By Air Mail Ch.04

She kept looking at the gun. He'd never said a thing about it.

The unsettling part of it was that it had been her head talking, reasoning things out so that they fit for her. What she felt in her chest was something different altogether.

"So who's waiting for you when you get home?" she asked a long while later. The sky had darkened considerably and there was rain pelting the windscreen. The ride had gotten a little rougher as well.

He shrugged, "My mother and Deke, mostly. If I'm a little lucky, Harry will be there too or not long after he gets the word that I'm home and once she hears about it, Rebecca is gonna try to crush my ribs with one of her hugs. I need to get with Harry and Deke to talk about the business, too. With any luck though, I'll find Harry in Pueblo when we get there."

He heard her exhale as though she was weary, "I meant," she said, rolling her eyes when she knew that he was looking at her, "Is there anybody else waiting for you back there - like a girl that you're sweet on, that kind of thing? You know? Some kind of cutie who's maybe kept a different kind of home fire burning, if you catch my meaning?"

He looked over at her again and she made it a point to waggle her eyebrows as lasciviously as she could.

They ended up laughing at each other and Emmy felt good over it, though she was also a little tense over waiting for his reply.

"Since it's taking you so long," she said a little sullenly, looking away out of the window again, "I'll take it as NOT a no - which is as good as a yes."

"I've been gone since late 1940," he said, "over five years, five and a half and some. I've never been back in all of that time, like I said. I wasn't nineteen when I left. There was maybe only one girl for me there who might have had feelings like you're talking about, Emmy, and I can't even say that it was all that much between us, not like you're thinking about.

You ought to know that my mother got married to Deke Potter. Rebecca didn't have anybody, but it was her who found those brothers first. She dragged Harry to the altar with what I've heard was a really happy look in her eye and they have a daughter. Her name is Amelia, and she was fourteen when I left."

He looked somewhat troubled for a minute.

"I don't really know how to explain it," he said quietly, though Emmy was just able to hear it in her headphones, "Over my childhood,... first there was me, and then Rebecca and Harry had Amelia. We have sort of an... odd kind of family.

Amelia and I are related in a family kind of way, though not by blood because of my mom and Rebecca marrying two brothers. We saw each other as kids all the time and I kind of looked out for her back then, because she could get herself into things like nobody's business."

He sighed, "And then Craig came along, not related to Amelia at all and a cousin to me that I didn't know I had."

Emmy waited again and then she said, "Well so far, it's an odd family, since you haven't explained it - and who's Craig now? I think I'm gonna have to use my fingers to work this out, huh?"

Tad looked over again, "I can't exactly help it if I stop for a second to think about people I care about if I haven't seen any of them in over half a decade.

Maybe it'll help some if I say that I'm a Fairbairn.

My mom WAS a Fairbairn by marriage before - though she's a Potter now. You good so far?"

Emmy nodded cautiously, though she was already holding up a few fingers.

"Rebecca is a Potter, and you might as well hold up two fingers for Deke and Harry too. Try to remember that Harry is with Rebecca and Amelia. So she's a Potter as well."

Emmy had to re-order things so that she arranged it maternally, one hand for Fairbairns and one for Potters. Tad knew that it wouldn't really work, but he said nothing for a moment.

"Ok," she said, "Go on. I think I'm all set for Craig's arrival."

'Oh, no you're not', Tad said in his mind, 'I sure wasn't'.

"Well," Tad said, trying to sound more like the old busybody barber in his home town, "Craig is a Fairbairn too. Only he's my cousin more by blood because he's the son of an uncle I'd never even met, the brother of my dead father.

He came to live with us from Portland, Oregon because he used to get asthma so bad that everybody thought that he was gonna die from it, though - and right here is the weird part - we THINK... his folks, who I'd never met in my life, sent him for my mom to look after because he needed to be in better air.

But really..." Tad sighed, "All these years later, it still doesn't make any sense to me, though I am glad that it happened. Really, they ditched him with us. They left money in a bank for Mom to use for him, like when he needed new glasses or medicines and they gave her legal guardianship over him. My mother agreed to it, but she didn't find out for years that they didn't ever intend to send for him."

Tad shook his head, "I was nine when he came, a sickly six year-old boy who was terrified of us and had an asthma fit as soon as he got there. So he and I are the only Fairbairns in a pack of Potters. We never met until that day."

"What happened to him?" Emmy asked, "Did he die?"

Tad shook his head, "Nope. I used to like to joke with him that it was worse than that.

You need to try to imagine it. Mom took to him right away and so did Rebecca. We all did, because he needed more than clean air. He needed somebody who actually cared about him. That's what he really needed.

Because of Mom and Rebecca, we were all close just because we were. In my family, the kids just grew up together, probably more like a pack of wild dogs, to hear some of the talk about us. Amelia and I were already like siblings in that structure and the first thing that she did when she met Craig was to hand him her favorite teddy bear. She was five then.

Craig grew up being treated like he was my brother and Amelia's too. He never went to war, because they wouldn't take him because of his asthma when he showed up to enlist after I was gone. He's some shorter than me and he wears these wire-rimmed glasses that make him look like he's the smartest guy alive - which he is, in my book anyway.

He's got the 'Fairbairn look' these days - whatever that is, they tell me. He does all sorts of odd-jobs and one of them every year is to live alone for four or maybe five months in the forest on top of Iron Mountain as a fire lookout while he puts himself through school to open his electronics business. Aviation electronics, specifically, but any electronics, really."

"What is that?" Emmy asked.

He pointed to the instrument panel, "This stuff. The things that help pilots know where they are, how high they are, the radios, and I've got three in here right now. That kind of thing."

He sighed loud enough for her to hear it in her ear, "I miss them all. I always have."

He looked over and shrugged, "And since I've been gone so long, I've lost touch, and that makes it worse to me. Amelia's husband used to beat her, so I feel guilty that I wasn't there to kill the bastard. Craig didn't know what was going on either, none of us did. She's been a widow now for a couple of years, since her dick of a husband got himself killed over in Europe.

So I don't know how you're gonna work it with your fingers, but you'll get to meet them all, and if you really want an answer to your question... then those two, Amelia and Craig are the ones that I love. It won't fit with your fingers there and I don't really care. That's the best answer that I can give you, Emmy. I'm sorry that I got hung up for a second back there, but they've been on my mind for a long time."

Emmy looked at him for a moment longer and then she nodded, "Good enough," and then she looked out at the sky.

"It's gotten a little rougher," she said, "I'm pretty sure of what you'll say, but well... we're alright, aren't we?"

He nodded, "It's just a little gusty is all. Out here, the clouds are just higher than they were where we left from, since the ground's higher here too. We'll be starting our descent for our approach after a while."

She nodded, seeming satisfied with his explanation and he returned his complete attention to flying and scanning his instruments. Emmy had gotten her hairbrush out when she'd been up and exploring the plane's interior before. Now she sat brushing her long hair and working to tie it into two long braids.

He flew on, thinking back over their conversation, and he was a little stuck on one thing.

She'd said that his explanation of Amelia and Craig had been 'good enough'. But she hadn't said why it had been good enough. He shrugged to himself and checked his charts again.