The plane dipped again, and Eva felt her stomach lurch upward into her rib cage, pressing uncomfortably in her mild panic. Her hands gripped the armrests with such force that color began to drain from her knuckles. Her well- shaped head with its short crop of gently layered curls was also pressed with equal force into the headrest. Anyone looking at Eva Duncan in that moment would have suspected that the woman was merely waiting out the boring process of the landing of the Boeing 727 jet. They would not have seen the distress that held her prisoner and which, in fact, held most people prisoners on their very first plane flight.

Eva completely missed the developing panorama out the window of the Caribbean Sea, spotted with islands of varying size and topographic details. She missed the aerial view of dozens of white-sailed vessels gliding along the aqua surface of the water below. But she also missed the plane touching down on the St. Thomas runway, looking for all the world as though it were headed for the mountains in front of it.

"We're on the ground," came the knowledgeable child's voice next to her. Eva opened her eyes and turned to look into the calm, wide-eyed face of her flight companion.

"You can open your eyes now," the little girl's voice continued before she turned her eyes to watch the ground procedures out her window as the plane slowed and reversed its powerful engines. "My name's Diane," she offered. "What's yours?"

"Eva," the woman replied.

Eva let out a silent sigh and released her armrests, placing her trembling hands in her lap. She'd done it! She'd actually gotten on a plane and taken a flight of several hours — and survived. She chuckled softly in self- derision.

The little girl turned back to her, her own head tilted, and raised her brows. "What's so funny?" she asked.

"Oh...I was just thinking what a big baby I'm being about this trip. I should be more like you. You're not afraid to travel alone," Eva observed.

"I was the first time," the little girl said. "I thought my daddy wasn't going to be here to meet me."

Eva smiled at the self-assurance of the youngster, so adult in so small a person. And it was ironic that at ten years of age Diane Maxwell had so much confidence, while twenty-nine-year-old Eva Duncan could have used a little more.

Starting to relax again now that the plane was safely on the ground, Eva was once more amazed at the determination with which she'd set about taking this trip, her very first vacation, all by herself. She could still hear her mother lamenting her daughter's lack of good sense. Cautioning Eva that there were far too many plane crashes these days, Florence Stewart tried to persuade her youngest child and only daughter that a bus trip to Philadelphia would serve the same purpose. That it was unnecessary to fly all the way to God knows where just to have an adventure. But Eva had remained firm. She wanted this trip to someplace new, someplace far away. And no one knew better than she that lives could be lost on the ground far easier than in the air.

Eva straightened the elastic neck and long, full sleeves on her white peasant blouse and smoothed the front of her red slim skirt, hoping her outfit didn't look too wrinkled after three and a half hours in close quarters. She absently swept her hands over the short hair from front to back several times, fluffing it and feeling the curls spring into place with new life. Her toffee-colored face with its rounded soft cheeks and small rounded chin began to glow with the beginnings of excitement. Her brown eyes with their almond shape were bright and wide open, and her small mouth smiled gently. Eva looked over the head of her companion and also peered out onto the sunny afternoon as the plane taxied downfield and came to a stop.

Eva frowned, expecting to see a modern, sterile airport and terminal building, but could only see a rather old, dreary-looking hangar.

Diane settled back in her seat and sighed. She began to swing a leg back and forth over the edge of her seat in growing impatience to be off the plane.

"Do you always travel alone, Diane?" Eva asked. Diane nodded, a pinky finger stuck into the side of her mouth and gnawed on absently by her small white teeth.

"My mama doesn't like to fly. She's scared more than you are!" she enlightened Eva.

Still, Eva couldn't really imagine ever sending a child of her own on a trip like this alone.

"She says she can't leave my stepfather and step-brother. Robert is still a baby," Diane announced.

At the beginning of the trip down to the U.S. Virgin Islands, Diane had been filled with impatience to see her father. Now that it was the end of school for the summer, she would be spending two weeks with him. It had been nearly a year since she'd last seen him, but she spoke of her father with gladness and love as though she saw him every day of her life. Eva wondered about a father that could inspire such devotion from so far away for fifty weeks of the year.

Diane informed Eva that her parents had divorced when she was a little girl. That had brought a smile to Eva's lips, because Diane was still so obviously a little girl. At ten she was still a bit chubby with baby fat. Her thick wavy hair was pulled back into a ponytail and gently twisted. Her brown face for the moment was round, but once the fat was lost and she grew some more, it would be more square with very attractive features.

Earlier when Eva asked Diane what her father did in the Virgin Islands, she'd responded that he studied fish. That had puzzled Eva, but she didn't have a chance to find out more as their lunch was served at that moment.

Over lunch, however, Diane regaled Eva with stories of the other times she'd visited her father, except for the one summer when he was away somewhere else, so her mother had sent her to summer camp. She hadn't enjoyed that nearly so much, but it was clear to Eva that at ten Diane Maxwell had experienced quite a lot.

Now as they gathered their carry-on luggage and prepared to leave the plane, Eva realized that she was about to leave a circumstance she'd gotten used to for almost four hours, to begin the next unfamiliar phase of her six-week vacation. The one hundred and thirty-eight passengers began filing out of the plane.

