Interlude 6
Mom’s Letter (as found in the box)
Jack, my dearest Bluebird,
Some nights I dream of our first flight together over the Island, the light so gold it made us both cry. I remember how your hand brushed mine on the throttle, and how, in that instant, I believed we could live forever in the air.
If you’re reading this, then it means enough time has passed for truth to sound less like betrayal and more like love. I never stopped loving any of you—never!—I just stopped believing I was the kind of person who could keep a family grounded.
I tried to stay (God knows I did). I baked, sang, mended, smiled, pretended.
But every evening I found myself listening for engines.
I began sneaking to the hangar again, to smell the oil and metal.
At first, it was only a few hours. Then a night, then another…
And then I realized that if I stayed, I would start blaming you, and the children, and the gravity that kept me still.
I couldn’t do that to you, and I couldn’t let love rot in the cage of our kitchen.
You could face stillness with grace. You were teaching Adam how to tie knots and Alicia how to read clouds the way I couldn’t.
And I loved you so fiercely for it! Watching you fight your own body, watching our house become smaller and smaller around your courage…
I couldn’t stand the reflection. I thought if I left, you’d all have a chance to stop waiting for a version of me that no longer existed.
I was wrong about what distance could heal.
When Alicia’s accident happened (God, I can hardly write this), I heard.
There are still people who write, who whisper news, who remember us.
I came to the hospital. I sat in the hallway outside her room for six nights, too afraid to walk in, too ashamed to see what I’d done.
She was so pale, so small, and there was that sound of the machines: the rhythm of a heart I helped make.
I wanted to touch her hand, but I didn’t want her first thought upon waking to be: you came now?
So I found another way. The only way I could love her was without taking something from her again.
The photos, the flying ones, I sent to you.
Every one of them. I took them on the coast, the airfields, through cloud layers that reminded me of her laugh (it’s contagious—and that she takes after me!).
I sent them when I felt she was losing altitude.
Maybe it was selfish, but it was the only way I knew how to say: I’m here, still watching. Keep flying, my baby.
And Adam, oh Adam. My golden boy. My sunshine in sneakers.
The one who turned every silence into laughter, every question into light.
I know he thinks I abandoned him when he still needed a mother most. But I’ve watched him in every photo you sent, that spark in his eyes, the way he stands slightly in front of his sister, like he’s always guarding her, even when he pretends not to care.
He’s so thin! He needs to eat better. Tell him he was the reason I stayed as long as I did, and the reason I never stopped believing there’s still goodness in the world.
His kindness is the kind I couldn’t teach: it’s the kind he was born with.
I know you’ve carried my silence and protected me longer than anyone should.
You never told them how I left. That it wasn’t anger, or another man, or madness.
You know I was never built for stillness.
You, steady as the runway, and me, all wind and turbulence.
We made it work longer than anyone believed we could, didn’t we?
You loved me anyway. Thank you for that.
Tell Alicia she doesn’t have to forgive me. To know that every time she looks up, I’m somewhere in the same sky, still keeping watch. Tell Adam that laughter is his compass and it will always lead him home.
Love, forever and always,
Your Hummingbird,
Marianne x
I folded the letter back into the box, careful not to crease it more than it already was.
The paper still smelled faintly of her: engine oil, soap, the faint sweetness of something burnt.
For a moment, I just sat there, tracing her handwriting with my thumb, and everything I’d ever been angry about seemed to blur into something quieter.
I didn’t know if it was forgiveness. Maybe it was just finally understanding the kind of restlessness that lives in our blood. Mom couldn’t stay. Dad couldn’t leave. And me? Somewhere between them, calm but restless, grounded but wanting to fly.
Dad had fallen asleep in his chair, his head tilted back, one hand resting on the edge of the shoebox like he was still holding her in place. I watched him breathe for a long time. The steady rise and fall of his chest, my silent hero.
By morning, the sky outside was clear, that perfect pale blue that makes everything feel slightly possible.
Some places didn’t ask questions. They just reminded you who you were when the noise stopped.
For me, that place was always the airfield.
I hadn’t planned to come here, but when instinct takes the wheel, you don’t argue.
The moment I stepped out of the car, I felt the open stretch of sky above me, and I knew why I came.
It wasn’t to look back at the past: the good, bad, and the ugly.
It was to remember that forward still existed outside the mess.
A glider was being pushed across the grass by two students, laughing about something I couldn’t hear.
The season was nearly over, but there was always someone chasing the last good day.
I leaned against the fence, my hair loose and catching in the breeze, watching the familiar rhythm unfold—wings being secured, checks being run, that quiet patience before takeoff.
For the first time in weeks, I didn’t feel weighed down by decisions. Because deep down, I already knew, and the surprising reaction from my dad and Adam’s sincerity only grounded me in my choice. But I’d probably known since Paul tried to turn a heartbeat into a problem to be solved with a pill.
I wasn’t here to figure things out anymore.
I was here because this was where everything felt right, even when life wasn’t.
I traced my fingers over the scar on my forearm, on my neck, wondering whether my heart, like my body, had also been fractured during the crash, and that was what pulled me toward another broken soul.
“You always did prefer watching to waiting, King.”
I turned at the voice—calm and vaguely familiar. James. Nickname: Echo. One of the instructors from flight school that I’d seen here a couple of months ago, his jacket zipped up against the fall chill, clipboard in hand. Aviator glasses. Tan from all the summers spent here.
I offered a small smile. “Some things don’t change.”
He studied me for a moment, reading between the lines like good pilots do.
“We’ve missed seeing you out here,” he said, nodding toward the hangar. “When you’re ready, perhaps we can take a self-launch glider first to take things slow. You know, this place isn’t going anywhere, and I’ll be happy to take you up there.”
I swallowed the lump that rose unexpectedly in my throat. “I know.”
He didn’t ask why I’d been gone. Didn’t mention the crash landing, or why my wings had been grounded longer than they should’ve been. He gave a short nod instead—the kind that said you’ll get there, before walking back toward his office.
I stayed a little longer, watching as a tow plane rumbled to life, pulling a glider toward the taxiway.
The sky stretched vast and indifferent above it all, no flat clouds, like it had space for every version of me: the girl who once flew, the woman standing here now, and whoever I was becoming.
As the glider lifted, silent and steady, I felt it deep in my bones: I wasn’t done here.
Not with flying. Not with life. I pushed my hair back from my face, took one last look at the horizon, and walked to the old familiar pickup.
The future wasn’t waiting: it was already unfolding, one steady breath and two heartbeats at a time.