Cynthia Cartier - Wings

“Are you gonna be okay?” Jenna set her hand on Liddy’s cheek and turned it to her. “Liddy?”

Liddy shook her head slowly. “I don’t know.”

Jenna and Ellis sat with her in silence for a long time until Liddy told them she wanted to be alone. Jenna was worried and made her friend promise to call her, and they left. Liddy stayed on the bench. She didn’t want to move and at the same time, wanted to be where Reid was as fast as she could get to him.

When Alan sat down, he landed with a bounce. He smelled like cigars and bourbon and he was wrapped in complete contentment. He smiled at Liddy and tried to get one back but she didn’t have one to give.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, still smiling.

Liddy closed her eyes and wished she could disappear to someplace dark and still. She needed time. She needed time.

“Tell me what’s wrong, Liddy.”

She looked into the face of that sweet man and thought how wonderful and awful life was. War complicated life and life complicated war, and her life had never been more complicated than in this moment. She wanted to protect Alan but knew she couldn’t.

“You’re scaring me, Sweet Cakes. What’s going on?”

Liddy’s mouth opened to say something, but what? How? She studied Alan’s face and prayed for time to stand still.

“Liddy.” Alan took her chin. “Please.”

“Reid Trent is alive,” she blurted it out and looked down at her hands.

The contentment drained from Alan’s face and he leaned back on the bench. “How do you know?”

“Jenna and Ellis told me.”

The night got quieter the longer they sat without either of them saying anything.

“What are you going to do?” Alan’s words were quiet and slow.

Liddy looked up and saw Alan’s sad face—every part of it was sad. She couldn’t bear it and turned away and closed her eyes. “I have to see him.” When she looked back up at him, Alan was nodding softly. “I’m so sorry, Alan. I have to see him.”

Liddy left the Atlanta airport the next morning and flew straight to Florida. She thought about Alan and that whatever happened, she had hurt him deeply. She thought about Reid and what she would say to him when she saw him.

At the hospital she asked to see Major Reid Trent, and a nurse led her down the hall and outside to a patio. It overlooked crowded beds filled with the tall blades of Cannas that held their bowl-sized blooms above their tips. The big leaves of the Catalpa trees cradled their show of pink bouquets, and teacup-sized Glads chimed in. Every growing thing seemed to have its own bloom and must have known nothing of life. The nurse pointed to a man sitting in a wheelchair that faced the garden and went back inside.

Liddy studied the back of the person wearing the pale-gray hospital robe and didn’t recognize anything about the figure. For the first time since she heard the words, ‘Reid’s alive’ from Jenna, she questioned if this is what she should be doing. Her heart was heavy with thoughts of Alan and her mind wouldn’t level.

All the thinking she had done about what she would do in this moment, had not led her to settle on a thing. Before her heart and mind could battle for one more second, she set her feet in motion and grabbed a chair as she passed one of the patio tables. She walked to where the man sat, set the chair in front of him and looked at his face and recognized it. “Excuse me, sir, is this seat taken?”

Reid looked up at Liddy and she realized that she had never seen pure surprise on this face. There were so many things she had never had the chance to see on this face, but it was the face of Major Reid Trent. It was his face, his evergreen eyes and sun-thickened skin that she was seeing unshaven for the first time. His hair wasn’t clipped off short. It was thick and curved softly back and forth for four or five inches, and a curled lock of hair hung to the side of his forehead. A pink scar ran from behind his right ear and disappeared under his collar. He looked thin, but his shoulders were broad and straight.

“Did you hear me, sir? Is this seat taken?”

“No.” Reid’s response was lifeless.

Liddy sat down in the chair and leaned back resting her elbows on the arms and laced her fingers together in front of her. She looked into his eyes and wouldn’t let go. His face didn’t change and held no smirk or twinkle, and he seemed tortured by her gaze. Still, every uninvited desire that she had ever felt for this man ran through her body. A tingling ran over her skin and her muscles tightened. Her heart pounded and in that moment it let her mind rest and told her that this was where she was supposed to be.

“I’ve written you a few letters you haven’t answered. What are you gonna do about that?” asked Liddy.

In almost a whisper, Reid said, “Liddy…” Then he moved his mouth but only air escaped until he finally got out, “… I wish you hadn’t come here.”

“You do, do you, and why is that?”

“Everything is different now.”

Liddy sat up straight and her hands gripped the arms of the chair. “Really, tell me what’s different.”

Reid dropped his eyes and stared down at his hands that clutched the blanket draped over his lap. She could see from the form under the cover that his lower left leg and knee were gone. His hair fell forward and his shoulders rose and fell with deep breaths.

Liddy set her finger under his chin and pushed it up, then she combed his hair off his face with her fingers.

“You don’t have two whole legs anymore—that’s different. What else is different, Reid? You don’t want me to fly you over the Rockies anymore? You don’t want to show me the Atlantic Ocean and the beach where you celebrated your birthday every year until you were eighteen? Or is it how you feel about me that’s different, Reid Trent?”

Reid’s eyes welled up and his mouth widened, but he didn’t answer.

“Reid, when you stopped writing, and then I found out your plane went down…” Liddy’s breath caught in her chest and her eyes filled with tears. “… and then I got the letters back I wrote you, marked…” She closed her eyes and tears soaked her lashes as she concentrated on taking small slow breaths, then she looked back at Reid. “I lost you bit by bit. I’ve had enough loss. Unless you can tell me that you want me to leave this hospital, and you never want to see me again, and that that is the truth, I have no intention of losing you again.”

