Chapter 41

Spearfish Lake has a number of different mail routes, so a different mail carrier left the mail at the Gravengood’s at about the same time Howie got the letter that was to change his plans so completely. The carrier usually delivered about the same time each day, so Mark waited until there had been plenty of time for him to get there before he trudged through the snow to the mailbox.

There was an unusually large pile of mail in the box for a Saturday, and it looked like a bunch of business catalogues and junk mail. It was too cold out there to dig through it beside the road, so he walked back up to the house and tossed it on the kitchen table, then took off his coat while Jackie started to leaf through it.

Junk, junk, and more junk . . . and a thick envelope from the US Air Force Academy! As thick as it was it could only be one thing!

Trying to keep her voice from showing her excitement she glanced at Mark with a big grin as she called, “Bree! You’ve got mail!”

Bree was in her favorite position for a cold, snowy, dreary day, which was to say she had Perky and a book in her lap. “Can you bring it here, Aunt Jackie?” she replied. “Perky’s asleep and I don’t want to wake him up.”

As nonchalantly as she could manage, Jackie carried the envelope into the living room and handed it to her adopted daughter.

Bree glanced at the envelope, and like her foster mother she knew instantly that the return address and the size of it could only mean one thing. She sat staring at the letter in shock, like it really couldn’t be real. For years her dreams had been focused on this moment; she’d worked toward it, went considerably out of her way to even be considered, and had hoped for it intensively – but there was never the knowledge that it really would happen.

Now, quite suddenly, it was real. She ripped open the envelope, for once not caring if she disturbed Perky or not – and the letter on top confirmed her suspicions. “My God,” she said. “I’m really going to the Academy! I can’t believe it!’

“Believe it,” Mark told her. “Bree, when I was your age, that was my fondest dream, but also by the time I was your age, I knew it could never happen. If there was one thing in my life I could go back and do over again, that was it. Now you get to do it for me. Bree, I’m so happy for you I just can’t find words to say it. The only thing I’m sorry about is that your mother isn’t here to see this day. I’m sure she would be proud of you and happy for you.”

“Thanks, Uncle Mark,” she said quietly, the mention of her mother having quieted her a little. “I wish she were here to see it too, but I’ve come to learn it can never be. But Uncle Mark, Aunt Jackie, I could never have done it without all the help you’ve given me. You both gave me the dream and the way to make it a reality. I’ll do my best out there, and I’ll give you every reason to be proud.”

“I know you will,” Mark told her. “You’ve already given us tons of reasons to be proud of you.”

Of course, in the next few minutes Bree called her friends and breathlessly told them of the letter; before long Jared, Howie, and Autumn were there in the Gravengood house to congratulate her and celebrate with her. They’d had a part in her accomplishment, too. “I’m going to miss you,” Jared told her. “We’re all going to miss you, but I guess we’re all going to be missing each other.”

“I’m sure going to miss you guys,” she beamed. “I wish I could take you all with me, but I knew that would never happen.”

“I know,” Jared told her. “But we’re always going to be thinking about you and caring about you. But as long as this is a celebration, I have something to celebrate, too. When I got home I had a letter, too. It was my letter of acceptance to Purdue.”

“Purdue?” Howie frowned. “I didn’t even know you were thinking about going there.”

“It’s been in the back of my mind for a while,” he admitted shyly. “I know Uncle Randy has been pushing me toward Northern Michigan University, but I wanted to go somewhere else. I’m still not sure what I’m going to be doing, but right at the moment I’m leaning toward structural engineering. If I decide to go into architecture it won’t hurt, but I still don’t know about that.”

“Well, good,” Howie said. “I guess that makes the future a little more clear for all of us.”

The next day the news of Bree’s appointment was spread around the school – not by gossip, but by the morning announcements. While her friends knew of her goal to go to the Academy and had helped her a lot with her reaching it, she’d never advertised it around school very much and it came as something of a surprise to everyone. Most of the kids weren’t aware of the significance of it, but knew at least that it was a pretty big deal.

Bree and her friends were sitting over their by-now traditional potluck lunch, which today was built around a spicy goulash Autumn had made, and they didn’t get much chance to talk, because people kept coming over to congratulate her, and find out a little more about what it meant.

They were a little surprised when Misty came over to them. They hadn’t noticed her around school much the last couple weeks. She’d been gone a lot, and they hadn’t thought about it; there was a minor flu bug going around, after all. “Hi, Bree,” she said. “I heard about your appointment. That’s a really big deal, right?”

“It is,” Bree told her. “A really big deal.”

