The Invitation (6 page)

She wouldn't speak to Billy for three weeks after that episode, but she relented when she woke up one morning and found him asleep on the porch swing. He'd climbed out of his bedroom window sometime during the night and waited for the milk truck to arrive. After hiding himself among the milk cans, he got out when the driver stopped at Jackie's house, where he curled up into a ball on the hard slats of the swing and fell asleep. When Jackie saw him, she said that he was a curse of the magnitude of the plagues of Egypt, but her mother thought Billy was cute.

Billy had been tagging along behind her the day she met Charley and fell in love with the airplanes.

Billy had said, “Do you love airplanes more than you love me?”

“I love mosquito bites better than I love you,” she'd answered.

Billy, as usual, said nothing, which always made her feel worse than if he'd yelled or screamed or cried like other kids. But Billy was an odd little boy, more like an old man in a kid's body than an actual child.

When she ran away from home with Charley, she was too cowardly to face her mother, so she left her a note. But she was halfway to the airfield when, impulsively, she ran back. She caught a ride with a man she knew, and he dropped her off at Billy's house, where a birthday party was going on. Most of Billy's eleven brothers and sisters, along with most of the children of Chandler, were terrorizing each other and making enough noise to cause an earthquake, but there was no sign of Billy. His mother, calm in the midst of chaos, saw Jackie and pointed to the side of the porch.

She found Billy there, sitting alone, reading a book about airplanes, and as Jackie looked at him she thought that maybe she did love him just a little bit. When solemn little Billy, who rarely smiled, saw her coming toward him, his face lit up with joy. “You never come to see me,” he said, and the way he said it made her feel guilty. Maybe she'd been too hard on him. After all, they'd had some laughs together.

He looked at her suitcase. “You're going away with them, aren't you?” There were tears in his voice.

“Yes, I am. And you're the only one I'm telling. I left my mother a note.”

Billy nodded in an adult way. “She wouldn't want you to go.”

“She might make me stay.”

“Yes, she might.”

She was used to his old man ways, but she could see his sadness. Reaching out her hand, she ruffled his dark hair. “I'll see you around, kid,” she said and started to turn away, but Billy flung his arms around her waist and held her tight.

“I love you, Jackie. I will love you forever and ever.”

Dropping down on her knees, she hugged him back. Then, holding him away from her, she smoothed back his hair. “Well, maybe I love you a little bit, too.”

“Will you marry me?”

Jackie laughed. “I'm going to marry some fat old man and go see the world.”

“You can't,” he whispered. “I saw you first.”

Standing up, Jackie looked down at him, at the tear streaks down his cherub cheeks. “I've got to go now. I'll see you again someday, kid. I'm sure of it.” Even Jackie didn't believe those words; she planned to leave this one-horse town and never return. She was going to see the
world!
On impulse, the way she did most things, she pulled her blue and gold school pin from her blouse and handed it to him. What did she need with a pin from a nowhere school in a nowhere town?

Billy was staring so hard at the pin in his palm that he didn't realize Jackie had started to walk away, walk at her normal pace, which was closer to a run. “Will you write to me?” he called, racing after her, trying to keep up but failing.

“Sure, kid,” she called over her shoulder. “Sure I'll write.”

But of course she never did. In fact, she hadn't thought of Billy more than half a dozen times over the following years, and then only when she was with a group that was laughing and comparing small towns. To the accompaniment of raucous laughter, she'd tell the story of little Billy Montgomery who had plagued her from the time she was twelve until she'd escaped at eighteen. A couple of times she'd wondered what had happened to him, but she knew he had the Montgomery money and connections, so he could do anything he liked.

“Probably married now and has half a dozen kids,” some guy said once.

“Not possible,” Jackie said. “Billy's just a kid. I used to change his diapers.”

“Jackie, I think you ought to do a little arithmetic.”

To her horror she had realized that “little” Billy Montgomery was about twenty-five years old. “You're making me feel old,” she'd laughed. “It couldn't have been more than three years since I left Chandler.” She groaned when Charley reminded her that they had been married for seventeen years.

So now, many years after she'd left Chandler, she was standing face to face with the little boy who had flung himself on her and sworn that he'd love her forever. Only he didn't look too much like the little boy she remembered. Six feet one if he was an inch, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped, very handsome. “You must come in and have some hot chocolate,” she said, “and some cookies.” She wanted to remind herself that, compared to her, Billy was just a child. Looking at him, it wasn't easy to remember that he was a boy.

“I'd prefer coffee,” he said, motioning to her to lead the way.

Once inside the house she felt awkward and had to force herself to move. “How is your family?”

“All of them are well. And your mother?”

“Died a couple of years ago,” she said over her shoulder as she moved into the kitchen.

Billy was right behind her. “I'm sorry. Here, let me help you,” he said, reaching above her head for a canister of fresh coffee beans.

Jackie started to turn around and found herself looking straight into Billy's sun-browned throat, then, as her eyes lifted, at his chin, a chin so square it could have been sculpted with a carpenter's hand plane. For a moment she found her breath catching in her throat. Then she stopped herself and stepped from under his encircling stance. “My goodness, but you do look like your father. How is he, by the way?”

“The same as he was when you saw him four days ago.”

“Yes, of course. I…”

Billy smiled at her, at some joke that only he knew, then pulled out a chair at the table in the corner of the pretty kitchen and motioned for her to sit down. “I will make the coffee,” he said.