Pain and sadness flooded Reid’s eyes and tightened the clench of his fists, and Liddy wanted to weep with him. She wanted to hold him and bring him back to her.

“So what’s it gonna be?” Her grip on the chair tightened and the metal pressed on the bones in her hands and they ached.

“I just can’t, Liddy.”

“You can’t what?”

A rush of pain filled her forehead and throbbed deep in her throat. He dropped his eyes again.

“Reid, don’t do this to me. If you want me to leave, just say it, please.” Her breathing became unsteady and she struggled to stay calm. She wanted to scream. “I wasn’t sure until I sat down in this chair, but I’m sure now. Nothing’s changed for me. If it has for you, please, please just say it.”

Reid looked up, his eyes full of tears and his voice trembled, “The day I first laid eyes on you, I knew you were gonna be a problem for me. I didn’t know how much of a problem, though.” Tears rolled down his face and dripped from his chin. “My life isn’t going to be what I was planning on, so I can’t even tell you where I’m going from here.”

“I don’t care where you’re going. I just want to go with you.” Liddy scooted her chair closer to him and set her feet on the rest where his foot would have been, and she pressed her left knee against the one he still had. “I need you, Reid. I love you so much. Even when I didn’t want to, I’ve loved you so much.”

Liddy wiped the tears from his face and loosened his grip on the blanket. Then she brought his hands to her mouth and kissed them and wrapped them up in hers and held on tight. She loved, loved this man. Liddy dropped her face onto their hands. He let his head rest on hers, and they wept months of tears.

When Reid lifted Liddy’s face and dried it with his hand, his voice was still trembling, “Heard there’s an HP in Missouri that can teach me a thing or two, maybe get me back in the pit with a peg leg.”

Liddy laughed softly and sniffled back the tears. “I’ve heard of her. By the book flyer from what I understand.”

“Now what fun would that be?” A smirk spread across Reid’s face and Liddy’s heart lifted off. She stayed with him the rest of that day, and they talked about everything that had happened in their lives the past fifteen months.

Reid told Liddy in detail of his time overseas, including being shot down and about Arman and Mari Gerard, the couple that saved his life. He told her how the farmer had seen his plane ripped from the sky by Nazi gunners, and risked his life when he set out to help the pilot if he could. He found Reid unconscious and carried him back to his home, then hid him for almost a year. Reid’s leg had been shattered in the crash. Infection set in, and again Arman risked his life when he traveled to bring back a doctor from the French underground. He and Mari helped the doctor take Reid’s leg and saved his life for a second time.

Liddy told Reid how hard it was to lose her Army wings, about missing her dad and about Bet, and she cried. She told him about her ferry command and about her life since she left the WASP. And when she came to the part about Alan, Liddy learned something: she could tell Reid Trent anything, and she did. She told him everything. And she told him how she had ached for him, how much she had missed him, and he said he knew the ache, he had missed her terribly, and they cried some more.

Liddy flew to Chicago before she flew home, and Alan knew the minute he saw Liddy’s face. He had prepared a gracious speech and seemed more concerned about Liddy than himself as he held her while she cried and apologized over and over. When her sobs lessened, he lifted Liddy’s chin and smiled. “Hey, buck-up, pal, I’m a fisherman, remember?”

She shook her head at him and fought back the tears—I’m not buying that.

“It’s that obvious, is it?”

“Painfully so.” Her cheeks were soaked with tears.

“Listen to me, Liddy, I really hate this. I mean I really, really hate this, but I know you would never hurt me if you could help it. I couldn’t love you so much if that wasn’t true. I’ve come to terms with the fact that you just can’t help this, Sweet Cakes. It still stinks though, but I’ll land on my feet, you just watch.”

Alan was so good, and as she left him, Liddy thought how one huge pain in her heart had replaced another huge pain, and she hoped it wouldn’t always be that way. Love should always be good, the thought throbbed inside her.

What would she have done if Reid hadn’t come back into her life when he did? What would she have done if she had made a life with Alan and then Reid came back? The pain would have been so much greater, it would have been forever pain, and she was thankful and sad, so very sad, so very thankful.

Liddy flew home and wrote to Reid every day and flew to see him on the weekends. She told Crik, Daniel, Celia, her sister-friends, everyone, even Muck and Gossy about Major Reid Trent.

The first time Reid kissed Liddy, was the first day she saw him walk again. When he appeared in the doorway, he had a cane in each hand but was standing on his own. His steps on the prosthetic leg were unsteady, but he was determined to cross the patio to where she sat waiting for him on a Saturday morning. Liddy was watching him, studying him and smiling. When he was standing so close that his legs rubbed up against hers, he looked down at her, smirked and asked, “Wanna race?”

Liddy pushed the chair back, stood up and set her hands on his. “Okay, but I get a head start.”

Reid rested the cane he was holding in his right hand on the chair. He moved slowly and had to adjust his weight after he leaned over and then stood back up. Again Liddy studied his effort with a smile and he knew that she did, and he liked it. When he had himself balanced again, he slid his fingers across her cheek and held it, then kissed her lips long and soft.

Looking deep inside her, he said, “I only remember feeling real fear twice in my life. When my leg was being cut off was one. The other was when you went missing at Avenger.” Reid kissed her again. “Even then you were a part of me. I love you, Liddy Lynn Hall.”