Page 20

“I t’s so far,” my daughter whines, literally dragging her jelly-clad feet. Imogen is not a fan of long walks and my plane is parked on the farthest end of the tarmac. It’s not that far, but she’s tired from staying up too late last night and an early morning ride to this small, regional airport. She must’ve finally adjusted to Mountain Standard Time right as we’re about to spend the weekend in a different time zone.

“Hop up, kiddo.” I crouch down so she can climb on my back.

This isn’t the day for a parental lecture on positivity or getting enough sleep. I just want to get in the air and get out of here. I stack Immy’s carry-on on top of mine. Sunny helps me buckle them together and the three of us continue toward my plane.

The days since the incident on set with sexy, wet swimsuit Sunny have been taxing. The work itself has been fine. My head is in the game. I’m feeling the part. The team is working well—all except for Micah. He’s about one snide comment away from a Will Smith-esque face slap from me. He can’t keep Sunny’s name out of his mouth, figuratively speaking. He can’t remember her name. The butthead just calls her Hot Nanny. And he has had plenty to say since her appearance on set, none of which bears repeating. The man has a filthy mouth when there are no cameras around.

A caveman-like protective instinct has me reach over to take Sunny’s hand at the memory. Her soft fingers lace through mine and everything feels okay.

“When you said you had a plane…” she starts.

“What?” I’m making her say it, because teasing Sunny is my new favorite hobby.

“I thought it would be…”

I smile and let some crickets chirp.

“Like, a big plane. I thought it would be some big ol’ pretentious jet, okay? Not…” She gestures toward our ride.

I act offended on behalf of my old Cessna. “She can hear you.”

She scoffs. “How did this thing get here, anyway?”

“I flew here in it with Ollie. It shaves off a few hours when we travel. It gives him more time to oil his hinges.” I shrug.

She looks even more confused. “And it’s just been sitting up here this whole time?”

“She’s a good plane. She stays where I put her.” I grin. “I promise, you’re going to love this.”

Imogen encourages Sunny from her place on my back. “It’s so fun when my dad flies. You’re gonna like going on a plane, don’t worry.”

The fact that I’m the pilot finally registers with Sunny. The look of terror on her face would be comical if it wasn’t so hurtful.

“I learned to fly a few years back. I got the plane to make traveling less…”

“Safe?” she fills in.

“Oh, you’ll be safe. I’m an excellent pilot. I’ve only crashed a few times. Right, Im?”

“Dad!” She giggles against my neck. “Just so you know, my dad doesn’t crash. He is super good at flying.”

I hitch Immy higher onto my back, feeling the need to sell Sunny on an Anders Airline experience. “Yeah. Super good. Flying is a rush. You’ll see. Besides, this makes traveling less public. It gets us places without dealing with crowds. I can go through smaller airports. This thing is big enough for me, Immy, Hairy, and Oliver—”

“The whole family,” she interrupts with a laugh. There’s some shakiness in her voice that makes me wonder if she’s more nervous about having me as a pilot, or flying in general.

I squeeze her hand. “You nervous?”

“Yeah.”

We reach the plane and I swing Immy down from my back. She skips around the plane, energy restored. “What are you nervous about?” I ask Sunny, unlatching the door. Maybe I can talk her through this so it will be fun for her.

“Burning alive in a plane crash. Mercer and Hairy lighting my condo on fire. Nizhóní going down in flames while I’m gone. The usual.”

Geez. I’m glad Immy was out of earshot during that laundry list of horrors. There’s a lot of fire in this woman’s worst-case scenarios, but one look in her glassy, brown eyes tells me she isn’t joking. My heart squeezes for her. “I’ll have Oliver double-check the fire extinguishers and smoke detectors. I promise I won’t crash the plane. Hairy can teach Mercer how to stop, drop, and roll. We’ve got this, Sunflower. You’re going on an adventure.”

She exhales, long and deep, and something in her big, brown eyes changes. She flashes one of her blinding, knockout smiles and this time my heart pounds against my ribs. “Okay.”

“That easy, huh?”

“I still can’t believe you left Hairy with Mercer.” Her shaky laugh gives her away, but I’m proud of her for facing this fear head-on.

I shrug, organizing our bags into the cargo area. “It was Oliver’s idea. He says they're a perfect pair. It worked out since you didn’t invite her along like you were supposed to.”

“I know… things are just too crazy at the resort right now.” She sighs. “And I love alone time. ”

Sunny watches quietly through my flight pre-check, which isn’t abnormal for her. She’s not a huge talker. In unfamiliar situations, like on set the other day, she seems to prefer standing back to observe. When we take off, I hear her little gasp through my headset and she latches onto my forearm until we finish our ascent. Besides that, she’s silent, her brown eyes wide and taking everything in. I’m busy keeping my promise not to crash, so I’m preoccupied, but Imogen makes enough conversation for all of us.

