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“Yes, that was called the preflight inspection.”
Considering he was on the other side of the plane, and she couldn’t see his face, Twyla made no comment. Knowing Forrest, he was likely completely serious. Safety, even when they’d just been playing, had always been first on his mind. That did seem odd. Someone who’d always been cautious and careful was now flying around in the air. Then again, maybe that’s why he was flying and had never crashed.
He was soon done with his inspection, and Twyla helped—although she didn’t do much—maneuver the plane backward until it was once again parked inside the shed he called a hangar. Then she put wooden blocks up against the wheels while he rolled a big barrel over and cranked a hand pump to put fuel into the plane.
“Why are you putting fuel in now?” she asked.
“So it’s ready to fly the next time I want to take her up.”
“How do you get gas out here?” she asked.
“Scooter delivers it when I call and ask him to,” Forrest answered.
Scooter Wilson ran the fueling station up on the highway between the resort and White Bear Lake, and had been a friend of all of theirs for years. “That’s nice of him,” she said, for lack of anything better to say. Her mind was still plotting, and wondering, and recalling just how closely connected Forrest had once been to her life.
Before she gave herself time to consider the consequences, she asked, “Why’d you leave town like that, Forrest? After that night with Norma Rose.”
He didn’t answer right away, acting instead as if fueling the plane took all his concentration. That was fine. She could wait out a snail.
Twyla spent a fair amount of time retying her scarf while she waited. When Forrest let out a sigh, she held in a grin, knowing his answer was coming.
“I didn’t leave,” he said, hooking the gas nozzle inside the barrel. “Not on my own, as everyone thinks.”
Twyla wasn’t sure if hope or disbelief flared inside her. “You didn’t?”
“No.” He pushed the barrel back through the wide front doors.
She followed him around the building to where he secured the barrel on a cement block platform near a tree. “What happened?”
He looked around and then wiggled the barrel as if making sure it wouldn’t tip over before covering it with a tarp. “After Galen returned home from taking Norma Rose to your place, he and I got in an argument. I left, planning on going to check on Norma Rose, but a few of Galen’s men stopped me in the back parking lot of the Plantation.”
Twyla understood just how some men stopped people and her hands started to shake. “Did they hurt you?”
* * *
Forrest hadn’t planned on telling her. Hadn’t planned on a lot of things. His mind was still spinning from kissing her. Twyla Nightingale knew how to kiss. Her lips could turn a man inside out. He hadn’t expected that to happen to him. Flyboys were used to kissing women, and some would say he’d kissed more than his fair share over the years. Not a single one—short peck or long kiss—had knocked his socks off.
Before today.
As the cat was out of the bag and he couldn’t put it back in, he shrugged. “You could say that.”
“I don’t want to say that.”
She’d stepped up beside him and was looking at him with more sympathy than he ever wanted to see.
“Then don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to,” he said, shouldering around her.
“I wouldn’t have to ask if you’d just tell me,” she answered, following on his heels.
“Why would I tell you?”
She grabbed his arm. “Because we’re friends.”
He stopped, but his mind kept flying around faster than his plane.
“We’re old friends, Forrest,” she said. “Childhood friends who never had secrets from one another.” She’d taken a hold of his arm with her other hand, too. “How badly did they hurt you?”
“Bad enough,” he answered, trying to sound vague although it was useless. He’d rarely, if ever, been able to keep a secret from her. One way or another, she’d always found a way to wrangle information out of him. That certainly hadn’t changed.
He was surprised when she didn’t persist.
Instead, she asked, “Where’d you go? After they hurt you?”
“To my aunt Shirley’s in Rochester,” he said.
“For how long?”
He sighed. She was as relentless as ever. But sincere, too, which was the part he couldn’t overlook. The compassion on her face made him care too much about her. Knowing she wouldn’t quit until she had her answers, he gave in completely. “Over a year. It took that long for me to learn to walk again.” Saving her from another set of questions, he added, “My legs were broken in several places, as were my arms. Uncle Silas, Shirley’s husband, is a doctor. He oversaw my healing and wouldn’t let me leave until I was as good as new.”
