Chasing Endless Summer by V.C. Andrews

Author:V.C. Andrews
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2024-02-13T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

As if they all knew I was the daughter of an FAA air traffic controller, everyone working at the airport and on the plane seemed to be extra attentive to me. Of course, I suspected that my grandfather might have had something to do with it. To my eyes, it seemed he had influence over anyone and everything, even the weather. Perhaps he’d had Franklin Butler call the head of the airport to say, J. Willard Sutherland’s granddaughter will be on a flight. Be sure she is treated accordingly.

After I boarded the plane, I was singled out and taken to the cockpit to be introduced to the captain. It was on the tip of my tongue to say, You’ll soon be hearing from my father, but I didn’t say it. If he asked how I liked Hawaii or anything about Daddy’s work, I would be too embarrassed to admit that I hadn’t ever been there and hadn’t heard from him or seen him for so long.

Other first-class passengers looked impressed, and when I sat again, the elderly man beside me said, “I guess you’re the child of someone important, eh?”

“We’re all children of someone important,” I said, and his untrimmed gray eyebrows almost flew off his face.

“True, true,” he said, and closed his eyes, maybe recalling his own parents.

I was happy to fall asleep soon after we took off. I didn’t think that came from being tired; it came from being frightened right to the base of my stomach, where my anxiety was tied in a knot.

That was because I realized that this return to my father was real. I had truly left Sutherland, but more importantly, I’d had to leave behind almost everything that had any meaning to my life, stuffed in a carton down in the dark, cold basement, which literally, because of Prissy’s grave, had become the cemetery of meaningful things. Love and the memory of it could be buried.

And yet I had so many reasons to leave it all and so many reasons to look forward to this new life. After all, how many would complain about being sent to Hawaii? They’d mock my reluctance and even a hint of dissatisfaction. Oh, poor you, being forced to live in a tropical paradise. They wouldn’t understand how or why I thought of it as the final stages of my rebirth because who I had been was unforgivable in the Sutherland world. Hawaii, this reunion with my father, probably was the final test, the place where the rest of my life would be determined.

When I awoke, I ate, but I didn’t look out the window until the pilot announced we were making our approach to the Kahului Airport and all seats had to be upright and tray tables stowed away. The only beach I had been on in my life was at Lake George. I had never been to the ocean. The sight of it below and the whitecaps cresting on waves was fascinating. As we descended, I was sure I even saw surfboarders, something I had seen only on television.

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