The Perfect Son by Barbara Claypole White
No one is perfect . . . that’s why pencils have erasers.
—author unknown
What was silent in the father speaks in the son, and often I found in the son the unveiled secret of the father.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
ONE
Passengers in the row behind muttered the Lord’s Prayer. Ella, however, had no plans to make her final peace with God or die in the clouds. She had a battle to conduct on the ground, after she’d cleared baggage claim at the Raleigh-Durham International Airport.
The plane lurched and a baby screamed. Eyes closed, Ella inhaled through the heartburn that had stalked her since Felix’s text had dinged over the flight attendant’s directive to power off electronic devices. Delivered with perfect timing—no possibility of retaliation—her husband’s message had been a declaration of war. Signed without a kiss.
The young man next to her grabbed the armrest. “Rough flight,” he said. “Think we can blame the polar vortex?”
The fuselage rattled as if about to rip into a billion fragments.
“Flying, still the—” Words clumped in her windpipe like a drain clog; statistics memorized to soften her son’s fear fogged up her brain. She forced out a breath. “It’s still the safest way to travel.”
“No offense,” the guy said, “but you don’t look too convinced about safety records.”
A stereo of heartbeats thumped in her throat. Boom, boom; boom, boom; boom, boom.
“Heartburn. Killer attack.” Ella tried to smile, but her stomach began to bubble worse than a cauldron of boiling acid.
“I don’t mean to be rude”—he glanced up at the call button and back at Ella—“but you’ve gone a strange color. You sure you’re feeling okay?”
“Bit churned up with all the—” Ella made exaggerated roller-coaster movements with her arm, then paused to breathe. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to start projectile vomiting.”
“Good to know, because I might.”
“A guy unafraid to discuss puking.” She pressed her palm against her chest. “Admirable.”
“Could you explain that to my wife? She thinks I’m a total wuss.”
Ella gave a sympathetic huh that seemed to say, Spouses, eh? Felix had always believed she was strong enough for both of them, and he’d been wrong. After seventeen years of marriage, she was so tired of being the family fulcrum.
The stranger stared at her from behind thick, black-framed glasses—very Elvis Costello, very late-seventies London pub scene. Very Felix. She turned to the window, faking interest in cloud formations. The memory flashed anyway: a muggy Saturday on the London Tube; a wave of light-headedness followed by the certainty that she was going to faint; a different stranger with thick, black-framed glasses. A beautiful young Englishman with floppy hair and a hesitant smile: Felix Fitzwilliam. Who could resist that name weighted with authority, with nobility, with ancestors—she would learn later—who had signed the Magna Carta? Who could resist the laserlike intensity of concern channeled through those huge blue eyes? He’d caught her; he’d stopped her from falling in more ways than one. But that was the past, and nostalgia had no place in the present. Not after Felix had texted: