The bomber jacket, p.47
The Bomber Jacket, page 47
On Tuesday after breakfast, Beth brought the bomber jacket down. She found it in the closet of Colin’s old room, where they had put her up again. “Mairi,” she said when she laid it in her lap, “this is for you. This was Colin’s, and I think it belongs here.”
Mairi’s aged face grew moist from tears. “Ah, ye blessed child. Ayre ye sure? It looks so right on ye.”
Beth nodded, feeling stronger than she had in months. “It brought me to you. But it needs to be here with his other things. Taken out and shown to his family.”
“To your children, Beth. That means you’ll be needin’ to bring ‘em home to Scotland when that time comes.”
Beth nodded, unable to speak.
“And ‘ye’re to be comin’ back often, nay?”
“Often,” Beth smiled, then laid her head in Mairi’s lap, atop of the bomber jacket which smelled of old leather, damp wool, and the faintest ancient lingering odor of airplane fuel.
It was early evening when she reached her hotel. She had only to repack one suitcase, and then she’d be ready for tomorrow’s plane trip. As she did, she found notes inside from both Anja and Iain, which included their home addresses and phone numbers and a request to let them know she was okay. And an invitation from Iain to come visit Canada. It made her smile.
At nine, after a shower and a room service dinner, she climbed into bed and picked up the phone to call Robbie. He answered on the first ring.
“Hi there,” she said, working hard to infuse cheer in her voice. The realization that she was finally leaving Scotland had begun to sink in.
“Hi there, yourself,” he replied tentatively.
“I’m sorry it’s so late. I hope it’s not too late to call.”
“It’s never too late, Beth.”
She let his statement hang in the air.
“Are you still leaving tomorrow?” he asked.
“Yes.”
The silence was heavy. There was so much Beth wanted to say, but there wasn’t time. In less than twelve hours, she’d be on a plane. Once again, her plans seemed to leave no room for Robbie. The realization intensified the ache in her heart. But she was too much of a coward to share it with him.
“You know, it might be easier if I just got a taxi. I mean I’d hate to put you out.”
“Is that what you think you’ve done?” His voice was suddenly angry.
“I just thought maybe…”
“Oh, for crying out loud, Beth. These months, you think you’ve been an inconvenience?”
Beth felt his fury battering against the strong walls she had built around her heart. Like a cartoon drawing, she saw a vision of Robbie in knight’s armor, battering ram in hand, racing toward a castle wall she was hiding behind.
“No, Robbie. It’s just, I… I’m… I can’t find the words to explain. To say how I feel. What you’ve meant….”
The silence stretched out uncomfortably. He finally said, “Meant? As in past tense?”
Beth left his question unanswered, and after a pause, he sighed. “Fine. Just tell me what time I should pick you up.” His words sounded slow, weary.
She didn’t want to fight anymore. “Six. Can you pick me up at six?”
“I’ll be in front of the hotel at six.” The phone clicked down. She had heard him angry, shocked, bitter. But never resigned. Well deserved. But at this point, what was there to say?
She had a terrible night’s sleep, filled with dreams of knights storming castles and of her throwing rose petals out a tower window. But never the whole rose.
She was out front well before six, shivering in the cold air, working up the courage to say the things he deserved to hear.
Robbie was prompt and uncommunicative on most of the thirty-minute ride to the airport through the dark streets and countryside of Edinburgh. When he greeted her, his voice was low and polite, his face calm but drawn. There was no anger in his eyes but no smile either. In the uncomfortable stillness, Beth mentally flipped through mental photographs of their time together. Their amusing meeting on the train where he showered her with lined yellow tablet notes about WWII airplanes; the next awkward encounter at Holyrood and his well-intended yet clumsy insults about her unnerving experience of hearing Colin’s voice being drug-induced. His sweet way of making up by offering to take her places on her grandfather’s list.
