Sexton was a woman of her word. Till death do us part, she told Rachel. Your father blessed me with you-a beautiful daughter-and for that I thank him. He will have to answer for his actions to a higher power someday.
Now, standing in the airport, Rachel's anger was simmering. "But, this means you'll be alone for Thanksgiving!" She felt sick to her stomach. The senator deserting his family on Thanksgiving Day was a new low, even for him.
"Well...," Mrs. Sexton said, her voice disappointed but decisive. "I obviously can't let all this food go to waste. I'll drive it up to Aunt Ann's. She's always invited us up for Thanksgiving. I'll give her a call right now."
Rachel felt only marginally less guilty. "Okay. I'll be home as soon as I can. I love you, Mom."
"Safe flight, sweetheart."
It was 10:30 that night when Rachel's taxi finally pulled up the winding driveway of the Sextons' luxurious estate. Rachel immediately knew something was wrong. Three police cars sat in the driveway. Several news vans too. All the house lights were on. Rachel dashed in, her heart racing.
A Virginia State policeman met her at the doorway. His face was grim. He didn't have to say a word. Rachel knew. There had been an accident.
"Route Twenty-five was slick with freezing rain," the officer said. "Your mother went off the road into a wooded ravine. I'm sorry. She died on impact."
Rachel's body went numb. Her father, having returned immediately when he got the news, was now in the living room holding a small press conference, stoically announcing to the world that his wife had passed away in a crash on her way back from Thanksgiving dinner with family.
Rachel stood in the wings, sobbing through the entire event.
"I only wish," her father told the media, his eyes tearful, "that I had been home for her this weekend. This never would have happened."
You should have thought of that years ago, Rachel cried, her loathing for her father deepening with every passing instant.
From that moment on, Rachel divorced herself from her father in the way Mrs. Sexton never had. The senator barely seemed to notice. He suddenly had gotten very busy using his late wife's fortunes to begin courting his party's nomination for president. The sympathy vote didn't hurt either.
Cruelly now, three years later, even at a distance the senator was making Rachel's life lonely. Her father's run for the White House had put Rachel's dreams of meeting a man and starting a family on indefinite hold. For Rachel it had become far easier to take herself completely out of the social game than to deal with the endless stream of power-hungry Washingtonian suitors hoping to snag a grieving, potential "first daughter" while she was still in their league.
Outside the F-14, the daylight had started to fade. It was late winter in the Arctic-a time of perpetual darkness. Rachel realized she was flying into a land of permanent night.
As the minutes passed, the sun faded entirely, dropping below the horizon. They continued north, and a brilliant three-quarter moon appeared, hanging white in the crystalline glacial air. Far below, the ocean waves shimmered, the icebergs looking like diamonds sewn into a dark sequin mesh.
Finally, Rachel spotted the hazy outline of land. But it was not what she had expected. Looming out of the ocean before the plane was an enormous snowcapped mountain range.
"Mountains?" Rachel asked, confused. "There are mountains north of Greenland?"
"Apparently," the pilot said, sounding equally surprised.
As the nose of the F-14 tipped downward, Rachel felt an eerie weightlessness. Through the ringing in her ears she could hear a repeated electronic ping in the cockpit. The pilot had apparently locked on to some kind of directional beacon and was following it in.
As they passed below three thousand feet, Rachel stared out at the dramatic moonlit terrain beneath them. At the base of the mountains, an expansive, snowy plain swept wide. The plateau spread gracefully seaward about ten miles until it ended abruptly at a sheer cliff of solid ice that dropped vertically into the ocean.
It was then that Rachel saw it. A sight like nothing she had ever seen anywhere on earth. At first she thought the moonlight must be playing tricks on her. She squinted down at the snowfields, unable to comprehend what she was looking at. The lower the plane descended, the clearer the image became.
What in the name of God?
The plateau beneath them was striped... as if someone had painted the snow with three huge striations