“What do you mean? We got in the air. We have all the data we need.” She shimmied down and shoved the clipboard at him.
He took it but didn’t even look at her figures. “We’re still too heavy. We need to lose eighty to a hundred pounds.”
But that wasn’t it. Jack didn’t fret about easy adjustments like reducing weight. He just made the cuts and went on.
She set her goggles on the worktable. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”
“No there’s not.” He leaned against the table, pretending to study her figures, brow furrowed.
She eased alongside him, placing her hand beside his on the table. “You can talk to me. I won’t tell a soul, not even Beattie.”
He continued to pour over the figures, his jaw working through the problem. “I suppose I could. You are a woman.”
“And what does that have to do with anything?”
“You might know what my sister is thinking.”
Though tempted to point out his lack of tact, Darcy sensed pain beneath the mindless comments, so she waited until he gathered the nerve to spill his worries.
“She’s found someone,” he said. “A doctor. She thinks she’s in love.”
“How wonderful.”
He scowled. “Not wonderful. She has polio. She can’t have children. That’s not something a prospective husband wants in a wife.”
“If he loves her…”
“How could he love her?” Jack exploded. “She thinks she’s in love because he talks to her.” He tugged at his hair, a gesture she noticed he did when worried. “But it will end up in disaster. How can I break it to her before she gets hurt? What do I say?”
“You don’t say a thing.” Darcy could not believe the man’s audacity. “Your sister is how old?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“She’s a grown woman and perfectly capable of making her own decisions.”
His scowl deepened. “But she’ll be hurt.”
Darcy was touched by his desire to shield his sister from pain, misplaced as it was. “We’re all hurt at times in our lives. Besides, you’re condemning the relationship before you know anything about it. Who is he?”
Jack shrugged and again pretended to review the times she’d recorded during the flight. “A doctor.”
“I happen to know that doctors can be compassionate. George Carrman certainly is.”
“How compassionate is he?”
She ignored that flash of jealousy. “He helped me when I was hurt.”
Jack did not look appeased. He handed the figures back to her. “Calculate fuel usage per hour.”
She couldn’t tell if he was angry or not, but he clearly didn’t want to talk about his sister any longer. Time to stick to business. “When do we make the distance test?”
A fine white line outlined his upper lip. “I’m sorry. I reached Dwight Pohlman by telephone last night. He’ll be here Friday.”
Shock slashed through her with the force of a windstorm. After so many delays, she’d begun to believe Pohlman would never show. She thought she’d be the navigator. She thought she’d won Jack’s respect.
She was right. On Friday morning, Pohlman wired that he would meet them in Newfoundland. Darcy rejoiced. Jack fumed. She suspected he was secretly happy that the weather had turned foul.
“You’re afraid to let me fly this test,” she pointed out.
He glared. “I’m not afraid, I’m cautious. No one flies in bad weather.”
“Suppose the weather turns bad underway?”
“You find a place to land and wait it out.”
“So that’s what we’ll do.”
He growled, “We’ll be over water.”
Darcy didn’t want to admit she hadn’t thought of that, so she went to the telegraph office to pick up the weather forecast. Rain and wind. Naturally.
The flight had to be put off over a week, but on the twenty-sixth, when Darcy picked up the forecast, she knew the wait was over. Three days of fair skies and steady high pressure, bringing low wind.
“I want you here an hour before sunrise for preflight,” instructed Jack. “Bring coffee, chocolate, sandwiches. It’s going to be a long day.” He listed a dozen things for her to do.
There was just one problem.
“Tomorrow?” She bit her lip, hesitant. “But it’s Sunday.”
He looked up from his notes. “What does that have to do with our flight?”
“We never work on Sunday.”
He went back to the notes. “That’s a luxury we no longer have.”
“But—” Darcy hesitated, torn by the call to fly and the duty to her soul. “The forecast calls for three days of fair weather. Can’t we wait until Monday?”
“The forecast changes, especially this time of year. If we wait we may lose the transatlantic attempt entirely. The chief competitors are already there.”
“Then let’s skip the distance test and go straight to Newfoundland.”
Jack scowled. “We can’t skip the distance test. Haven’t you been listening? That test will tell us if this plane can make the distance. Without it, we’re flying into certain death. No skipping steps, understand?”