She had been just eighteen when she met him in FSU , still figuring out the world, still passionate about everything. He’d persuaded her to drop her classes and move with him to New York. You don’t need to fill your pretty head none with notions of flying, sugar. Dumbstruck, she followed him. Like a child.

But within a year all the passion was sapped out of her. Bored, she took up painting. Paul promised to take her back to Georgia, for their wedding, where they would live and die together, he said. He saw her growing restlessness and was worried.

“You can start flying again, Katie, if you really want to.”

“I want you to call me Katherine. My name is Katherine.”

At night she smoked cigarettes with all the windows closed and painted crashing airplanes in his absence. Feeling only the vaguest hint of compunction, she slashed red and black paint across the canvas. Created eerie scenes of planes burning down, crashing down to the blood stained earth.