The anchorwoman nodded with concern. “Let me ask you this, Mr. Mitchell. Have you ever seen any strange lights or unexplained objects in the sky?”
“Oh, for pity’s sake,” my mother said, interrupting the broadcast. “They’re going to turn this into a circus and start searching for little green men.”
“Shh, Mom,” I replied, sitting forward to listen.
“I haven’t,” Mike replied, “but I know people who have. I just hope everyone out there searching will be okay and that they find the pilot. He was a good guy.”
The anchorwoman thanked Mike and showed video images of Coast Guard helicopters taking off while she described the search area.
The phone rang again. I rose quickly to my feet to answer it, and it was Richard.
“Did you see that?” I asked.
“Yes, but don’t read too much into it, Olivia. That guy does too many drugs. And he probably wants to milk the publicity.”
“Are you sure about that? Because that transcript you read to me was kind of strange, don’t you think? I mean . . . what was Dean talking about? What sort of cloud forms a tunnel?”
“Clouds can move and shift in all sorts of ways.”
“Yes, but he said there was no wind. And what about the compass spinning around?”
Richard was quiet for a moment. “Listen, Olivia, I don’t want to crush your hopes, but the things Dean was saying . . . it makes sense if he was disoriented.”
“How so?”
“If there was a problem with the compass, it’s likely that other instruments were failing as well, and if his artificial horizon wasn’t working—”
“What’s that?”
“It’s an instrument that shows where the horizon is so that the pilot can keep his wings level. If that’s malfunctioning, even the smallest bank to the left or right can be imperceptible to a pilot, and without instruments to show that the plane is losing altitude, and without any points of reference from inside a cloud, a pilot can’t possibly tell that he’s spiraling until it’s too late to recover. That might explain why Dean thought the cloud was rotating in a counterclockwise direction.”
I found all this difficult to accept. “But he said he could see clear skies ahead, through a doorway at the end of the tunnel.”
“Again,” Richard gently replied, “he might have been looking at the ocean. It was dark, and there was a full moon. The reflections on the water might have looked like starlight.”
At the thought of Dean’s plane spiraling toward the dark sea, my throat constricted, and my eyes burned with tears. I took a moment to collect myself before I was able to speak. “Thank you, Richard. Will you promise to call me right away if you hear anything? I’ll keep praying.”
“I’ll do the same,” he replied.
I hung up and turned to my mother, who was staring at me with concern. “Are you all right?”
The walls seemed to be closing in all around me. How could this be happening? Yesterday, Dean and I were sailing, talking about starting a family. He was supposed to be home by now. He had promised to crawl into bed with me at sunrise, and we were going to make love.
But he hadn’t come home. He was out there somewhere. Alone. Dead or alive, I didn’t know. I continued to cling to the hope that he had survived, but when I met my mother’s troubled gaze, my hopes plummeted. I felt odd, like my skin was tingling. Then I felt as if I were suffocating and needed an oxygen mask. My mother leaped to her feet and urged me to sit down.
CHAPTER 3
MELANIE
New York, 1986
The therapist’s door was open, so I crossed the threshold, timidly. Outside the window, rain came down steadily, and the office seemed dark, lit only by a single standing lamp in the corner, though the curtains were open to a leafy outdoor view. My eyes went first to that small glimpse of nature before they settled on the therapist.
He was sitting behind an antique desk, but he soon stood and moved to greet me. “You must be Melanie,” he said warmly. “I’m Dr. Robinson. Please come in.”
Feeling slightly apprehensive—because it wasn’t my normal habit to reveal my deepest secrets and insecurities to strangers, or to anyone for that matter—I slid my purse strap off my shoulder and approached a chocolate-brown leather sofa, which I presumed was intended for the patients. Dr. Robinson waited for me to sit down before he lowered himself into a large leather armchair and placed a notepad on his lap.
Neither of us spoke while I glanced around the room. I took in the red Persian carpet beneath my feet and the ornate dark wood paneling with impressive historic millwork. Books were everywhere, stacked on the fireplace mantel and stuffed at every angle on the shelves behind Dr. Robinson’s desk. Above my head, a brass chandelier was in need of a good polish.
“This is a lovely room,” I commented, still looking around without ever meeting the doctor’s eyes. But was he really a doctor? I wondered passively. A psychiatrist? Or was he a PhD, like me? “It feels like something out of an Edith Wharton novel.”
Dr. Robinson looked around as well. “I suppose that’s true. Are you a fan of Edith Wharton?”
I shrugged. “I read The Age of Innocence in my first year of college when I had to get a writing course out of the way.”
He folded his hands on his lap and inclined his head, waiting patiently for me to continue.
“I was a science major,” I explained. “I had a lot of textbooks to read. Stuff to memorize. Equations to solve. Reading romantic novels felt like something I should be doing on summer vacation.”
He nodded, and only then did I allow myself to truly look at him instead of the decor. How old was he? I wondered. Thirty perhaps? He had blue eyes and a strong jaw. I looked away again—this time at the throw pillows on the sofa. I straightened one of them and tried to fluff it up a little.
Dr. Robinson said nothing. He simply sat there, quietly watching me. I felt like a blood sample on a slide under a microscope.
“So what brings you here today, Melanie?” he asked, and I was grateful that he was finally taking charge of the conversation, because I had no idea what to say. The silences made me want to squirm.
“It wasn’t my idea to come,” I said, picking at a loose thread on my jeans. “It was the head of the physics department at Columbia who suggested it. Dr. Fielding? He said the cost of this would be covered?”
Dr. Robinson nodded. “Yes. And why did he suggest that you talk to someone?”
“Because I was late on a few things. I’m working on my dissertation for a PhD in particle physics,” I explained, “but I seem to have lost interest lately. Dr. Fielding says he’s worried about me.” I looked away and rolled my eyes a little. “Or so he claims. I think he cares more about the research than he cares about me. There are some important donors funding the project.”
“What’s it about?”
I met Dr. Robinson’s gaze directly. “I’m studying zero-point energy—the instance where all activity in an atom ceases—and the associated effects that a quantum vacuum might have on an airplane. Or in layman’s terms, I’m trying to solve the mystery of why planes go missing over the Bermuda Triangle.”