She points out rust-colored cliffs below, and one fat, white Hairy-shaped cloud in the cornflower blue sky. She giggles, then laments the fact that we couldn’t bring Hairy this time. Then she moves on to comments about how the ground looks like a big blanket and the trees and shrubs look like yarn tied through a quilt. Then she wonders aloud if my mom is going to make chocolate balls for us this time. Eventually she peters out, her head lolls against her seat, and she falls asleep.

Not long later we’re winging our way northward to Minnesota when Sunny’s voice comes through my headset, breaking through the constant drone of the twin-engine airplane and occasional radio chatter.

“This is unbelievable, Anders.”

Something in her tone has changed and I realize she’s blinking back tears. Her watery eyes are wide, taking in the expanse of blue sky and clouds, and the corners of her mouth turn up in a gentle smile. The late morning sun shines through the window behind her, catching gold highlights in her dark hair—or maybe that’s remnants of my daughter’s accidental dye job. Either way, she is radiant. Everything about her glows and I want to draw closer and closer to her warmth. Her authentic, unashamed delight in this short flight on a thirty-year-old, no-bells-and-whistles airplane makes me want to wrap her in bubble wrap and stand between her and the world. She is too good for this planet. Earth, you do not deserve this woman .

For once in my life, I don’t know what to say. How do I gather all of my thoughts into a response that won’t scare her away? Instead, I pull her hand to my mouth and press a kiss to the inside of her palm. She doesn’t need to know what’s happening in my head. Yet.

I’m sure my thoughts are plastered all over my face and showing through everything I do, anyway. Yesterday Christopher said that if he doesn’t end up firing me, I should send him a wedding invitation. I can fly a plane and bungee jump off of tall bridges. I do my own stunts, hanging off cliff faces hundreds of feet above the desert. But that? That offhanded, half-joking comment from a guy who knows me well drained the blood from my face.

Thankfully, Sunny breaks through my thoughts with a comment that catches me completely off guard.

“You’re better at this than I expected.” She nods in the general area of the control panel and yoke. “You’re a decent pilot.”

That startles a laugh out of me. “What did you expect?” I ask, incredulous.

“That came out all wrong.” She laughs, too, which I don’t love. “I mean, you don’t fly the way I thought you would. I was sure you’d be doing barrel rolls up here just to get a rise out of me.”

“You think I want to scare you?”

“It’s just… usually you’re so…” she trails off.

I know how I am. But not with flying. At least, not with my kid in the back seat. And now with this woman as a passenger? No way. I shake my head. “Not with you and Immy in the plane. Besides, this old gal’s not built for barrel-rolls. She’s more of a point A to point B aircraft. Like if your car was a plane, this would be it.”

Sunny smiles, patting the dash of the plane like a dog. “I like her.”

I like her, too .

My dad picks us up from Crystal Airport in the same Subaru he’s been driving since I bought it for him. It was a gift after I got my first big paycheck—a “thank you for not killing me as a teenager” offering. He loves the thing.

When he pulls up to the curb, I offer Sunny the front seat because it seems like the gentlemanly thing to do, but her panicked head shaking tells me she’ll be more comfortable in the back seat with Immy. She waits with me, shivering in her little blue dress and tennis shoes, while my dad walks around the car to greet us. Minneapolis is chilly compared to the warm, dry desert we just left. I tug a sweatshirt out of my carry-on and pass it to her. She thanks me and pulls it over her head, wrapping the long sleeves over her knuckles and folding her arms around herself. Her glasses are askew from the process, and she pushes them back into place.

The sight of her swimming in my oversized sweatshirt, her brown eyes blinking behind her glasses, makes the words tumble out of my mouth. “You… you get used to it. True Minnesotans consider this spring.”

My dad pops the trunk to help me load our bags, then gives me a quick hug with a pat on the back and a short, “Glad you’re home, Son.” He nods at Sunny. But when Imogen wraps her arms around his legs he comes alive. He scoops her up and squeezes her in a bear hug.

“Morfie!” Immy’s squeal is muffled by the shoulder of her grandpa’s worn, navy corduroy jacket.

Sunny looks at me with a question in her eyes.

While my daughter and her grandpa catch up I explain, “Grandpa is Morfar in Swedish. Immy turned it into Morfie. She morphed it, if you will.” I cringe at my lame joke.

Sunny’s eyes are warm. “You are such a gigantic dork. I love it.”

I smile into the trunk where Sunny can’t see, arranging the last of the bags and slamming it closed. “Grandma is Mormor . She calls her Mormie. You can call her Tillie, and my dad is Johan.” I hope my tone conveys that she shouldn’t be nervous. “I’m surprised my mom didn’t come along. I know she wants to meet you.”

“It’s a shame. I have so many questions about all of this.” She waves a hand in my general direction.

“Well, too bad. You’ll have to believe the lies you read on TMZ like everyone else.”

