I will keep my promise to you
Michael; if you ever need me, I will be there for you.” She closed
the shade, picked up her suitcase, and being careful to avoid the
reception, left the hotel, Wrightsville Beach, and the man she
loved behind.
Four
Maeve and I rose late the next morning. Our
flight out wasn't until mid-afternoon, so we were in no hurry. The
dining room at the Hilton offered a lavish breakfast buffet,
including a station where a talented young chef made a show out of
preparing omelets to order.
Seeing how much the exuberant fellow loved
working with the ingredients, I told Maeve, “I think I'll have a
western omelet with the works.”
Maeve wrinkled her nose. “I'll stick to my ham
and cheese omelet, thank you very much.”
Besides the omelets, the buffet included
Belgian waffles, pancakes, biscuits with or without saw mill gravy,
scrambled eggs, sausage links, bacon, several flavors of fruit
juices, and some decent brews of coffee. The only thing lacking was
genuine maple syrup. Everything else we tried was so good Maeve and
I decided we could forgive the hotel for that.
After breakfast we returned to our room to
repack our bags, check that we had our passports and plane tickets
handy, and go over our flight itinerary. Then Maeve looked at me
and asked, “What do you want to do until it’s time to leave for the
airport?”
My grin and the look in my eyes let her know
what I was thinking we could do to pass the time.
“ Michael,” Maeve said, trying to
sound scandalized. But she walked over, put her arms around my
waist, and pulled me toward the bed.
We barely made it to checkout at eleven. I
called the concierge from the room before we headed to the
elevator, and she had a cab waiting to whisk us to the
airport.
After checking our bags and getting our
boarding passes, we had time for a leisurely lunch.
“ Did you save room for dessert?”
our server, Stephanie, asked after clearing away our lunch
dishes.
I looked at Maeve, and said, “I don’t know
about you, but I’m going to try the marble cheesecake.”
After gnawing at her lower lip for a moment,
Maeve smiled and said, “We are on our honeymoon, after all. I’ll
have the chocolate mousse.”
We enjoyed our desserts and then spent the
rest of the time before our flight in front of the big plate-glass
windows watching the planes take off and land.
“ Airports are really cool places,
Mike,” Maeve commented. “They’re full of people coming and going to
all sorts of destinations around the world. There’s a sense of
adventure just being in an airport, don't you think? It’s all very
exciting.”
“ Whenever I see a plane take off I
wonder about the people on board,” I told her, gesturing towards a
Boeing 727 starting down the runway. “I try to imagine where
they're going and why, who they're leaving behind, and who they're
going to see. Will they find what they're after or come back
empty-handed, if they come back at all?”
The expression on Maeve's face told me she was
trying to imagine those things. Then her expression changed and she
turned to me. “What about the planes landing? What do they make you
think about?”
“ When I see a plane land, I think
about coming home. A landing plane always makes me think the people
on board are returning from somewhere even though I know many
probably aren’t from here. I don't know why I think that. That's
just how it feels.”
We lost track of time while watching all those
arrivals and departures, so we were caught by surprise when the
attendant at the gate called for our flight to start boarding.
Maeve and I grabbed our carry-on bags and got in line. The
attendant checked our boarding passes and passports, smiled
graciously, and wished us a pleasant flight.
We went out the door, down a flight of stairs,
across the tarmac, up the boarding ladder, and into the plane. Our
adventure had begun in earnest, and a few minutes later, as the
pilot revved the