“Good for you,” Misty told her. “I’m glad you got what you were looking for, but Bree, I need to talk to you.”

“What’s the problem?”

“I, uh, I can’t say right now,” she replied shyly. “Maybe you could take me home after school.”

“Don’t you have a car?”

“Not anymore. It, uh, well, that’s part of what I need to talk to you about.”

“All right,” Bree said, wondering what trouble this was. “I’ll meet you out in the parking lot after school.”

“Thanks, Bree. I know I owe you a lot already, but you’re the best one I can think of to talk to. I’ll see you later.” She turned and walked away, trying to stay away from people.

“Wow,” Howie said. “That sort of reminds me of the way she was last year. I wonder what trouble this is?”

“Good question,” Bree said, “but I suspect I’m going to find out.”

Although it was early in March, it was cold in the car when Bree made it out there, with Misty only a few seconds behind her, getting in the car just as Bree got the engine going. “Something tells me you’re having trouble,” Bree said.

“Yeah, Bree. I, uh, don’t know how to say this, but you know my dad took off and left my mom and me, don’t you?”

“No, I didn’t,” Bree said. “I haven’t seen you around much.”

“I know,” Misty replied sadly. “I’ve been trying, uh, to keep Mom from going off the rails. Dad didn’t just leave us. He left us with no money and a bunch of bills. My car has already been repossessed and Mom will probably lose hers in the next few days. They’re going to take our house away, too; we’ve got another week or so on that. Mom, well, Mom is totally lost about what to do. All she can do is cuss Dad and Rusty for leaving us in this mess.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“We’re not real sure,” Misty admitted. “Mom has been able to get a storage shed for some of our stuff, but, well, we’re going to have to pay rent on it or we’re going to lose that, too. About the only thing Mom can think of doing is for us to move down to Grand Rapids and move in with Bethany. That’s going to happen in the next couple weeks; it sort of depends on how long Mom can hold onto her car and when we have to be out of the house.”

“Wow, you’re really in a bind,” Bree shook her head. “I don’t know if there’s much I can do for you, though.”

“I know,” Misty said. “And I already owe you a lot more than I can ever repay for saving me from Walt that time, and I hate like hell to ask you this. We’ve only got three months of school left, and I don’t want to have to go down to Grand Rapids to a strange school this close to graduating. The only thing I can think of is to find someone I can stay with until I graduate. I know you don’t think much of me Bree, but you came to help me when I was in trouble before, and all I can think of is to ask you to help me out again.”

Bree mentally let out a sigh. There was going to be a whole lot to do in the next three months, what with having to get ready to go to the Academy and keeping her grades up. It wasn’t something she wanted to do . . . but on the other hand, when her Mom died, Uncle Mark and Aunt Jackie didn’t hesitate a minute about taking Becca and her in. It had worked out a lot better than she ever could have dreamed. While Bree still missed her mother, she also had to admit that she’d never be going to the Air Force Academy if she’d lived . . .

“I can’t say yes or no,” Bree told the girl on the seat beside her. “It’s not my decision to make. We’ll have to go ask Uncle Mark and Aunt Jackie as they need to be willing to help you get that far. Becca’s room is empty and she probably won’t be back much before we graduate. But Misty, what are you going to do after we graduate?”

“I don’t know,” she replied with tears in her eyes. “I wanted to go to college, but it’s not going to happen. There isn’t going to be any money to do it. Bethany thinks maybe Mom can get a job at the Taco Bell, maybe me too or something, but there’s no way to be sure of it. I really don’t want to go down and live with Bethany and Mom. It’s going to be awful crowded, and knowing them they’re both going to be pissed off all the time.”

“Well, I might have an idea,” Bree suggested. “You might want to think about joining the service, maybe even the Air Force.”

“Bree, that’s a nice idea, but there’s no way in hell I could get into the Air Force Academy the way you did.”

“No, not that,” Bree said. “I mean enlisting. You have to start at the bottom, but you get a place to stay, food, something to do, and you get paid for it. If you want to go to college, you could work at it a little at a time, and you can get a lot of your college paid for when you get out.”

“And it wouldn’t be in Grand Rapids,” Misty nodded, seeing some sense in the idea.

“Your job might not be any better than working in a Taco Bell,” Bree told her. “I don’t know enough to tell you more than that. But it might be interesting, too. And you’re right, it wouldn’t be in Grand Rapids.”

“I never thought about that,” Misty admitted. “You’re right. It might be the best idea anyone’s come up with yet, at least for me. I can see there’s more I’ll need to know, though.”

