoned. Ruth, keeping company with Ivy and George and Adele, stalked the perimeter, observing, listening.

To her father telling Helen he had to fly to LA in the morning. Would she mind if he phoned her during the turnaround?

To Joyce ordering “just soda” at the bar.

To Frieda telling Elizabeth she hoped to get married herself someday.

“Oh, I’m sure the right one will come along,” said Elizabeth.

“She already has,” said Frieda. Elizabeth’s mouth hung open for a beat. Then Frieda clinked her champagne glass against the older woman’s and they both drank.

To Don telling the Quigleys about the honeymoon. He planned to show Vivian Memphis, his hometown, take her to hear blues and eat ribs, to meet the relatives who couldn’t travel to the wedding.

She declined another glass of champagne from a passing waiter and snuck off to the sitting room, a frilly parlor that served as a buffer between the rest of the club and the women’s bathroom.

The walls were papered in a rose pattern, barely visible beneath numerous gilt-framed mirrors and watercolors of Edwardian ladies strolling beneath parasols.

The furniture was old fashioned and deep.

Ruth sank into the crushed-velvet sofa. She’d woken up before dawn to collect Elizabeth and had been on her feet ever since arriving back in Enid.

She slipped off her heels and savored the quiet. But not for long.

Two pilots’ wives rushed in. “Pardon us!” said the first. “Nature calls,” sang the second as they stumbled into the restroom.

Hoping to forestall any conversation when they came back through, she picked up a newsmagazine from the side table and flipped through it, not really reading, just pretending absorption.

Halfway through, a photo of a 737 caught her eye.

Female Pilots Take to the Skies read the headline, over a shot of a woman wearing a captain’s uniform like her dad’s.

This must be the article Aunt Elizabeth had mentioned.

Ruth scanned the pages. It was true. Several big airlines wanted, or at least allowed, female pilots now.

The door swung open again. “There you are!” said Frieda. “We wondered where you’d run off to.” Vivian followed her in.

“Look,” said Ruth, passing the magazine to Frieda.

She scanned it quickly and handed it to Vivian. “Babe, you’ve got to do it!”

Vivian’s eyes shone. “Oh, Ruth, it would be perfect for you!”

“I don’t know. I’ve only ever flown the Cessna.”

“No one starts with 737s,” said Vivian. “And there’s a whole crowd of aviation people right outside who could get you access to bigger planes. Your dad. Quigley! Especially him. You could do this, Ruth.”

Yes, whispered Ivy, whispered George, whispered Adele. Yes, yes, yes.

Back in the ballroom. Back in her shoes. Vivian and Don fed one another cake. The band struck up one last song. Did she dare to dance with Frieda? Yes, she did.

A final toast from Tom to the newlyweds. Helen catching the bouquet. Guests collecting their coats. Did she dare to ask Quigley if he could arrange for training in some larger aircraft? Yes, she did.

Rice and confetti showering the couple as they dashed to the car. Ruth and Frieda in the front seat, waiting. Vivian and Don giggling like children as Frieda revved the engine, put the car into gear, and sped them away.

By the time they reached the airfield, the sky had turned from blue to violet. Far out on the horizon, the orange-gold sun rested. Crickets sang. Swifts dipped and wheeled over the grass, acrobats hunting. Dew dampened Ruth’s shoes as she hugged Don goodbye, then Vivian.

Vivian kissed Ruth’s cheek, brushed stray grains of rice from her hair. They didn’t say goodbye, just looked long at one another.

Then Ruth and Frieda showered the couple with a final handful of confetti as they climbed into the plane.

The Bonanza’s position lights flicked on, then the taxi lights.

The engine sputtered awake and warmed to an easy idle.

Vivian and Don waved from the cockpit. The Beechcraft hummed down the runway, picked up speed, lifted into the air.

It cleared the tree line, rising, and banked east, Memphis bound, its lights growing small in the darkening sky.

Ruth held Frieda’s hand as the plane bore her mother away, and knew that it would bring her back.