Peachy's Proposal
Автор
Carole Buck
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Prologue
Shortly after 9:00 p.m. on the third Saturday in April, Pamela Gayle Keene—called “Peachy” by just about everybody—caught the bridal bouquet tossed by the newly wed Mrs. Matthew Douglas Powell. According to nuptial lore, this meant that she was destined to be the next female among those present to get married.
Yet less than twenty-four hours after bagging the lace-frilled bundle of blossoms for which so many had so eagerly vied, Peachy found herself clutching the floral omen of her supposedly happily-ever-after fate and contemplating the very real possibility that she was going to die a single woman.
And not just any old sort of single woman, either. Oh, no. Pamela Gayle Keene was a single woman who’d never made love with a man.
She’d come close to doing so once. Very, very close. Unfortunately, while her prospective partner had been extremely willing in spirit, he’d been woefully weak in terms of fleshly follow-through.
Although Peachy was aware that being a virgin at twenty-three years of age would qualify her as something of an oddity in many social circles, she normally did not give much thought to her lack of sexual experience. A public address announcement that the plane she was flying on had suffered an equipment failure and would be attempting a “belly” landing at the New Orleans International Airport changed this state of affairs. All at once the implications of her intact status began to loom extremely large on her emotional radar. Larger than life, one might be tempted to say.
Her first reaction to the news of the emergency—which had been delivered by the plane’s pilot in a calm, country-boy drawl—was fear. Her heartbeat accelerated from a slow, steady rhythm to a panicked pounding in a few short seconds. Her stomach knotted. Her mouth went dry. Her palms turned clammy.
“Oh, God,” she whispered on a shuddering exhalation of breath. “Oh…Dear God.”
She lifted her left hand to the base of her throat, instinctively seeking the familiar contours of the bell-shaped silver locket she’d worn for nearly ten years. The locket was a cherished memento of the first wedding she’d ever attended and the emblem of an experience she’d shared with two very special women. Touching it eased her terror, just a bit.
Although possessed of a certain degree of personal daring, Peachy had always been a nervous flyer. It wasn’t that she subscribed to the dictum that if the Lord had intended people to soar into the sky He would have blessed them with wings. She didn’t. She simply harbored a gut-level conviction that flying was a decidedly unnatural activity which should be avoided whenever possible. She was also strongly inclined to question the veracity of many aviation safety claims—particularly the ones involving statistics that purportedly showed people were more likely to be killed by bathtub falls than by plane crashes.
A woman across the aisle from her began sobbing as the pilot completed his spiel. A man seated behind her started praying in a language she didn’t understand. Up front, the flight attendants launched briskly into a detailed demonstration of the applicable emergency procedures.
“After the aircraft lands…” they said, prefacing each instruction.
After.
Not if.
And not the slightest hint that instead of touching down safely and sliding to a well-positioned stop, the plane might very well end up smashing into the runway and exploding into several thousand fiery pieces.
Peachy appreciated the cabin crew’s relentlessly positive attitude. She hoped it would prove an effective counterbalance to the little voice in the back of her skull that kept shrieking, I always knew flying was dangerous! She suspected it was the same sort of little voice that had prompted a fabled hypochondriac to have the phrase “See, I told you I was sick” engraved on his headstone.
About the time the flight attendants finished explaining how to exit the plane via its inflatable escape chutes, Peachy’s fear gave way to a curious kind of calm. It was not a que sera, sera sense of resignation about what was going to happen. Passive acceptance was not—would never be—her style. Rather, this was an empowering feeling of serenity that flowed directly from her participation in the previous evening’s wedding.
That wedding had been an incandescently happy event, a celebration of the matrimonial commitment between a man and woman whose lifelong friendship had unexpectedly blossomed into passion. All the people Peachy held nearest and dearest had been there, sharing in the blissful smiles and sentimental tears. If her time was up, if the plane did crash and burn, it was profoundly comforting to her to think that her loved ones would be able to remember her in the context of such a life-affirming occasion.
