My Substitute Wife Is Not on the Return Manifest novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Strike My Name

At the station Signe has her name removed from the vehicle log in front of the captain and says she was not in that car; Dane takes the reprimand without a word and Brooke hugs her, and the captain orders Dane an audiogram because he missed the whole correction.

At seven forty the next morning Signe walked into the flight station duty office with her chart room badge on and a form already filled in.

The duty officer looked up from his screen.

Behind him two pilots stopped talking, and a mechanic with a coffee cup stopped at the door.

"I need the vehicle log for last night," Signe said.

"Ma'am, the log is closed."

"My name is on it. I was not in that car."

The duty officer pulled up the entry and read it twice.

"It's a spouse override," he said. "It's authorized under your base access. The system won't strike a name."

"Then write it as a correction."

She laid the form on the counter and tapped the line she had already signed.

Correction: Hallowell, M. was not aboard. She was left at the ferry terminal.

The duty officer glanced at the pilots and kept his voice low. "Mrs. Mayhew, are you sure you want this on the record?"

"It's already on the record," Signe said. "I'm only making it true."

The captain's door opened down the hall.

He came out with a folder under his arm and read the correction upside down before he reached the counter.

"Somebody tell me what I'm looking at."

"The duty sedan went out last night under spouse transport," the duty officer said. "Mrs. Mayhew says she wasn't in it."

"I wasn't," Signe said. "Lieutenant Commander Mayhew used my authorization to clear a private use warning. He dropped me at the ferry terminal first."

Nobody in the room moved.

Dane came in through the side door in his flight suit.

The captain turned toward him and said, "Lieutenant Commander."

Dane kept walking toward the coffee machine with his head tilted a little to the right.

"Mayhew."

He still did not turn.

Signe said, "Dane," from the counter, and he looked straight at her.

He had heard her. He had been watching her mouth.

"Captain," he said, and he stepped to the counter. "The log is mine. She wasn't aboard. I used her name to get the car out."

"Why did you need the car?" the captain asked.

Dane tapped his watch twice. "A personal matter, sir."

"A personal matter that needed an official override."

"Yes, sir."

He did not look at Signe again, and he did not explain.

She had expected that, and it still landed somewhere under her ribs.

A woman's voice came from the doorway.

"Signe? Oh good, I was hoping I'd catch you."

Brooke Ellery stood there in a green flight suit with her father's squadron patch on the shoulder.

She held a paper bag in both hands, and her eyes were rimmed pink.

She crossed the room without asking anyone and put her arms around Signe.

Signe stood stiff for a second and then, because there was nothing else to do, let it happen.

"I'm so sorry about last night," Brooke said into her shoulder. "It was my fault. I called him and I shouldn't have. I'd had a couple of glasses and I got scared of the water."

"You don't need to apologize to me."

"I do. You've been so kind to everyone here." She leaned back and held out the bag. "Muffin. Blueberry. Julie told me you skip breakfast."

"Julie did?"

"At the cafe. I went in yesterday." Brooke wiped her eye with a knuckle and looked at the correction form. "Oh, you used the wrong box. They make everyone redo it. It's box fourteen, the one at the bottom."

She took Signe's pen and rewrote the signature in box fourteen herself, neatly, in one stroke.

"There," she said. "Now they can't send it back. Seven days, right? Until you leave? We'll all miss you."

"Thank you," Signe said.

She had not told Brooke anything about seven days. The whole station talked, she reminded herself.

The captain was still looking at Dane.

"Lieutenant Commander, I have said your name three times in this office, and this is the second time in two minutes you have not turned around."

"I'm sorry, sir. I didn't catch it."

"You have caught every word she has said."

Dane's hand went to his key ring and stopped there.

"The flight surgeon has a slot Monday at nine," the captain said. "You'll sit for a full audiogram."

"Sir, that isn't necessary."

"It wasn't a question."

"Yes, sir."

His voice was calm and even, the same voice he had used to sign the divorce.

Signe noticed, for the first time in three years, that he had been walking on her left side the whole way in.

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