First Light

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2016 by Bill Rancic

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Ebook ISBN: 9781101982280

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Rancic, Bill, author.

  Title: First light / Bill Rancic.

  Description: New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2016.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016027134 | ISBN 9781101982273 (hardcover)

  Subjects: LCSH: Wilderness survival—Fiction. | Married people—Fiction. | Reminiscing—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Romance / Contemporary. | FICTION / Family life. | FICTION / Contemporary women. | GSAFD: Romantic suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3618.A4799 F57 2016 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016027134

  p. cm.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For Giuliana, with whom it is a privilege to share my life every day.

  For Duke, whose growth and wonder provide a constant source of joy and pride.

  For Karen, with whom I work every day and whose support is a true blessing.

  For my mom, who pushed me to make my dreams a reality.

  And for my dad in Heaven, who believed in me even when I didn’t believe in myself.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  About the Author

  1

  The envelope arrives one afternoon when I’m out in the yard raking leaves. I’m feeling pretty good at the moment, watching the street for the car bringing my wife and son home from the soccer game, wondering if Jackson got to play, wondering if he got to score. He’s been riding the bench all season, watching his friends get more playing time, and it’s been bothering him enough that he’s added extra practices and workouts to his routine, running suicide drills at the stadium, lining up kick after kick in the fall twilight. I’ve been practicing with him in the evenings and on weekends, videotaping him so he can watch his form. A dentist appointment that morning kept me from actually making it to the game, but I’ve been thinking of my son all day as I scrape up leaves, red and brown and gold, wondering how it went. If he still didn’t get to play, or played badly . . . I know how disappointed he’ll be.

  I remind myself that Jackson is a bright and loving kid who does well in school, who has plenty of friends, who is pretty much as well adjusted as any parent could hope. If he doesn’t get to play in the soccer game today, so be it. Worse things have happened.

  The leaves crackling underfoot remind me of the crunch of snow in the dead of winter. For a minute I’m back in the Yukon, in the woods with the snow falling all around, listening to Kerry’s slow breathing, watching her chest rise and fall. It’s a memory I have often—when my wife crawls into my arms at night, when our son sits between us on the sofa at home to watch a movie together or read a book. I remember praying for another breath, then another, then another. Praying for her, for us, to live, and thinking, I’m not strong enough for this. I’ll never be strong enough.

  My breath catches, and I freeze for a moment, remembering. The truth is that we almost didn’t happen, Kerry and Jackson and me. If we hadn’t been saved. If we hadn’t survived. Then a siren blares and I remember where I am, what I’m doing. The ordinary world fits itself around me again, safe and calm and familiar.

  The mailman pauses on his afternoon route to hand me the mail. Behind me, the house Kerry and I bought and renovated seven years ago sits in its rectangle of mown grass, stained-glass windows glinting red and gold in the sun. Down the street I can hear the kids at the playground, their voices rising on the afternoon air like a flock of birds. I get a glimpse of Lake Michigan through the trees, sea green and icy cold even on such a hot day. Along the shore there are kids biking and playing volleyball, whizzing by on skateboards, soaking up every moment of sun before the long, cold Chicago winter that’s coming, and I think that maybe Jackson and I will join them, once he gets home.

  But when I flip through the mail and see the envelope with the Denali Airlines logo on the cover, I know immediately what’s inside. I don’t need to do any math to know that this year marks the tenth anniversary of the crash; I feel it every time I look at Jackson, his gangly limbs, his big feet and hands. Like my wife and me, he’s a survivor, though he doesn’t know it yet.

  I sit down on my front steps with the envelope in both hands, turning it over and over, almost afraid to open it. Finally I slit the top and take out the card inside, also printed with the Denali Airlines logo: a blue mountain backlit by a setting red sun. I read: You and your family are cordially invited to be our honored guests at a ceremony honoring the victims and survivors of Flight 806 . . .

  “Dad? Are you okay?”

  It’s Jackson. He and Kerry are home from the soccer game, but I didn’t hear them pull up to the curb. I didn’t hear anything except the roaring in my ears.

  I look up into the face of my son, so like his mother—large, light-brown eyes; a mop of thick auburn hair that he’s forever refusing to cut; the same high, freckled cheekbones; the same wide mouth. He’s always been a good kid. Good-hearted, level-headed, if a bit on the sensitive side, with a tendency to mope. Like me.

  I think, It’s time. He deserves to know.

  For a minute I consider throwing the invitation away, pretending it never came, but that’s not a serious option. There are a hundred reasons why we should be at that memorial service, the most important standing right in front of me.

  “Dad?”

