Fran

Fran loves to fly. She has loved it ever since the first time her granddaddy took her up in the crop-spraying plane that they used on the homestead. With no siblings, she had spent much of her time in her granddaddy’s work shed tinkering with all manner of engines and gadgets, but it was the plane that she loved the most. It was beautifully looked after and revered. On special occasions, she would sit in the co-pilot’s seat and enjoy soaring through the air. She would giggle her way through the bumps and unexpected veers and swerves her granddaddy liked to do in the plane to make her laugh.

Her mother despised the plane and, for that matter, her father-in-law, who had come along as a package deal with the homestead when she married Fran’s daddy.

Since her granddaddy had passed, Fran had looked after the plane with great care, flying it every weekend. Howard Griffiths had given her a beautiful sealed envelope after her grandaddy’s funeral in the Griffiths Funeral Home. She had taken the envelope and opened it as she stood in front of the plane. The piece of neatly folded paper inside the envelope had nothing but a number written on it, and she had clutched the paper to her heart and smiled.

That very next weekend she had taken to the skies, being careful to set the radio that her granddaddy had installed in the cockpit to a frequency matching the number on the paper; and then she had waited.  As she circled Lake Brock, she heard the sputter of radio feedback followed by the cheerful voice of her granddaddy saying hello.

Now, whenever she needed to chat, she would simply take to the skies and turn on the radio.