As for the memories she had to cling to in what might be her final minutes…
There was the glow she’d seen in Annie’s and Matt’s eyes when they’d turned from the altar after exchanging their “I do’s” and faced the world as husband and wife.
There was the enduring warmth she’d felt emanating from her parents, who would soon mark their thirty-eighth anniversary, when they’d danced together at the reception.
And above all, there was the breathless joy she’d heard in her older sister’s voice when Eden had confided that she and her husband, Rick, were going to have a baby in October, some six months hence.
“Oh, Eden,” she’d whispered, perilously close to tears. She knew how desperately her sister and her brother-in-law yearned for a child. She also knew how many fertility experts had declared that their chances of conceiving one were next to nil. “Oh…Eden.”
“You like the idea of being an auntie?” had been the mother-tobe’s bantering response.
“Like it?” she’d echoed, eyeing her sister’s still-flat tummy with fierce affection then enveloping her in a hug. “I absolutely love it! It’s even better than getting to be one of the Wedding Belles when you and Rick—”
“We aren’t going to make it,” the weeping woman on the other side of the aisle suddenly moaned. “We’re all going to die.”
Peachy’s curious kind of calm slammed against cold, cruel reality and cracked. Regret surged through her in a torrent of couldhaves, would-haves and should-haves, of might-have-beens and ought-to-have-dones. Dreams deferred became dreams irrevocably denied. A twenty-three-year life that had seemed rich and rewarding just moments earlier devolved into an unfulfilled existence consisting of little more than missed chances and squandered opportunities.
If only—
Too late.
And then the realization struck. It popped into Peachy’s consciousness unbidden, like the evil fairy godmother who’d shown up at Sleeping Beauty’s christening to lay a curse on the baby princess rather than to gift her with a special grace.
I’m going to die without ever having done it, she thought, the fingers of her right hand spasming around the ribbon-wrapped stem of the former Hannah Elaine Martin’s bridal bouquet.
Funny, how the human psyche reacts in times of great stress. Pamela Gayle Keene had a million marvelous reasons for wanting to live, not the least of which was the desire to discover whether she was to be “Auntie Peachy” to a niece or nephew. Yet she stubbornly fixated on the notion that she had to survive so she could finally have sex. An obsession was born in the space of a single heartbeat.
I don’t need to have a lot of sex, she assured herself and any straitlaced spirits that might be listening. Just one time with one man will be enough.
Peachy felt her cheeks heat. It was a familiar sensation. Endowed with flame-colored hair and fair, freckle-dusted skin, she’d been blushing since babyhood.
Then again, maybe it won’t be, her innate honesty forced her to concede after a few moments. But given the alternative—
The pilot came on the P.A. system again. He provided a terse update on the plane’s location then ordered the members of the cabin crew to take their seats and strap in. While the bedrock steadiness of his voice was encouraging, his use of the word “final” when describing their approach to the New Orleans airport seemed a trifle ill-advised.
Inhaling a deep, deliberate breath, Peachy bent forward to assume what had been described as the emergency “posture.” She tried not to think about how much doing so seemed an act of compliance with the clichéd admonition about putting one’s head between one’s knees and kissing one’s derriere adieu.
Her long, red-gold hair swung forward, curtaining her face.
Her world was reduced to a fragmented series of sensory details.
The sharp-edged jab of the seat belt’s metallic buckle against her midriff.
The sweet fragrance of wedding flowers mixed with the rancid odor of mortal dread.
The frantic thundering of her pulse.
Please, Peachy prayed, the faces of her family and friends flashing through her mind. Oh, please.
She brought her hands up, clasping the back of her head as the flight attendants had instructed everyone to do. Drawing another deep breath, she squeezed her eyes shut and waited.
And waited.
Then waited some more.
A split second before the plane bumped down on the runway, Pamela Gayle Keene made a solemn vow about her sexual future.
Sometime later—in the middle of a “How does it feel to have cheated death?” interview conducted by a vaguely familiar male TV reporter with an off-kilter nose and a cemented-in-place hairstyle, to be precise—it occurred to her that the fulfillment of this solemn vow was going to require the cooperation of a second party.
That started Peachy thinking…
