“I’ve thought about that, Jeri.”
“Okay. Goodbye.”
She was gone, and Lacy immediately felt lousy for being so abrupt. The poor woman was a wreck and had been for many years, and Lacy should have been more patient.
But it was early Saturday morning.
She closed her eyes and was thinking about more sleep, but the dog was making noises. She was thinking about Allie and how nice it would be to have him beside her. And, wide awake now, she was thinking about Jeri Crosby and the sadness of her life.
What she wasn’t thinking about was her older brother and only sibling. When Gunther called not ten minutes after Jeri, Lacy had a hunch that her carefree day would not go as planned. He said he had a new airplane he wanted to show off, and with the weather perfectly gorgeous on this spring day he had the urge to fly down and take his kid sister to lunch. “I’m on the runway, taking off now, landing in Tallahassee in eighty-four minutes. Meet me at the airport.”
It was so typical of Gunther. The world revolved around him and everyone else was just an extra. She fed and let out the dog, threw on some jeans, brushed her teeth, and headed to the airport, her quiet Saturday shot to hell. But she wasn’t really surprised. Nothing about her brother was surprising. He was an avid pilot who swapped airplanes almost as fast as he bought and sold sports cars. He ran the women hard too, and the bankers and investors. When the markets were up he burned cash, and when things went flat he kept borrowing until he couldn’t. Even when the demand was high for his strip malls and tract housing, he seemed to totter along the edge of financial disaster. Because he was known to embellish and outright fabricate, Lacy had lost count of the times he had filed for bankruptcy. She thought there were three, along with his two divorces, and one near-indictment.
But regardless of his problems, Gunther slept hard every night and attacked each day with enthusiasm and confidence. His zest for life was contagious, and if he found himself in the mood to fly in for lunch there was no way to stop him, regardless of what she had planned.
Waiting in the private terminal, watching the small planes come and go while sipping a cup of bad coffee, she both dreaded and looked forward to seeing Gunther. With both parents gone now, they needed each other. Both were single and childless and it certainly looked as if they would be the family’s last generation. Trudy, their mother’s sister, was trying to become the matriarch and getting too involved. Lacy and Gunther were united in their resistance.
But she wasn’t exactly thrilled to see him, because he had too many opinions about almost everything. Since her car wreck, he’d had far too much to say about her lawsuit, her lawyer, their legal strategies. He thought she was wasting her time at BJC. He wasn’t too keen on Allie Pacheco, though this was a reaction to Lacy’s dislike of every girlfriend he had dared introduce her to. He thought Tallahassee was a hick town and she should move to Atlanta. He disapproved of her current car. And so on.
There he was, crawling out of a sleek little plane, bounding down from the wing with no luggage, no briefcase, a playboy out for a spin and a nice lunch. They hugged in the doorway and left the terminal.
As soon as he buckled up he said, “Still driving this cheap little thing?”
“Look, Gunther, it’s great to see you, as always. But the last thing I want to hear today is a steady stream of bitching about my life. Car included. Got that?”
“Wow, Sis. You wake up on the wrong side?”
“I did.”
“Did you see my airplane? Isn’t it a beauty?”
“I did. It’s lovely as far as airplanes go.”
“Bought it last month from a guy whose wife caught him cheating. Sad.”
Gunther was anything but sad. “What is it?” she asked, but only because she had to.
“A Socata TBM 700 turboprop, all the bells and whistles. Think of a Ferrari with wings. Three hundred miles an hour. Got a real deal.”
A real deal for Gunther meant that he had convinced yet another banker to make a loan. “Sounds exciting. Looks pretty small.”
“Seats four, that’s plenty for me. You wanna go for a spin?”
“I thought we were doing lunch.” Lacy had been his passenger on two occasions and that was enough. Gunther was a serious pilot who didn’t play around and take chances, but he was still Gunther.
“Right,” he said, suddenly checking his phone. When he put it away he asked, “How’s Allie? Still seeing him?”
“I am, hot and heavy. Who’s your new squeeze?”