She shot a furtive glance his way. He was staring ahead, a grim expression on his face. She longed to reach over and soothe away the lines of tension. So much of her relationship with Robbie was intertwined with her search for Colin; they both grew unnervingly complicated and intense at the same time. She thought of Traprain Law and the Wallace Monument.
She took a deep breath, clearing her thoughts of Colin. Robbie looked over and then away. Her heart twinged at his distance.
This isn’t about Colin, she reminded herself. This is about Robbie. From the very beginning, he was someone she was attracted to. Someone whose company she enjoyed immensely. The night at the movies, dinner at the Indian restaurant. Their conversations. His thoughtfulness. His increasing tenderness. Their shared joy on Skye.
After all that, she owed him an explanation. An apology. Finally, as they approached the International Terminal, brightly lit in the predawn September morning, she screwed up her nerve and plunged in. “Robbie?”
He glanced sideways at her.
“I’m thinking… I think… there’s things… I need to… say to you. That I should have… said months ago.”
He grunted but said nothing else, clearly waiting. Shit, this was hard.
“I think, I think… I owe you an apology. Wait, no—” she wrung her hands. “Th-There’s more, but that’s where… where I need to start.”
He pulled a short distance from the drop-off point and put on the blinkers, then turned in his seat to face her, his expression flat. “Well… start then.”
“I don’t want to make excuses. I was horribly rude… no, cruel. Stupid. Just Naïve. Confused.”
He continued to stare at her wordlessly.
“I… my visions…” No, definitely not that, he never understood. She took another breath. “Robbie, by now… you know. You know… everything. I had to leave… you. I had to. But…” She gripped her hands tighter. “But I shouldn’t have left like that. Cutting you off so suddenly… Going silent like that… I should have tried to explain…”
Beth forced herself to meet Robbie’s gaze, even as she trembled a little. “You didn’t deserve that.” She closed her eyes, remembering his stunned confusion and anguished voice when he dropped her at her dorm. “You didn’t deserve that.” She whispered.
Robbie’s hand lighted gently on her arm. “Are you all right?”
His soft voice crumbled all the walls she had built around her heart. She had so not wanted to cry in front of him. But she did now, her hands covering her eyes. How she ached for a different ending to their story.
“I owe you an apology too, Beth,” he said, his hand a comforting presence on her shoulder. “For misjudging you. For not listening. For not believing that you had this uncanny gift to see into the past. To be a… I don’t know… a medium… that sounds too weird… a vehicle for bringing about healing for a wound from fifty years ago.” He shook his head. “I won’t pretend I understand it now, but… I should’ve taken you more seriously.”
Beth lifted her damp face and took in the tenderness in the eyes of this man she could so easily come to love. Or maybe already loved. But they were out of time.
A knock on the driver’s side window startled them both.
“You can’t park here, sir,” a uniformed security officer said sternly. “This is a drop-off area.”
“Yes, sir, yes, will be moving in a moment,” Robbie said, then turned to Beth. They stared at each other silently for a minute before he nodded and pulled the car ahead in front of the British Air terminal.
“Can you pop the trunk?” She jumped out of the passenger side and retrieved her backpack from the back seat. Robbie walked around to the rear of the car. She drew in deep breaths to calm herself.
She snagged a luggage trolley from nearby. Robbie lifted the suitcases one at a time onto the waiting cart. Then, slamming the trunk shut, he stood looking at her. Waiting. He was always waiting. But how long would he continue to wait?
“So then, what are your plans on going back?”
She cleared her thick throat. “I’m going to finish up my undergrad at Shippensburg, and then, well, I’m thinking of a master’s in history.”
Quietly, he added, “And where might you be taking this master’s?”
“Well, let’s see. Probably not Shippensburg.” She laughed nervously. “Probably, probably somewhere in… Scotland?” She looked at him solemnly. “What would you think of that?”
“I think…” He gently touched her arm. “I think your Scottish family would like it very much if you came back here for your master’s. And your American family would miss you.”