I open Sunny’s door and hold it until she settles in her seat. My dad buckles Immy into the booster seat that never leaves the back of the car. After I’m buckled in I tug my hat over my head. My aviator sunglasses have been in place since the flight because obviously I can’t aviate without them. Oh, geez. Are dad jokes contagious? Because I’ve been with my father for under five minutes and they’re popping up like an allergic rash.

“Did Mom give you the address of the place where Sunny’s staying?”

“Yeah, I got it.” He turns to Sunny in the back seat. “You sure you don’t want to come to dinner first? My wife would love to meet you. She made me promise to invite you and offer a ride to your hotel after.” It’s clear that my dad is uncomfortable. He never knows how to act around the people in my life, so he ends up acting overly formal bordering on standoffish. He doesn’t know Sunny, though.

“I’d really like that. I have a lot of questions about this guy.” She pats my shoulder over the seat. “I haven’t been able to nail down a diagnosis.”

That gets a loud laugh from my dad. “Oh, Tillie needs to meet you. She can tell you everything you need to know, plus some things you don’t want to know.” He pulls into traffic. “So, what do you say? Dinner?”

“Yeah, Sunny! You have to meet my Mormie.” Imogen chimes in.

“I’d love to. Thank you.”

And that’s how, a few hours later, I find myself wedged between my mother and Sunny on our family couch, flipping through a photo album while the two women laugh at me. Sunny gets a kick out of the matching footed Christmas pajamas my mother sewed for us every year until way too recently.

“Please tell me these still exist,” she says, breathless with laughter.

She turns the page, and it’s a picture of the whole family after my parents’ citizenship ceremony. I was probably five or six years old that day. I don’t remember much about Sweden, since I was only a few years old when my parents emigrated, first to New York, then eventually finding jobs as school teachers in Minneapolis. They’ve been here ever since.

“What brought you to the United States?”

My mother looks at my dad in the kitchen. He’s up to his elbows in dishwater. Immy is standing on a chair beside him, drying plates and putting them away. “ ?ventyrskall ,” she answers in her native tongue with a dreamy sigh. “The call of adventure. Johan and I love to travel. We wanted to see the world. We fell in love with this country. Something called us here, so here we are.”

She flips the page to a photo from one of our many trips to the motherland. My brothers and I lined up in slickers and galoshes on some rain-soaked street in Stockholm. “We didn’t make it home often enough. But we do now, thanks to this guy.” My mom kisses my cheek. That makes forty-seven for this visit. I’m keeping a tally.

“Aw, what a good son,” Sunny squeezes my knee. She hides a yawn behind her hand.

They’ve been mocking old photos of me for so long, I didn’t realize how late it has gotten. “We should probably get you to your hotel, huh?”

When she nods, my mother stands. “We didn’t even get to dessert. I’ll pack some chokladbollar for you.” She leaves to fill a repurposed cottage cheese tub with a few of the nostalgic, chocolatey treats. It’s a gesture I’ve seen my mother make many times, though it’s sometimes a margarine or Cool Whip container.

“I think I’ll call the hotel and tell them I need a late check-in. How far is it from here?”

I don’t want her to leave. “Forty-five minutes or so.” How can I ask her to stay when this is supposed to be her vacation? She deserves a break from me and Immy, but I haven’t been away from her except to sleep and work this week. I don’t like it. Don’t go.

She pulls her phone from her bag and walks my parents tiny foyer to make the call. I follow my mother into the kitchen to track down some comfort chokladbollar . I’m lucky. She still has them out when I catch up to her. I pop one in my mouth whole.

“Slow down, Sockergris . You’ll get sick.” My mom tsks and swats my hand away before I can take another one. Then she whispers, “I like this one,” with a nod toward the living room.

“She’s cool, right? I thought you’d like her.”

“I do.” Her blue eyes crinkle at the corners. “You’re you with her. I like that.”

I chuckle to hide my bruised pride. “Who else would I be?”

She purses her lips to the side, thinking. “With Cassidy you were—”

“I know.” During my brief mistake of a marriage to Cassidy, I bore no resemblance to the son she raised. I’d regret it fully except it resulted in the best part of my life—Imogen. My mother has never held back her opinion on the subject of the women I date and she likes to make sure I stay in line. I wonder if she and Oliver have been trading texts again.

“Um, Anders?” Sunny peeks around the corner into the kitchen and curls a finger at me to follow her.

My heart thumps at the invitation. She is killing me, and she has no idea. I would follow her anywhere. For now, I follow her into my parents’ living room.

“What’s up?”

She looks worried and uncomfortable. “The hotel can’t find my reservation. ”

“I’ll call them. They have to—”

She sighs. “Anders, trust me. I know this business. I checked every possible name and scenario.” She bites her lip, like she doesn’t want to say what she needs to say next. “There isn’t a reservation for me, and they have no openings for this weekend.”