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although, naturally, I much appreciate your father’s hospitality on my behalf .
After our brief conversation on the sofa, I could not help but think that despite your silence concerning the matter, you did want to be taken up in my airplane, after all. I believe I understand your hesitation. I would not have liked to have taken my first airplane ride surrounded by newspaper reporters and photographers, either. Hence my proposal .
If you would like to fly with me, meet me in the kitchen at four-fifteen a.m. We can go up and be back here before breakfast is served, and no one will ever be the wiser .
I do, however, acknowledge the possibility that I have misinterpreted your intentions. I will not be offended if you do not choose to meet me .
    Sincerely ,                         
Charles Augustus Lindbergh
    By the time I finished reading, my hands were no longer shaking,although my rib cage was—for I was laughing. Silently, prayerfully—but I was laughing, nonetheless. If you would like to fly with me… oh, miraculous words! Intended for me and me alone!
    Colonel Lindbergh had looked for me —and, finding me, had understood me. He had known everything that I was thinking but could not express with all those people listening—that even as I longed to experience flyingas he had described it, just beneath my longing was the fear that somehow I would fail this test, this test of gravity and expectations. And if I did fail—if I embarrassed myself by crying or being sick or chickening out at the last moment—I did not want it reported on the front pages of every newspaper in the land!
    Elisabeth was cut out for that kind of publicity. She would not fail, for shehad never failed at anything in her life. Yet I suspected that my desire to fly was more sincere than hers. Despiteher obvious interest in Colonel Lindbergh, I was certain she had asked to be taken up primarily because it was expected of her.
    There was a certain safety in being the plain one, I realized, not for the first time. Dwight was the heir apparent, expected to graduate Amherst magnacum laude simply because Daddy had done so on scholarship. Elisabeth was expected to be dazzling and beautiful and marry brilliantly. Con was too young yet, and too spoiled, anyway; she was the pet of the family, loved and unquestioned.
    I was expected to be—what? No one had ever articulated it to me; I knew only that I wasn’t to disappoint or disgrace my family, but beyond that, no one seemedto care.
    Or—did someone care?
    No, of course not; with a stern little shake of my head, I reminded myself that in real life, heroes were not interested in girls like me. It was simple politeness that compelled the colonel to ask; after all, I was the daughter of his host.
    Still, he had asked, and that was enough to make me grin stupidly at my own reflection in the mirror opposite the bed fora long moment, before suddenly becoming aware of the lateness of the hour. Slipping the note —his note—inside my pillowcase, I wound my alarm clock tightly, setting it for four a.m. My stomach was so full of butterflies and other insects with busy, brushing wings—entirely appropriate under the circumstances, I couldn’t help but think!—that I could hardly fall asleep. And when at last I did, I knowI slept lightly.
    As if I remembered, even in my slumber, that I had a dream beneath my pillow that I did not wish to crush.

CHAPTER 2

    T HE NEXT MORNING , I was almost late. Not because I overslept—I was awake a good half hour before the alarm went off—but because, for the first time in my life, I couldn’t decide what to wear.
    Normally I didn’t fuss with all that. I had an ample, if somewhat boring, wardrobe that I purchased in New York with my mother every season, mainly from Lord & Taylor. Daydresses, skirts, sweaters, tea gowns, one or two modest evening gowns, tennis dresses, golf skirts.
    But not a single flying garment among them! Sorting through the