“You can do that?” Jackie was of the school that believed that men could do nothing except what they were paid for or received awards for. They could fight wars, run huge businesses, but they couldn't feed themselves or choose their own clothes without a woman beside them.

Billy poured the right number of beans into the grinder, then began to turn the crank, all the while watching her with a slight smile.

“So tell me all about your life,” she said, smiling up at him, trying her best to remember that she had once changed this man's diapers.

“I went to school, graduated, and now I help my father do whatever needs to be done.”

“Managing the Montgomery millions, right?”

“More or less.”

“No wife or children?” It seemed impossible to think that a kid she used to baby-sit could possibly be old enough to have a wife, let alone children.

“I told you that you were the only woman I would ever love. I told you that on the day you left.”

At that Jackie laughed. “On the day I left, you were eight years old and your nose came to my belt buckle.”

“I've grown up since then.” As he said this he turned around and poured the ground beans into the coffee pot, and Jackie couldn't help noticing that he had grown up very, very well. “So how's your family?” she asked for at least the third time.

Billy turned, removed his wallet from his back pocket, took out a stack of photographs, and handed them to her. “My nieces and nephews,” he said, “or at least some of them.”

While the coffee was brewing he bent over her and showed her the photos, some of them of groups, some of individual children. She liked the fact that this man was sentimental enough to carry photos of children with him, that he knew their ages and something about the personality of each child. But for Jackie the experience wasn't all that pleasant. She remembered the parents of these children as children themselves. There was one little dark-haired girl who was the same age as her mother had been when Jackie had last seen her.

“I think I'm getting old,” Jackie murmured. In her own heart she hadn't aged a day since she'd left Chandler. She still felt eighteen, still felt that there were lots of things she had to do before she became a grown-up and started acting like an adult. She wasn't yet sure what she wanted to do with her life. She'd had a long adolescence flying airplanes in shows and races, doing stunts and tricks to dazzle the world, but now she was nearly ready to settle down and become an adult. She thought she might be ready to marry a “real” man, a guy who had a nine-to-five job, a man who came home at night and read the newspaper. She was even thinking that maybe now she was about ready to start a family. Terri thought this was hilarious since two girls from their high school class were grandmothers already.

“You'll never be old, Jackie,” Billy said softly, from just beside her ear.

His breath on her skin made her jump, and Jackie had to mentally shake herself. What was wrong with her that she could allow the nearness of a child like Billy to affect her? “What—” she began but stopped as she heard a plane. It sounded as if it was coming in to land.

Putting down her coffee cup, she went through the living room and out the front door toward the landing field, Billy just behind her. As she shaded her eyes against the sun, she could see the plane heading toward the airstrip. Immediately Jackie knew that the pilot wasn't very experienced: the plane was too low too soon.

The pilot managed to land the plane but only by the skin of his teeth, and Jackie planned to give him a piece of her mind. He could have taken the chimney off the old house on the hill, and the impact could have caused the plane to crash.

As she briskly walked across the field, Billy passed her to get to the plane first, and he held up his arms when the pilot stepped out. Jackie realized belatedly that the pilot was a woman. Only a female could be that slender, that delicately curvaceous, and only a beautiful woman could so easily accept a man's uplifted arms to help her down. She removed her goggles and leather helmet to release a torrent of midnight black hair before turning to Jackie with a look of chagrin on her lovely face. “I was so hoping to impress you,” she said, “but instead I nearly killed myself, a few trees, and…” She looked at Billy. “Was that a chimney I nearly hit?”

“None other,” he answered.

The words of scolding died on Jackie's lips. She remembered the time she had wanted to impress Charley with her flying skills only to fly her worst when he was around. Instead of lecturing, she smiled at the girl.

“You remember my cousin Reynata, don't you?”

At first Jackie didn't, but then she looked at the girl in horror. “Rey? You're little Rey?” When she had known this girl Reynata had been a plump five-year-old with perpetually dirty clothes and skinned knees. She was always trying to run after the older children, always falling and hurting herself. Now she was tall and beautiful and nubile. “Of course I remember you,” Jackie said, trying to sound gracious, but wondering if her hair was turning gray with every one of these “adults” she met. After shaking hands with the young woman, Jackie invited her in for coffee.

“I'd love to, but I saw the truck just down the road and—Ah! Here it is now.”

Jackie stood where she was as Rey, all energy and movement, ran toward the road leading into Eternity where a large truck was just now coming into view.

“I think I'd better help,” Billy said, then moved forward to follow his cousin.

Puzzled, Jackie followed them slowly. Just what was going on? The plane Rey had flown was a Waco, so shiny-new that it must have left the factory yesterday. It was the type of plane that she had told her rescuer, William, that she most wanted. Was this a coincidence or was the plane from William?

By the time she reached the truck, it was being unloaded and things were being carried into the old hotel that she rented from Billy's father—a bed and linens, a chair, a couple of small tables, lamps, clothes, and a rack to hold the hangers. The whole situation was so confusing that it was several moments before Jackie could speak. “Would you mind telling me what is going on?” she asked Billy after pulling him aside. “And would you mind telling those men to stop putting furniture inside
my
house? I already have enough furniture.”

Billy looked surprised. “The top floor is empty, isn't it? You didn't rent that floor, did you?”

“No, I didn't. Your father—”

“Oh, I bought the hotel from Dad. He charged me five dollars for it. I tried to get him down to one dollar, but he wouldn't hear of it. At first the scoundrel wanted ten, but I don't have a degree in business for the fun of it. I won't be cheated, even by my own father.”