I spent that night parked in the driveway in my rented Escalade. Savannah refused to talk to me and had gone to bed early. The Walkers, sympathetic to my plight, graciously offered me the use of their living room sofa, but I declined. I needed my own space to think things through.

Savannah, I realized, was a compulsion, if not an addiction. If I were to recover from that addiction, I would need to fall back on the same kind of twelve-step strategy embraced by alcoholics and gamblers. The first step of any recovery program is to admit that you can’t master your addiction alone. It requires a higher power. This is where I ran into trouble. Buddha to my knowledge never addressed the issue of former spouses that you just can’t let go of. I was also fairly certain that no support groups existed in the Rancho Bonita area specifically intended to benefit men with a problem like mine. “I Miss My Ex Anonymous”? Seriously, what guy would attend that kind of whine fest?

If I were at all honest with myself, however, the truth was that, painful as it was at times, I didn’t want to escape my Savannah addiction. And, at the same time, I wanted her out of my life as much as I ever wanted to be rid of anything. Hell, I didn’t know what I wanted when it came to her. I tried to focus on my missing cat. I tried to think about my broken airplane. Both made me feel worse.

My phone rang. I was hoping it was Savannah, but it wasn’t. It was Eric LaDucrie, the baseball star-turned-death-penalty proponent Hub Walker had wanted me to meet with. He said he was due back in San Diego the next day. We made arrangements to meet at his condo on Coronado at two P.M. He seemed eager to talk.

I drifted off to sleep somewhere after midnight. Two hours later, I was awakened by the sound of chewing.

Raccoons had invaded Hub Walker’s trash cans. Five of the critters were enjoying a late night feast of chicken bones and what looked to be leftover fettuccini Alfredo. I rolled down my window and yelled at the thieves in their cute little Zorro masks to scram. One of them paused, raised up on his haunches, and looked over at me as if to say, “Yeah? What’re you gonna do about it, pal?” then continued chowing down with his buddies like I wasn’t there. I rolled the window back up, reclined the driver’s seat, and tried to go back to sleep.

Live long enough, you learn to pick your battles.

Ten

The sun was up. Savannah had locked herself in the Walkers’ guesthouse bathroom. From the other side of the door, I could hear water running in the sink.

“How about we go to SeaWorld today,” I said, “pet some penguins?”

No response.

“You’re being unreasonable, Savannah.”

“I’m being unreasonable?” she said from the other side of the door.

“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare the hell out of you. Next time I crash, I’ll definitely call you immediately afterward, OK?”

The door flung open. Savannah was wrapped in a towel.

“How can you possibly have the audacity to call me ‘unreasonable’? Do you know how many nights, how many years, I cried myself to sleep, wondering where you were, wondering if you were alive or dead, knowing you were lying through your teeth whenever I asked you what you did for a living — what you really did — and all you’d tell me was, ‘Marketing’? Yesterday brought it all back, Logan. The fear. The constant, terrible stress. I’m just not sure I can go through it all over again. Can you at least begin to understand that?”

She caught me staring at her legs.

“I’m trying to have an adult conversation with you. Can you please get your mind out of the gutter for once?”

“My mind is not in the gutter, Savannah. It’s in the shower. I need to take one — unless you want to take one together. Conserve precious natural resources. Save the planet. All that happy stuff.”

She rolled her eyes, tears streaming. Then she slammed the door, locking it once more.

Call me a dope. I’d probably deserve it.

“Guess I’ll take a shower later,” I said to the door.

Silence.

My phone rang as I walked outside to cool off. The caller identified himself as Paul Horvath from the Federal Aviation Administration’s local Flight Standards District Office. He’d been assigned, he said, to investigate the “incident” in which I’d been involved the previous day at Montgomery Airport. His voice was nasally, like his nose had been clipped by a clothespin.

“My preliminary examination of your aircraft found something quite interesting,” Horvath said. “How soon can we meet?”

“As soon as I can hire an attorney willing to represent me.”

Most pilots have a keen distrust of the FAA. For better or worse, the agency’s accident investigators are perceived as headhunters eager to ground any flyer for the slightest transgression. A meteor could sheer off your wings, terrorists could blast you out of the sky over Kansas with shoulder-fired missiles, and the FAA would still find some way to blame you for the crash.

“You’re entitled to legal counsel, Mr. Logan,” Horvath said, “but I should tell you, again preliminarily, that the causative factors leading to the catastrophic failure of your engine yesterday would appear to have been largely beyond your control.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that I’d prefer to show you what I found, rather than discuss it over the telephone.”

He didn’t sound like an evil government bureaucrat. He sounded like a government bureaucrat with an adenoid condition. I agreed to meet him an hour later outside the airport’s terminal building.

Savannah was still locked in the bathroom. I told her I’d be back that afternoon, which would still leave us plenty of time if she wanted to go to SeaWorld.

“I’ll think about it,” she said through the door.

At least she was still talking to me.

Crissy Walker left a note for me on the kitchen counter: Hub was spending the morning with Ryder at zoo camp, and later attending a lecture at the San Diego Museum of Art. Would Savannah and I like to join them for lunch after they got home? I couldn’t speak for Savannah, I wrote on the backside of the same note, but I was headed to the airport to meet with the FAA and to not expect me until afternoon. I added, “Thanks anyway.” I would’ve included one of those little smiley faces, only I don’t do smiley faces.

The mess the raccoons had left beside my Escalade was still there. The Walkers must’ve missed it when they pulled out. I cleaned it up as best I could while Major Kilgore trimmed his hedges across the street with electric clippers, pausing periodically to check his work with a carpenter’s level. Backing out of the driveway, I gave him a thumbs-up, but he appeared not to appreciate the gesture. I could see him in my rearview as I drove away, getting smaller and smaller, glaring after me.

I called my insurance broker, Vincent Moretti, on the way to the airport and left a message, letting him know he’d be receiving a claim on my policy. A big claim. In all my years of flying, even in combat, I’d never once dinged an airplane. And of all the planes I’d ever flown, none was more reliable than the Ruptured Duck. I hoped to get him back in the air, but given his age and the damage done, I had my doubts that my old airplane was even salvageable.

Paul Horvath was waiting for me in the parking lot outside the terminal building at Montgomery Field, a professorial, gray-haired man in his late fifties with bifocals and a wispy, Wolf Blitzer-style beard. A laminated FAA photo ID card hung from a lanyard around his neck. He wore a peach-colored, short-sleeve dress shirt, pleated khakis, and black, soft-soled oxfords. His left eye twitched with a pronounced tic.

“Your aircraft’s been relocated to an enclosed hangar for closer inspection,” he said, shaking my hand. “We can take my car.”