Jack woke early, a little groggy and hung over, still wrapped around Calder. The other man's sleeping face was set in a tired frown, and there were dark circles under his eyes. Jack wondered how much sleep he'd managed to get.

Jack slipped out of bed without disturbing him and dressed quietly, figuring he'd grab breakfast for the both of them in the mess. It felt like sneaking out after a one-night stand and he struggled to convince himself it wasn't. This was his house after all, he'd be back, and they hadn't even slept together last night. They'd just...slept. Which somehow felt far more intimate to Jack. He hurried out into the brisk morning. The bright, chilly day was preferable to the uncomfortable questions inside.

It was a clear early morning, the sky a washed out pale blue as the sun began its climb. No clouds, not much wind. A perfect day for flying. Jack sighed, glancing at the hangar where Ann was still recuperating. He shrugged deeper into his coat and headed for the mess hall instead. Some coffee would do him good, and maybe quiet the troubled thoughts crowding his mind.

The hall was mostly deserted. The really early risers had already come and gone carrying dawn deliveries. The latecomers weren't up yet. The handful of men still around were mostly overnight fliers, the late shift, having only got home an hour or so ago, lingering a bit before they headed to bed. There was just one oddity that fit none of these categories. And that was Otis, still face down and snoring on the same table they had left him at last night.

“Otis,” Jack said, shaking the man lightly by the shoulder. “Otis!”

Otis grunted, snorted as he woke suddenly, sitting up to stare at Jack in a daze.

“For a minute there I thought you'd bought it,” Jack said. “You been here all night?”

Otis made a confused noise, glanced at his watch, and began swearing colorfully enough to put a sailor to shame. He struggled to get up and tripped over his own feet.

“Shit, I was supposed to go out early this morning,” he said, his words still fuzzy and sleep addled, as Jack caught him and pushed him back into his seat. “Boss is gonna eat me alive for missing those deliveries.”

“You're not in any shape to be flying right now,” Jack said. “If I let you up in the air right now, you'd probably come back down on top of me.”

“Got no choice, Jack,” Otis said. “Somebody's gotta make those flights.”

“I'm grounded today anyway,” Jack said. “I'll take em. You need a couple of hours in an actual bed.”

Otis was too tired to fight. Jack got him some water and sent him stumbling off to his bunk, then went to talk to administration about getting his delivery schedule for the day.

“You're already behind,” they told him, handing him the schedule sheet. “You'd better get in the air now.”

Jack thought briefly, guiltily, about Calder still asleep in his bed. Now he really was sneaking off. He pushed those thoughts away quickly and climbed into Otis' plane. These deliveries had to get made, and he was the only one around who could do them.

He felt better as soon as his plane was in the air, the fresh air clearing his mind. Everything would be fine. The comfort Calder had needed last night wasn’t so different from the comfort he’d used Jack for the past two nights. It was just a mutually beneficial relationship that gave them both an outlet for their feelings. It didn’t mean anything except that they were grown adults capable of compartmentalizing their feelings. As long as Jack kept the line clear between their purely physical relationship and their purely professional one, they’d be fine.

Otis and his Cessna generally flew heavier cargo. Big supply drops and larger packages. Jack had been to most of the places on his list for smaller, more regular deliveries. He was grateful for that. The Cessna was bigger than his Super Cub and handled differently. He wouldn't want to be flying somewhere unfamiliar while he was still trying to figure it out.

He'd gone through a good chunk of the list, nearing lunchtime, when he noticed Tahltan, penciled into the schedule late. Jack had almost forgotten that he'd asked Otis to deliver that chair for him. He felt the same slight uneasiness he always did when visiting that town, and shrugged it off. Unlike his usual deliveries, this was just one big package. He could drop it off and leave again without even leaving the plane.

He set the Cessna down on Tahltan's gravel strip with only minor difficulty, and saw Howard hurrying to greet him as he turned off the engine and opened the cargo doors.

“Jack! Wasn't expecting to see you today!” Howard said as he spotted the other man.

“Special delivery,” Jack replied. “It's Frank's birthday, right?”

“You got the chair?” Howard asked, clearly delighted.

“It's in the back,” Jack reported with a smile, glad to have improved the man's day. Howard called for someone to help him unload it, then turned back to Jack.

“You should come to the party!” he said. “We're just about to cut the cake.”

“I really can't stay,” Jack said evasively. “I've got other deliveries.”

“Just for a minute,” Howard insisted. “Just make an appearance and get yourself some cake. Everyone will want to thank you for getting the chair here on time.”

Jack debated it for a moment, looking for a way out. But it was his lunch time and he hated to disappoint Howard.

“All right,” he agreed. “Just for a minute.”

The party was being held in the roadhouse, that being the only public building around that was large enough. Jack entered right behind the chair, which was presented to old Frank still plastic wrapped. The old man looked close to tears. Jack tolerated everyone coming to thank him for delivering it on time with as much politeness as he could manage.

When the excitement had dwindled a bit, he took a piece of overly sugary sheet cake and retreated to a corner to eat, watching the ongoing festivities from a safe distance. There were plans to organize a chicken dance and Jack had no intention of being pulled into that. He'd finish his cake and left quietly. He still had plenty of deliveries to get back to.

“Mr. Whittaker.”

The birthday cake soured in his mouth. A woman, somewhere in her late forties, with long dark brown hair and a worry lined face, had come to stand beside him.

“Marna,” he said with a cautious nod. “Thank you for the fudge the other day.”

“You're welcome,” she said tersely. “I didn't expect you to be here.”

“Came to deliver Frank's birthday present,” Jack replied. “Just a quick stop.”

“Do you have time to come and see Brian?” she asked. There was a steely lack of emotion to her voice. Her face resembled nothing so much as the woman in American Gothic, stern and empty and somehow accusative. Jack didn't have the will to refuse her.

