“What?”

“If I take the job, will you come with me? You and Tim?”

There was a brief silence. “I don’t know, Liam. This is honest. I don’t know.”

He laughed then. “Yeah, well, we’re not the most decisive couple on the block, now, are we?”

“I guess not.” She laughed, too, a little. “Liam.”

“What?”

She took his hand, and his curled around hers in a comforting grip. “There is Tim.”

“There certainly is. I wasn’t thinking we’d leave him behind.”

“I know.”

“I like him, Wy. I like him a lot. And without sounding too egotistical, I think he likes me. I’d like to be his father. And,” he added pointedly, “I’d like to make it official.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said. “Man, I never knew anyone more hot to get married than you.”

He leaned over to kiss her. “ ‘Hot’ doesn’t even come close,” he said with his best sexy growl, and then his mike got tangled up with hers and they both started to laugh.

“Tim can’t get into any more trouble in Anchorage than he has in Newenham,” he said, sitting back. “Same cliques, same drugs, same joysticks. He can go to the malls and the movies, and it’ll be harder to keep tabs on him if he finds a friend with a car, but otherwise it’s not that different.”

“It’s a lot bigger than Newenham. The school’s bound to induce big-time culture shock. And then there is Natalie.”

Liam shook his head. “I never would have thought to hear you using Natalie Gosuk as a reason to keep Tim in Newenham.” He was gentle but inexorable. “Are you sure she isn’t just an excuse to keep you there, too?”

She was silent. They were out of the pass and were losing altitude, on approach across the Nushugak into the Newenham airport.

“Do you know the words in the wedding service, Wy? ‘Forsaking all others, so long as you both shall live.’ That’s what I want. ‘Forsaking all others.’ And all other places. We don’t have to move to Anchorage; that’s not what I’m saying.”

She didn’t sound angry. “It kind of sounds like that, Liam.”

He was exasperated. “Do you get anything about me at all, woman? I love you! I’ve always loved you! I would have walked out on my wife and my child if you’d asked me! But you didn’t ask!”

She stared at him. “Don’t you get anything about me?” she said at last. “I wouldn’t have wanted you if you’d been able to do something like that. One of the reasons I love you, that I’ve always loved you, is that you’re an honorable man. I knew all I had to do was drive to Glenallen and knock on your door. I always knew that.”

“But you didn’t.”

“So I didn’t love you enough to? Is that what this is about? I let you back into my life, Liam, into Tim’s life. You’re important to both of us now.”

“I want to be essential.”

“You are. You were then.” She was silent. “Or…”

“What.”

She took a deep breath. “I don’t know, Liam. Love is supposed to be unselfish. If you love, you’re supposed to want what’s best for the person you love.”

“And?”

“And if I’d loved you enough then, I shouldn’t have asked you to choose between me and Jenny and Charlie. If I’d loved you enough, I should have bought the house next door to yours, so you’d never have to be far away from your son.”

His feeling of comfort vanished. The plane seemed very high in the air and nowhere near as steady beneath his butt as it had been a moment before. “You’re telling me you didn’t love me enough.”

The silence that followed seemed to him to be very long. “I guess I didn’t.”

The next question was as difficult but came much more quickly. “Do you now?”

If he hadn’t been listening so intently for her answer he might have missed it. “Wy?”

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“The engine seemed to miss a beat.”

“What?” Liam sat up, peering at the prop, instantly focused on where they were.

“There! It happened again!”

She was adamant so he listened. A high-pitched drone whined past the outside of the aircraft. The Cessna seemed to shudder, although it might have been Wy’s hands clenching on the yoke. “What the hell?”

“What is it?”

Her hands were already a blur of movement. “I think someone’s shooting at us.”

“What!”

“I said I think-”

There was another whine, followed this time by the unmistakable impact of metal on metal. The prop began to shudder, and the cowling and indeed the entire front of the aircraft with it. “Hang on!” she shouted, and kicked the rudder and put the Cessna into a shallow dive and a spiraling turn.

It was an unnecessary command; Liam had his hands clenched around the edge of his seat and with every muscle strained upward, keeping that plane in the sky. Oh, God yes, anything but down, please, please, I’ll never get drunk again, I’ll do all of Miranda every single time no matter how the Supreme Court rules, I’ll marry and settle down and live a nice, quiet life, just please don’t let this plane go down with me on board.

But when he risked a glance out the window, down seemed to be coming up very fast indeed, and now he cursed the light of the moon that so clearly illuminated the river beneath them. No, not into the river-it was too cold; they’d never survive long enough to make it to the shore-and then the shore was beneath them-oh, no, not the shore, they were going to crash, the plane was going to hit the ground and break into pieces and they were going to break into pieces with it, not the shore, please not the shore. Wy’s face was tight-lipped and grim, the yoke shook back and forth in her hands in time with the shaking of the propeller and the cowling and the whole front of the plane, Oh, God, he thought he was going to be sick.

The ground rushed up at them and suddenly he saw a stretch of open ground, oh, God, was it an airstrip? It was white with snow or frost but it was long and straight and there were no trees in the middle of it, no trees for the plane to run into, no trees to decapitate him or impale him or skewer him, a Campbell shish kebab. “Is it an airstrip?” he shouted.

“Shut up!” she shouted back, and the ground rushed up, filling his range of terrified vision, up, up, up, until they hit down, hard, bounced once, hit again, and then, miraculously, all three gear were on the ground and she had cut the engine and they were running out the length of the airstrip, this blessed airstrip that had appeared out of nowhere to aid and to succor them in their time of need.

The Cessna rumbled and rolled and thumped and chunked over hummocks of ice and snow and what might have been a fallen tree and finally stopped.

It was very quiet in the cabin of the little plane. Liam could hear himself inhale, exhale, inhale. His heartbeat was clearly audible, too, a rapid thudding sound, like a drumbeat, slowing now.

“Liam.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry I told you to shut up.”

“It’s okay. Everything’s okay. I’m fine. You’re fine, and I’m fine, and we’re on the ground, oh, God, how I love the ground, and everything’s fine.” He was light-headed, a little dizzy.

“Liam?”

“Really. I’m fine. I’m just-I’m fine.”

Another silence. “Wy?”

“What?”

“Why does the plane always break when I’m on board?”

She ruffled up. “It doesn’t always break. It’s only broken once before when you were on board. And it didn’t break this time; somebody broke it.”

She opened the door and climbed out. He followed.

One end of the propeller had been hit, it looked by, yes, by a bullet. The squared-off end of the prop was not quite holed but sort of splooshed, dented, cratered, if you could call something that small a crater.

Liam could. “I have to sit down,” he said, and staggered over to a tree trunk.

“Me, too,” Wy said, and followed him.

They both sat down at the same time, not bothering to clear off the trunk, and as a result the snow on the trunk wet their pants through immediately. They didn’t move, except that Liam put his head between his knees.