The women in his life were never obvious. There was nothing anyone could talk about, except how hard he worked, or how much time he spent with the O'Malleys. He still spent most of his spare time with them and their kids. He was like an uncle to them. And Oona had long since given up trying to fix him up with any of her friends. She had even tried to start something between him and her youngest sister when she'd come out to visit years before, she was pretty and young and a widow. But it had been obvious for years that Nick Calvin was not interested in marriage. Nick was interested in airplanes, and not much more, except the O'Malleys, and an occasional quiet affair. He lived alone, he worked hard, and he minded his own business.

“He deserves so much better than that,” Oona had complained to Pat for years.

“What makes you think that marriage is so much better?” Pat had teased, but no matter how convinced she was of what would be good for him, even Oona no longer broached it with Nick. She had given up. At thirty-five, he was happy as he was, and too busy to give much time and attention to a wife and kids. Most days, he spent fifteen or sixteen hours a day at Fat's airport. And the only other person there as much as Bat and Nick was Cassie.

She was seventeen by then, and for most of her life Cassie had been a fixture at the airport. She could fuel almost any plane, signal a plane in, and prepare them for takeoff. She cared for the runways, cleaned the hangars, hosed down the planes, and spent every spare moment she had hanging out with the pilots. She knew the engines and the workings of every plane they had. And she had an uncanny sense of what ailed them. There was no detail too small, too intricate, too complicated to escape her attention. She noticed everything about every plane, and could probably have described almost everything in the air with her eyes closed. She was remarkable in many ways, and Pat had to fight with her most of the time to make her go home to help her mother. She always insisted that her sisters were there and her mother didn't need her. Pat wanted her out of his hair, and at home where she belonged, but if he succeeded in driving her off one day, like the sun, she'd be back at six o'clock the next morning, to spend an hour or two at the airport before school. Eventually, Pat just threw up his hands and ignored her.