“Of course,” he said. She led him silently out of the party.

The small home she shared with her son was not far from the main road. It was boxy but pleasant. Marna and her husband had raised their three sons and a daughter there.

“Jess still in college?” Jack asked as they approached the house, delaying the inevitable.

“Graduated,” Marna replied. “She's in California now.”

“That's pretty far,” Jack said with a frown.

“She calls often.” Marna truncated the conversation there by opening the door of the house. The inside was grimmer than the exterior. There was the air of a hospital about it. Kept rigorously clean, at the expense of anything comfortable or homey. There were no family pictures on the grey walls. No drapes on the windows. Few knick-knacks or decorations of any kind. It felt like Marna wasn't living there, just lingering, temporarily, with one foot already out the door.

Brian was in the back bedroom, the room that had been his growing up. He was twenty-five this year. Handsome, with his mother's dark hair. He lay in his bed, eyes closed, the only sound the whir and rush of the machines that did his breathing for him.

“How has he been?” Jack asked, his voice quiet, as though afraid he'd wake the young man. If only that were possible.

“No change.” Marna sat down on the edge of his bed, straightened his blankets. “It's been almost two years now.”

She sat like a statue, straight backed and still, a carved angel in a cemetery, looking down at the grave she guarded. She swept his hair back from his eyes. Jack held his hands clutched in front of him, wishing he were anywhere else, wishing he knew what to do. He'd already apologized a hundred times or more. Once he'd drunk himself half to death, nearly killed himself flying out here in the middle of the night, and cried on her front porch until he passed out. She knew how sorry he was from experience. Apologizing again wouldn't fix anything. It wouldn't even make either of them feel better.

“I talked to the doctor again the other day,” she said. “He thinks it's time to pull the plug. I think he might be right.”

“God,” Jack murmured, stunned.

“He's not going to get better,” she went on. “He's never going to wake up. There's nothing left in him to wake up. That all died before you pulled him out of the snow. It's past time the rest of him followed.”

“Christ, Marna, are you sure?” Jack asked.

Jack saw her shoulders slump.

“I'm tired, Jack,” she said. “I'm so tired. I feel...rung out. Like a hundred-year-old dishrag. I'm tired of looking at him and remembering. I'm tired of being in this place alone. I'm tired of all of it. I just want it to be over so I can move on. The doctor says he has no memories. He doesn't even dream.”

Jack swallowed a lump in throat, fighting the itch to run away.

“Marna,” he said. “You know I would do anything, anything, to make this right. To make up for…for how I failed you. What do you need me to do?”

Marna turned to look at him, heavy tears running down well-worn tracks in her cheeks.

“I need you to tell me I'm making the right decision,” she said, her voice breaking. “You're the only person I know who's made a choice like this before. I need you to tell me I chose right.”

Jack stayed with Marna for about an hour, until she'd calmed down and he felt safe leaving her. He checked back in with the party after and found Howard, letting him know what had happened and that someone would probably need to go sit with Marna for a few days until everything was done. He couldn't blame her for not wanting to be alone anymore.

Before he left, she'd stopped him at the door. Afternoon had crept toward evening and the sky ran with color like overturned paint cans, spilling gold and orange and pink across the horizon. The pine trees were a single black silhouette beyond the driveway. Further beyond them, the mountains were just hazy shapes in the growing darkness. The world felt very large, and Jack felt very small in it.

“I heard you took another rescue mission,” Marna said, leaning against the doorway as he stood on her porch, looking up at the sky. Glancing back at her, he couldn’t help remembering the image on the top of the tin she’d given him. She was still waiting in the doorway for her family to come in from the snow, but they never would.

“I forgot how fast word travels around here,” Jack said, frowning, suddenly afraid that she would be angry, that she would demand he never do what he’d done to her to anyone else. Instead she smiled, the expression weary and distant.

“I'm glad,” she said. “I was glad to hear it. I know you stopped taking them after Brian.”

Jack looked away, his heart twisting with guilt. Somehow, that was worse than righteous anger. She’d been so furious at him right after. She’d screamed and even thrown a punch at him. And it had been good, cathartic even. Then she’d turned in on herself and the anger had dwindled to embers. Instead, she sent him tins of fudge and asked him to visit. He’d thought they were passive aggressive gesture. He was starting to think he’d been at least partially wrong.

“I know you think I blame you,” she went on. “I did at first. I blamed everyone back them, including myself. To be honest, part of me still does, and probably always will. But I don't hate you, Jack Whittaker.”

It was words he’d never expected to hear, and he didn’t know how to respond to them. He gripped the porch railing so hard it creaked. The evening wind tugged at his clothes like it was trying to pull him away from this.

“It wasn't your fault. You made the best decision you could when there was no good decision to be made. And you're a damn good rescue pilot. I don't want to be the reason you stop saving lives.”

Jack looked down at his feet, eyes stinging. He brought a hand up to rub at his eyes, to try to stop the tears before they started. 

“You aren't,” he croaked, his voice rough with emotion. “Yeah, I thought you blamed me. I think you're right to. God knows I blame myself.”

The evening was quiet except the wind in the trees. The breeze smelled like snow on the way. He heard the creak of the porch as she stepped closer to him, and felt the graze of her skin, warm and dry, almost brittle, as she took his hand. She squeezed it once, and he mastered himself enough to turn back and look at her. She met his eye, her gaze steady and, though it was heavy with pain, somehow less burdened than it had been before.

“You made the right call,” she said.

Jack pursed his lips and searched for the right words. He pulled his hand away to pat hers reassuringly.

“For what it's worth,” he told her, turning to go, “I think you're making the right call too.”