  “I’m fine, buddy,” I say. “I’m just looking at this invitation that came in the mail.”

  Behind him Kerry sees the envelope and freezes. She, too, knows what it means.

  “Invitation? Like to a party?” asks Jackson.

  “Sort of. I was thinking maybe you and me and your mom should take a trip.”

  Jackson’s face lights up. “Like, where?”

  I can see by the look on his face that he’s equating the word “trip” with “vacation”—Disney World, maybe, or California. Someplace warm, near the ocean, with a nice sandy beach and warm blue swimmi
ng pool and maybe a water slide or two. He isn’t thinking about snow and isolation, the deep cold woods of northern Canada. He isn’t thinking about memorials to the dead. His life, until now, has been fairly uneventful. A fact his mom and I have tried very hard to preserve.

  Jackson grabs his skateboard from the front porch and is doing a few simple tricks along the sidewalk while we talk, taking a bit of a tumble when he trips trying to flip the board over. “Helmet, please,” his mother reminds him for the millionth time. He groans and takes the helmet out of the trunk of the car. Soon he’ll be a teenager, and getting him to listen won’t be so easy. No, I think—it has to be now. While he might still be willing to open his ears and his heart and hear, really hear, what we have to say.

  “I was thinking we could take a drive up to Canada. To Whitehorse,” I say. “There’s something happening there soon the three of us are part of.”

  I can feel Kerry tense up, but Jackson is oblivious to his mother’s fear, and mine. He scrunches up his face. “Whitehorse? Is that a real place?”

  “It’s a city in Yukon Territory. Near Alaska.”

  “Oh.” His face falls a little bit. “It sounded like a town in Dragon Age or something. I thought it would be something cool.”

  “It’s a real place, all right. Your mom and I have been there before.”

  He looks intrigued. This is new information to him. “When?”

  Kerry glances at me. We both knew this day was coming. Maybe not today, but soon. She says, “Before you were born, honey.”

  He’s looking at me sideways now, his brown eyes full of skepticism, even a touch of annoyance. We almost never talk about our lives before he was born, though I know he’s curious. He asks us, sometimes, the story of how we met. “At work” is all we’ve ever told him. “We worked together, and then we fell in love and decided to get married.” He’s never pushed the issue, though I’ve often wondered when he would ask for more details, when we’d have to tell him the truth and nothing but the truth.

  Jackson says, “Did you say we’re going to drive there? Isn’t it, like, a million miles from here?”

  “Four days’ drive, maybe five.” There is no way, absolutely no possibility of getting Kerry on a plane, not to mention me. Driving is our only option.

  He groans. “Five days in the car? For fun?”

  “Not exactly for fun,” I say. “It will be educational.”

  That word “educational” is Jackson’s personal bête noire. He doesn’t like museums or historical sites, any of the things his mom and I have tried to interest him in whenever we use that word. He hears “educational” and thinks “boring.” But I have something in mind for this trip that will make driving imperative, beyond our fear of flying. And it will be educational, just not the way he thinks.

  I want Jackson to see. To know the place, and what happened to us there. I want him to taste the air in the Yukon, ride its roads, see its towns and its hills. I want it to be as much a part of him, his life, as it is Kerry’s and mine.

  “There’s a ceremony of sorts. A memorial for the victims of a plane crash. We should all be there.”

  “A memorial for a plane crash? Why?” He drags out the last word, filling it with all the pre-teen skepticism he can muster.

  “We were on the plane when it crashed,” I say.

  I’ve imagined saying the words for so long, practiced them so many times, that the words are halfway out of my mouth before I realize it, but Jackson only looks at me and laughs, a kind of incredulous chuckle. Like he thinks this is another one of my weird dad jokes, as silly as the time when I taped a picture of a mallard to the low ceiling over the basement stairs and told him to “duck” when he went downstairs. He doesn’t realize I’m serious. “No, really, Dad. What’s going on?” He looks from me to his mom and back. “A plane crash? Like, for real?”

  I catch Kerry’s eye. We’ve talked about this moment so often: when we will tell him, how we will. We’ve been close to doing it already a number of times the past few weeks but just haven’t been able to make ourselves do it. Now her look says, Are you sure about this?

  I’m not, not at all, and I know she isn’t, either. Still, she says, “For real.”

  A hundred tiny emotions flit across his face—anger and confusion and fascination and fear. Finally he settles for curiosity. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  Kerry steps up and puts a hand on his shoulder, though I can see his posture tighten, almost as if he wants to throw her off but is not able to bring himself to do it; he’s at that age when he both wants and resents his mother’s reassurances. “It’s complicated,” she says. “But we think maybe you’re grown up enough now to understand.”

