into her mind, and said she wanted to schedule a balloon ride to celebrate her fortieth birthday. When she hung up, she looked at herself in her bedroom mirror, wondering how Laura Brandon could have done such a wacky thing.
12
IT WAS STILL DARK WHEN LAURA REACHED THE WINE COUNTRY. Dylan had told her to be at his house by 5:00 a.m. so she’d have a good view of the sunrise from the air.
“At your house?” she’d asked, surprised.
“I keep the equipment in a barn on my property,” he’d explained. “I have a field I can use for takeoff when the wind is right.”
The drive was about half an hour from Lake Ashton, through country that would be beautiful in daylight. Leaving Emma practically in the middle of the night had posed a problem. Laura solved it by bringing Shelley, Emma’s teenage babysitter from their old Leesburg neighborhood, out to the lake to stay over the night before. Shelley would be there to take care of Emma when she woke up this morning.
Pulling to the side of the road, she turned on the car’s overhead light to look at the printed directions Dylan had sent her. His street was just around the next bend. She turned onto it and drove through woods so thick and deep that they would have been dark even in the daytime. Then she saw the mailbox described in the directions. It was an ordinary wooden mailbox, but sailing from the top of it, lit up by a small, hidden spotlight, was a wooden replica of a colorful hot air balloon.
The driveway curved through the woods for another half mile before a house slipped into view from the darkness. Lighting along the ground illuminated this part of the driveway, and the windows of the house were aglow. She parked next to a van in front of the garage and got out. From somewhere to her right, she heard voices, and in the dusky light, she could make out a barn at the edge of a field. A couple of people stood in the center of the field, setting up the balloon, she supposed. She felt the first twinge of anticipation about the balloon ride itself. Until now, she’d had far bigger things than the ride on her mind.
The house was actually a log cabin, she saw as she approached. Small and relatively new. She climbed the porch steps, and Dylan came out the front door before she had a chance to knock.
“Susan?” he asked.
Laura nearly lost her voice. In the porch light, his resemblance to Emma was remarkable. Those blue eyes and the dark hair. Even his quick smile was Emma’s. At least, it was the smile Emma used to have.
“Yes.” She held out her hand, waiting for him to remember her, but he shook her hand without a hint of recognition. She must have made quite an impact on him that night. Or perhaps she’d changed a great deal in the last six years. In the light from the house, she could see that Dylan now had a little gray at his temples and his hairline was beginning to recede. He was wearing a short-sleeved jumpsuit, either blue or gray, with a hot air balloon design above the breast pocket.
“The crew’s setting up the balloon in the field out back,” he said. “Come watch.”
They walked together toward the field. “Do you fly only in the morning and evening?” Laura asked, making conversation in an attempt to calm her nerves.
“Uh-huh. Weather conditions are best then.”
“What if it’s raining?”
“Rain’s a problem. Wind is even worse. I end up canceling about forty percent of the scheduled flights.”
“Guess I lucked out.” The morning was balmy, the sky clear. “What do you do during the rest of the day?”
“Sleep.” He laughed. “I’m up at four nearly every morning.”
They’d reached the center of the field, where a huge fan blew air into the mouth of the balloon. The balloon lay on its side, and she could see the billowing of the fabric, although she could not quite make out its colors. A truck stood nearby, and two men worked near its rear bumper.
“Hey, Alex. Brian,” Dylan said. “This is Susan.”
The men looked up from their work. They seemed very young, at least in the dim light. One of them had long hair tied back in a ponytail. The other wore a heavy beard. Both wore gloves.
“How’s it going, Susan?” one of them asked.
“Okay,” she answered. “Hope you guys know what you’re doing.”
“Me, too,” Dylan said. “Today’s their first day working for me.”
Laura cringed.
“Just joking,” Dylan said, touching her arm. “They’ve been working with me a couple of years.”
“Oh. Good.”
He was suddenly all business as he told her where she should stand in the balloon, what sort of emergencies might arise and what she should do in each case. She tried to listen carefully, nodding in the appropriate places, but she was having a great deal of trouble concentrating. At any moment, she expected him to recognize her.
“Ready,” one of the men said.
“Excuse me,” Dylan said, leaving her side to walk toward the balloon. He lit the burners at the top of the basket, sending a roaring blue-and-red flame into the mouth of the balloon. Slowly, the fabric of the balloon swayed and billowed, rising into the air, like a huge animal coming to life. She could see now that the balloon had a swirling striped pattern, and it was immense.
Once the balloon had inflated above him, Dylan hoisted himself into the basket.
Laura listened as the three men ran through a preflight checklist, then the man with the beard set a stepladder next to the basket.
“Here you go,” he said, reaching an arm toward her. “Hop in.” He held her hand as she climbed the stepladder, and Dylan took her other hand from inside the basket as she stepped over the rim.
“Step on the propane tank,” he said. “That’s it.”
She stepped onto the tank, then onto the floor of the basket, moving to one of the corners as he’d instructed her to do. At least she remembered that much of what he’d told her.
“All set?” Dylan asked.
She nodded.
“Let her go!” he called to his crew.
The bearded member of the crew untied a line from the axle of the truck, then helped Dylan store it on the bottom of the basket. Dylan sent two short blasts of flame into the balloon, the sound nearly deafening. The man with the ponytail, who’d been holding on to the rim of the basket, let go, and the balloon began to rise.
The ascent was slower, gentler than she had anticipated, taking her breath away in small increments. In the east, the sky was beginning to color.
“This is beautiful,” she said, thinking that he must hear that word dozens of times in a day’s work.
They began to drift above the treetops, but there was no sense of motion whatsoever inside the basket. And, except for the occasional roar of the flame, the world was silent.
“Couldn’t find anyone gutsy enough to come with you for your birthday, huh?” Dylan asked.
“Actually, I wanted to do this alone.”
“I can appreciate that,” he said. “There’s nothing like being up here alone. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me, though. I’ll try not to intrude.”
Tearing herself away from the sunrise, she faced him. The golden light made the blue of his eyes translucent. She’d seen the same phenomenon in her daughter’s face and remembered why she was here. She took a deep breath. “Dylan,” she said, “I’ve lied to you.”
He raised his eyebrows. “About?”
“My name’s not Susan…” She couldn’t even remember the last name she’d given him. “I’m