First Light - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Bill Rancic is a television personality and the author of the New York Times bestselling book You’re Hired: How to Succeed in Business and Life, as well as the books Beyond the Lemonade Stand and I Do, Now What? which was written with his wife, Giuliana Rancic. After bursting onto the national scene when he was hired by Donald Trump as the winner of the first season of NBC’s breakthrough program The Apprentice, Rancic has become a well-known entrepreneur and sought-after motivational speaker. He appears before businesses and organizations around the world on a variety of business-related topics and is also a frequent guest on numerous daytime broadcast and cable television programs such as Today, The View, Rachael Ray, and various CNBC programs.

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***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof***

Copyright © 2016 Bill Rancic

One

The envelope arrives one afternoon when I’m out in the yard raking leaves. I’m feeling pretty good at the moment, watching the street for the car bringing my wife and son home from the soccer game, wondering if Jackson got to play, wondering if he got to score. He’s been riding the bench all season, watching his friends get more playing time, and it’s been bothering him enough that he’s added extra practices and workouts to his routine, running suicide drills at the stadium, lining up kick after kick in the fall twilight. I’ve been practicing with him in the evenings and on weekends, videotaping him so he can watch his form. A dentist appointment that morning kept me from actually making it to the game, but I’ve been thinking of my son all day as I scrape up leaves, red and brown and gold, wondering how it went. If he still didn’t get to play, or played badly…I know how disappointed he’ll be.

I remind myself that Jackson is a bright and loving kid who does well in school, who has plenty of friends, who is pretty much as well-adjusted as any parent could hope. If he doesn’t get to play in the soccer game today, so be it. Worse things have happened.

The leaves crackling underfoot remind me of the crunch of snow in the dead of winter. For a minute I’m back in the Yukon, in the woods with the snow falling all around, listening to Kerry’s slow breathing, watching her chest rise and fall. It’s a memory I have often—when my wife crawls into my arms at night, when our son sits between us on the sofa at home to watch a movie together or read a book. I remember praying for another breath, then another, then another. Praying for her, for us, to live, and thinking, I’m not strong enough for this. I’ll never be strong enough.

My breath catches, and I freeze for a moment, remembering. The truth is that we almost didn’t happen, Kerry and Jackson and me. If we hadn’t been saved. If we hadn’t survived. Then a siren blares and I remember where I am, what I’m doing. The ordinary world fits itself around me again, safe and calm and familiar.

The mailman pauses on his afternoon route to hand me the mail. Behind me the house Kerry and I bought and renovated seven years ago sits in its rectangle of mown grass, stained-glass windows glinting red and gold in the sun. Down the street I can hear the kids at the playground, their voices rising on the afternoon air like a flock of birds. I get a glimpse of Lake Michigan through the trees, sea-green and icy cold even on such a hot day. Along the shore there are kids biking and playing volleyball, whizzing by on skateboards, soaking up every moment of sun before the long, cold Chicago winter that’s coming, and I think that maybe Jackson and I will join them, once he gets home.

But when flip through the mail and see the envelope with the Denali Airlines logo on the cover, I know immediately what’s inside. I don’t need to do any math to know that this year marks the tenth anniversary of the crash; I feel it every time I look at Jackson, his gangly limbs, his big feet and hands. Like my wife and me, he’s a survivor, though he doesn’t know it yet.

I sit down on my front steps with the envelope in both hands, turning it over and over, almost afraid to open it. Finally I slit the top and take out the card inside, also printed with the Denali Airlines logo, a blue mountain backlit by a setting red sun. I read: You and your family are cordially invited to be our honored guests at a ceremony honoring the victims and survivors of Flight 806…

            “Dad? Are you okay?”

            It’s Jackson. He and Kerry are home from the soccer game, but I didn’t hear them pull up to the curb. I didn’t hear anything except the roaring in my ears.

            I look up into the face of my son, so like his mother—large light-brown eyes, a mop of thick auburn hair that he’s forever refusing to cut, the same high, freckled cheekbones, the same wide mouth. He’s always been a good kid. Good-hearted, level-headed, if a bit on the sensitive side, with a tendency to mope. Like me.

I think, It’s time. He deserves to know.

For a minute I consider throwing the invitation away, pretending it never came, but that’s not a serious option. There are a hundred reasons why we should be at that memorial service, the most important standing right in front of me.

            “Dad?”

            “I’m fine, buddy,” I say. “I’m just looking at this invitation that came in the mail.”

Behind him Kerry sees the envelope and freezes. She, too, knows what it means.

“Invitation? Like to a party?” asks Jackson.

“Sort of. I was thinking maybe you and me and your mom should take a trip.”

Jackson’s face lights up. “Like, where?”

I can see by the look on his face that he’s equating the word “trip” with “vacation”—Disney World, maybe, or California. Someplace warm, near the ocean, with a nice sandy beach and warm blue swimming pool and maybe a water slide or two. He isn’t thinking about snow and isolation, the deep cold woods of northern Canada. He isn’t thinking about memorials to the dead. His life, until now, has been fairly uneventful. A fact his mom and I have tried very hard to preserve.

Jackson grabs his skateboard from the front porch and is doing a few simple tricks along the sidewalk while we talk, taking a bit of a tumble when he trips trying to flip the board over. “Helmet, please,” his mother reminds him for the millionth time. He groans and takes the helmet out of the trunk of the car. Soon he’ll be a teenager, and getting him to listen won’t be so easy. No, I think—it has to be now. While he might still be willing to open his ears and his heart and hear, really hear, what we have to say.

“I was thinking we could take a drive up to Canada. To Whitehorse,” I say. “There’s something happening there soon the three of us are part of.”

I can feel Kerry tense up, but Jackson is oblivious to his mother’s fear, and mine. He scrunches up his face. “Whitehorse? Is that a real place?”

“It’s a city in Yukon Territory. Near Alaska.”

“Oh.” His face falls a little bit. “It sounded like town in Dragon Age or something. I thought it would be something cool.”

“It’s a real place, all right. Your mom and I have been there before.”

He looks intrigued. This is new information to him. “When?”

Kerry glances at me. We both knew this day was coming. Maybe not today, but soon. She says, “Before you were born, honey.”

He’s looking at me sideways now, his brown eyes full of skepticism, even a touch of annoyance. We almost never talk about our lives before he was born, though I know he’s curious. He asks us, sometimes, the story of how we met. “At work,” is all we’ve ever told him. “We worked together, and then we fell in love and decided to get married.” He’s never pushed the issue, though I’ve often wondered when he would ask...