  He narrows his eyes at her, still skeptical. “But only if we go on this trip, right?”

  “I know it doesn’t sound like fun,” I say. “But I think we should be there.”

  Already I’m planning. Four days in the car, maybe five, would be just enough time to talk to Jackson. We need to be able to talk to our son, to have his full attention, away from video games and soccer and math homework, away from his friends and the city and all our familiar places and distractions. We need him to listen. To hear us.

  “Dad,” he says, “can’t we go to Disney World instead? Or at least the beach?”

  “This is more important, buddy. This is someplace we need to be. I promise you, this is something you’ll always remember.”

  “You always say that, and it always ends up being so boring.”

  He’s not accepting it, but at least he’s not fighting me too hard. It will be okay, I know it. “What do you think? Want a snack?” I ask, putting my arms around him and leading him inside the house, the dog panting at his heels.

  “Sure,” he says. “But nothing healthy. No kale. I hate that stuff.”

  I laugh. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  —

  By the time we’ve got the car packed, the mail stopped, the house buttoned up for the time it will take to drive to Canada, attend the ceremony, and come home again, we’re all worked up into such a state of anxiety that even the dog seems glad to see us go, dashing off her leash at the kennel without so much as a backward glance. Jackson cries a little on Sasha’s neck, turning his face away so I won’t see his tears. “She’ll be happier in the kennel than in the car with us, buddy,” I tell him. “We’ll be back in no time.” He turns his head away again. He’s having trouble believing that his mom and I are taking this trip for anyone’s benefit except our own, and I don’t think he’s entirely wrong about that.

  We climb in the car, and soon we’re on the highway heading out of the city, past deep-dish pizza parlors and Vienna Beef stands, merging into the stream of cars on the Kennedy heading north toward the Wisconsin border. Traffic is terrible, the cars thick and slow-moving, like minutes ticking on a clock. A few days out of town, away from the crowds and noise, will be a relief. But then I remember the quiet of the forest and the snow in the Yukon, the sound of the wind in the trees, the bitter cold that seeped into my fingers and toes, the fear, and I remember. This isn’t a vacation: Kerry and I nearly died out there. She spent a week in the hospital after, myself more than two. She still suffers migraines and memory loss from the injuries she sustained in the crash. She still has nightmares sometimes, though in the mornings she says she doesn’t remember what they’re about. In some ways, I think it’s better. There are parts of the story I wish I could forget, too.

  As we head north, the Chicago streets give way to a stream of beige suburbs, the white hulks of malls, the green tracts of forest preserves and subdivisions, the houses growing farther and farther apart until suddenly we’re out in the country, in the open spaces of farmland and dairy pasture, the stubble fields brown in the fall light. Here and there a cloud of dust announces the presence of a combine harvesting the last of the corn, and every few miles a handpa
inted sign declares “Pumpkins for sale!” At each one, Jackson begs us to stop and buy a pumpkin, forgetting we won’t be home for weeks, that there is no more room in our Toyota for anything after packing three suitcases, a cooler of snacks, and Jackson’s collection of books and games.

  “Maybe on the way back, buddy,” I say. I’ve taken the first shift, thinking Kerry will want to take the lead—she’s his mom, and much of the telling of it should come from her—but I catch her eye across the car. The night before, she’d told me she was ready, that it was time. “I’ll be glad to get it over with,” she’d said, pulling out the old black journal, the only thing she’d brought back with her from the Yukon. I’d glanced at it, and she said, “It will be a relief to talk to him about everything, finally.”

  Now neither of us can bear to begin. It should be just like ripping off a Band-Aid, I think—one quick tug and you’re done. Maybe we should wait for Jackson to ask a question. But no, that’s no good, we might be waiting until we get back home again and the trip will be over.

  Kerry makes a choking noise in her throat, and I shoot her a quick look of sympathy. It isn’t easy, this business of dredging up the past. I realize with a tiny jolt that the black journal is in her lap. I didn’t even see her take it out.

  “Don’t feel like you have to say everything at once,” I say. “Begin at the beginning.”

  “I can’t.”

  “One of us has to. We’re going to want to stop for the night in an hour or so.”

  She squeezes her eyes shut. “It’s too hard.”

  “You were always good at stories,” I tell her. “Why is it so hard now?”

  “There are big parts of it I don’t really remember. And what about the rest? All those things we only learned about afterward, in the hospital? I don’t know if it’s enough.”

  “What you don’t remember, I do. The parts we didn’t see first-hand, we’ll have to describe as best we can, as they were told to us.”

  “It feels weird. Speaking for people who can’t speak for themselves.”