"Now we have to get our luggage," Diane said over her shoulder informatively, looking up into Eva's face as they started down the stairway of the plane.

The heat was unexpected and fierce. It hit Eva full force as she crossed the runway to a sheltered walkway that took the passengers into the Harry S. Truman Airport and to their luggage. Diane walked with knowledge and ease toward the hangar, and Eva could only follow behind. She knew that after she got her luggage she was to take a cab to the boat docks at Red Hook on the other side of St. Thomas. From there she was to catch a ferry to St. John, the smallest of the three Virgin Islands and just twenty minutes away. That much seemed enough to worry about for the time being.

The dark, but cool, interior of the hangar was a sudden, welcome change to the heat. Eva hoped that she would adjust quickly. She thought ruefully that if she wanted unbearable summer heat and humidity, she could have stayed home in New Jersey.

She followed behind the other passengers to a motionless conveyor belt, and assumed that eventually her luggage would come this way. Diane, standing next to her, was craning her neck around the old, oddly converted hangar, obviously searching out her father.

"Are you sure he's going to meet you?" Eva asked the little girl in some concern.

"Yes..." Diane answered, giving up the search for the moment. "Sometimes he's late, but he always comes," she said positively. She looked up to Eva with a frown.

"Isn't anybody going to meet you?"

"I'm afraid not. I...I don't know anybody here. This is my first time, remember?"

"But what hotel are you staying at?"

"I'm not staying at a hotel. I'm renting a house for my vacation."

"All by yourself?" Diane asked, eyes wide open.

"All by myself," Eva confirmed, nodding with a smile.

"I'd be scared. "Specially at night," Diane confessed. The smile on Eva's face went through a transition totally lost on the little girl. It grew sad and rather pensive, her eyes distant and staring, its depths sudden dark pools hiding pain from the past.

"You get used to it," Eva murmured. She quickly pulled herself together and smiled down at Diane.

"Maybe I'll see you around while you're here," Eva suggested.

Diane nodded in agreement. "You might get into trouble all by yourself. Maybe my father and I should keep an eye on you. Just in case."

Eva laughed lightly. "That's very nice of you, but I think I'll be okay."

Eva liked Diane's open friendliness, her thoughts of other people. She must have really wonderful parents, Eva imagined, even though their marriage hadn't worked and they separated. They were both doing something right with this youngster.

For a long time Eva used to compare every little girl she saw to Gail, her daughter. Every little body with two fat pigtails used to make her stop in midstride to stare and wonder, to feel her stomach tighten and eyes mist. It had taken a while to reconcile herself to the fact that there had been only one Gail, and she was gone.

Eva blinked and took a deep breath. She passed a slightly shaking hand over her damp forehead. It suddenly seemed so very warm in the hangar.

The conveyor belt churned into motion, and the passengers from her flight pushed to the edge in a rush, everyone anxious for his bags so each could continue on his way. Eva spotted her brown nylon duffle with its yellow luggage tag and reached to swing it off the conveyor to the floor. Her thirty-six-inch case came next, but she was not prepared for the weight and couldn't move it. She had to let go of the handle as the bag remained on the belt and went on a journey around the system again.

A tall blond youth, probably a college student, helped her the next time the bag came, and she thanked him. But she still had no idea how she'd manage everything by herself. As Eva stood in indecision, the blond young man again came to her rescue.

"You look like you could still use some help," he said good-naturedly. Eva smiled ruefully, looking down helplessly at her bags.

"I guess I do. I'm wondering how to get all of this to a taxi. For that matter, where do I find a taxi?"

"That's easy," the young man answered, the tropic breeze ruffling up his long shaggy hair. "The taxi depot is just through that door." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. And then without any apparent effort he lifted the one oversized suitcase and her duffle. "If you have everything else, I'll walk you over."

"Oh, I really appreciate this!" Eva said with feeling, lifting her heavy tote onto her arm.

"No problem. You've never been here before?" he asked, adjusting his lanky, long-legged steps to her slower, shorter ones.

"No. This is my first time."

He chuckled. "Everybody packs too much the first time down here."

"But I'm going to be here for six weeks!" Eva said as they once more walked into the brilliant, startling sunshine. The youth shook his head as he put her bags down on the curb. "You don't need much on the islands. You'll probably be in a bathing suit most of the time anyway. I bet you won't wear half the stuff you brought with you."

Feeling already as though she was way overdressed in her blouse and skirt and open-toed sandals and with perspiration making trails down the valley of her breasts and down her back, she could well believe him.

"At any rate, I want to thank you for your help. It was kind of you."

"Sure...anytime." He smiled, standing with his hands on his narrow hips.

"Are you on vacation?" Eva asked.

"Sort of. I work here," he answered.

"What kind of work?"

He laughed. "The easy kind, and as little as possible! I come down every summer and work at the resort on St. John. I teach the guests how to snorkel, use the Sunfish, and how to surf sail..."

Eva raised her brow. She didn't know what he was talking about. She smiled, however, at his enthusiasm and obvious enjoyment of what he did.