“That’s what the Internet is for,” Bree said, turning to back the car out of the parking space. “And if you like the sound of it, I’ll drive you down to the recruiter’s office.”

The last three months of the school year went quickly. Bree and her friends ran track, of course; Bree and Howie had good reasons to stay in training, while Jared and Autumn figured they might as well grab the last of their high school adventures. Back in March, Jared had repeated as state champion in his weight class, so he felt a little more even with Bree in athletics.

Misty always came to the meets; she was an outsider in the group of four, but they went out of their way to make her feel welcome, especially at the lunch table.

Predictably, Misty’s mother hadn’t been very happy with the idea of her daughter joining the military. She of course wanted to keep Misty close to her in hopes of still getting her to find some well-off guy she could control, but Misty had finally seen the error of that thinking and was ready to get away from it. Linda was not happy about it, but Misty was eighteen now and didn’t need her mother’s permission. She decided, for no reason Bree could comprehend, to join the Navy. The visit to the recruiter’s office in Camden was interesting, since the recruiter tried very hard to get Bree to join the Navy, too. She had a difficult time convincing him that she had different – and she thought much superior – plans. In any case, Misty would be leaving for boot camp at Great Lakes not long before Bree left for Colorado Springs.

The senior prom came along just a few days before graduation. Jared took Bree, of course; it was something of a last fling for them. Howie took both Misty and Autumn, and danced with them about equally, giving at least a little more joy to the end of Misty’s career in high school.

Then came graduation, on Memorial Day weekend. Not really to anyone’s surprise, Bree was the valedictorian, but Jared made salutatorian by a hair. It wasn’t the same as winning the top spot, he explained to his four friends and now extra constant companion, but when he considered who he lost it to, he figured he couldn’t quite complain.

Bree gave the valedictory speech, but she kept it short, mostly sticking to the fact that the class of 2013 had enjoyed an adventurous four years, especially the football team, but elsewhere, too. She pointed out that just because they were from a small, isolated town didn’t mean that it was impossible to set big goals and achieve them, and she had plenty of examples to choose from. She didn’t include herself in those examples, but everyone knew without her saying it that she was the best one of all.

Soon Misty was gone to the Navy; they received a few letters from her, but she wasn’t allowed to make a phone call for a while. She said in her letters that boot camp was tough but that she was managing it all right, and hoped that maybe it would set her on a new track in her life. In spite of the hassles she was going through in training, things looked promising for her, and she hoped to see all of them again someday, sooner or later.

The rest of them settled down to enjoy the summer, to make plans for attending college, and get things set up, but it was a very short period for Bree. She wouldn’t get the full summer off; she had to report to Colorado Springs on the last Thursday in June for a summer training camp before things really got under way at the Academy in the fall. That meant she only had a few weeks for her final preparations, and to have her last adventures with her friends. She did manage to get out in the 1-26 a couple times for short local flights; it had played a big part in her dreams becoming reality, and it was hard to say goodbye to her faithful white Schweizer with the diamond badge and her name painted on the nose.

Soon the day came when Bree had to leave for Colorado Springs. She knew she was facing a period of initial training that was a lot tougher than what Misty was facing, but she knew she was ready for it. It was part of the program, part of the price she’d have to pay. She met it with mixed emotions; she’d been looking forward to it and working toward it for so very long and now she was eager to take the next step. But at the same time, she knew she was leaving her home behind, her family, her friends, and there could be nothing but sadness at that.

She knew she couldn’t take much with her; that was made clear in the information she’d been sent from the Academy. All she was taking was in a small barrel bag, and at that it was probably more than enough; she would be issued much of what she would need.

Originally, Mark and Jackie had suggested driving her down to the airport in Camden, at least partly because her friends wanted to come along and tell her goodbye. Security restrictions made that a little cumbersome, and besides, Bree had a better idea.

One of the big reasons Bree had developed the goal to go to the Air Force Academy in the first place was her first flight in Rocinante, and the little old Cessna had done a great deal to help her accomplish her goals. So it seemed only right that Rocinante would be involved in her going away to the Academy.

Thus it was that early one morning, Bree’s friends and some other well-wishers gathered at the airstrip behind the house, to watch Bree carefully preflight the cherished antique. She wished everyone goodbye one by one, and Jackie got into the plane so there would be someone to fly it back home – but Bree was the one who started the engine, taxied out to the airstrip, and took off. She made one last low pass over the gathered crowd, waggling her wings in farewell, then turned the plane to the south, and flew away into the rest of her life.

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