Her voice was shaky, “And… you?”
He shrugged. “I’ll probably still be teaching a bunch of bamstick freshmen.” He jammed his hands into his coat pockets.
“But you didn’t answer my question.”
She thought of his answer later, as the airplane climbed into the sky, over the city she had come to love, heading away from the country that felt so much like home.
“Nae, I suppose I haven’t,” he had replied, cupping her face, wet with her tears, in his warm hands, kissing her tenderly on her eyes, on her cheeks, and then on her mouth. Telling her with his lips what he wouldn’t say with his words. Words she herself couldn’t admit to.
Leaving her standing there, watching him drive away into the brightening morning. Knowing her heart would always be torn between two places on either side of the Atlantic.
THE END
About K.M. King
K.M. King has lived countless lives—member of the United States Army, legal secretary, editor of a community newspaper, junior high school English and history teacher, staff development specialist in the disabilities field, personal coach, corporate trainer, and author.
She and her husband Dana reside in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. They have two children and four grandchildren. She enjoys playing scrabble, dabbling in abstract art, writing poetry and fiction, and engaging in philosophical discussions. Her K-drama obsession intensifies through her blog Kdrama for Life.
The Bomber Jacket is her first published novel.
Learn about K.M. King’s upcoming works, explore a book club discussion guide to The Bomber Jacket, and connect to her blogs at her website: www.kmkingauthor.com.
Acknowledgements for The Bomber Jacket
Many people supported me in my long journey to publication, and I am forever grateful. Thank you to the many beta readers who gave feedback on the many versions the book took to its final form.
My husband Dana always encouraged my passion for writing and provided time and space for me by doing more than his share of the daily tasks involved in raising children and maintaining a home. He never objected when I went away to write for extended weekends or even a whole week.
Special and heartfelt thanks to my friend, Dani Church, who lent hands-on editing expertise in shaping the story and honing the characters, then helped search for agents even as her cancer relapsed. It is a bittersweet part of this journey that she did not live to see The Bomber Jacket in print.
It may seem odd to acknowledge a country, but were it not for the beauty and allure of Scotland that transfixed me over many trips, this novel may never have come to be. I’m thankful for the curiosity and questions of my grandchildren Zoe, Owen, and Lola that shaped the story on our visits to the UK. (Olive, your trip is coming soon!)
And many, many thanks to my sister, Riley Kilmore, whose middle grade novel, Shay the Bray, was recently published by Wild Ink Publishing. Riley asked Abigail Wild to look at one of my manuscripts. Though I had several to choose from, I decided I’d give The Bomber Jacket one last chance after a string of rejections over a number of years. Abby not only accepted my book for publication but also designed the cover, which perfectly captures my vision of the story. Sometimes, it takes a long time for an author to meet the right publisher. So, if you’re a writer, don’t give up. Believe in your story. And thanks, too, to Brittany McMunn and the other Wild Ink staff for so much behind-the-scenes work.
Special credit to Ian Tan, my editor at Wild Ink. He championed my story and characters while being an exacting craftsman. He gave me the creative freedom to work within his editorial guidance, never demanding or insisting, but always encouraging and explaining, serving as much as an instructor of writing as a shaper of sentences, all while being so diplomatic—I told him he could have a career at the United Nations. Because of his sense of story, eye for detail, and way with words, my first published novel is polished and primed to be released to the world.
In the process of writing the novel, I had the privilege of meeting Richard Boyd, a highly decorated WWII Royal Air Force pilot who flew a Lancaster bomber on 33 missions in the European theater. His belief that his greatest success was getting his crew home safely became the foundation of my Scottish pilot character.
This novel is dedicated to all the courageous men and women of “The Greatest Generation,” including my father Earl Whiskeyman, who waged a desperate struggle to preserve democracy for my generation and my children and grandchildren’s generations. It’s a gift many gave their lives for, and one we must not take for granted.
K.M. King, The Bomber Jacket
