Clutching the orange-fabric plane seat, Bernadette did something she hadn't done in a long time. She prayed. Unlike some of the other passengers on the flight, who were literally screaming each time the aircraft unexpectedly fell another thousand feet, she didn't emit a sound. She tightened her seat belt with each rocking and pitching movement of the plane, braced her feet against the seat in front of her, and prayed for dear life.

The "problem," as the pilot had described it minutes earlier on the P.A. system, was an unexpected weather front they'd run into just north of Salt Lake City. It was moving east, rapidly, across the Wasatch mountains, and had spawned at least a dozen tornadoes within the space of three minutes. The pilot of Bernadette's flight had no choice but to try to get through the line of heavy weather -- but neither he nor the air traffic controllers at Salt Lake had counted on things getting this rough.

As the pilot announced his intention to try for an emergency landing at the small airport in Logan, Utah, Bernadette realized how absurd her worries about Hollis Burns and his motives were. Your life could end in a moment, for God's sake, and she'd been obsessing about what? Money!

Oh please! "Could they throw in ANOTHER red herring?" the reader is asking himself. "Something even MORE cliché than a possible plane crash?" To which the writers proudly respond, "Yes." And we will. Because life -- in case the reader hasn't noticed --IS cliché. Painfully, sometimes.

Bernadette glanced out the window and dark gray clouds that seemed to be fifteen miles high were all she could see. Rain pelted the plexiglass cabin window, and, once again, the plane dropped precipitously, leaving Bernadette's stomach high in the air. In a moment, she thought, she was going to have to reach for the air-sickness bag. "Folks," the pilot came on again, "please make sure your seatbelts are fastened tightly. I'm going to have to ask you to follow the flight attendants' instructions to assume safety-landing positions." Bernadette noted the politically correct new way of saying "crash positions." The palms of her hands were soaking wet.

At the flight attendant's order, she gathered her pillow on her lap, and put her head down on it. Before she did, she glanced out the window again, and could actually see, like in "The Wizard of Oz," a funnel-cloud in the distance. This wasn't happening, she thought. A tornado.

The engines revved with a shriek that itself sounded like a plane crashing. For what seemed like an eternity, the aircraft circled -- or at least that was Bernadette's sensation -- until, without warning, there was a bone-crunching thud as the plane miraculously touched down on a runway none of the passengers had known was there. As the small plane careened down the runway, Bernadette was fearful of looking out the window -- they'd been told to hold their "safety landing, head down" positions -- but she couldn't help it.

As she peered outside, she saw the most frightening sight of her life. The cyclone, tornado, funnel-cloud, or whatever you called it was clearly visible, and on a zig-zag collision course with the plane, which had nearly reached the mid-point of the runway. The twister was going to hit them.

Bernadette screamed as the plane's air brakes came on, and, as the aircraft decelerated to nearly a complete stop, Bernadette's ears popped. With half the passengers staring disbelievingly out the window and the other half still buried in their pillows, the tornado passed over the front of the plane, lifting it several feet off the ground and turning it 90 degrees. Bernadette felt her neck whip around as though she were on a violent carnival ride, and then there was nothing but silence.

They were safe.

"Ano?" Cy was saying softly. The little boy asleep on his beach towel inside Cy's makeshift hut began to stir.

"Ano? What are you doing here?"

Rubbing his eyes and awakening slowly, the boy sat up. "Oh, hi," he said matter-of-factly. "I was tired."

"I can see that," Cy responded. The tradewind wafted up from the water's edge. "You'd better be getting home. Your mother's going to be looking for you."

"No," Ano said, "it's okay. She doesn't mind."

"But it's dinner time," Cy said, sitting down on the sand next to the boy. The sun was beginning to drop over the ocean. That was Cy's favorite thing about beaches facing west -- the sunsets -- and this was his favorite time of day.

The little boy didn't say anything.

"Ano?" Cy said to the boy, lowering his tone of voice to be as non-threatening as possible.

"Huh?" the boy said, not looking at Cy, drawing in the sand with two fingers.

"You don't have a mother, do you," Cy ventured, dangerously. He'd suspected for some time now that the boy was homeless, and had been lying to him about his family.

"Tell me the truth," Cy said. "Do you have a father? Do you have . . . anyone?"

The boy looked down at the sand, morosely, then looked up at Cy, and said, "Just you."

Cy immediately felt the lump in his throat, and yet, at the same time, he was angry at Ano's manipulative response. He'd come all this way to divest himself of responsibility, to get away from things, and the first thing that had happened was that he'd become responsible for a homeless beach-urchin.

"Why did you lie to me, Ano?" Cy asked.

"Because I'm already in trouble," the little boy said, standing up. "I ran away from the orphanage, and I'm not going back. But I didn't know where else to go. So I've been sleeping down here on the beach. I lied about having a mother and a sister, because I knew if you knew the truth you'd squeal on me."

"I wouldn't have squealed on you, Ano," Cy said, "but an eight-year-old boy can't live on a beach, sleeping on stolen beach towels under the branches of banyan trees and stealing papayas and breadfruit from the market." Cy had a pretty good idea of how the boy had stayed alive on his own. "Why not?" Ano said, reasonably. "I'm doing okay." "Yes, Cy said," smiling, his heart going out to the boy. "Yes, you are. But you've got to let me help you."

Not what Cy had in mind. Many guys of Cy's age and status back in New York are on their second trophy-wives -- frosted-blonde, pencil-thin 29-year-olds -- and are starting second families that they really don't want. You see them on upper Fifth Avenue, graying and distinguished, walking with five-year-olds who look more like their grandchildren than their children. Looks like Cy could be starting a second family too -- only without the trophy-wife.

Ano began to get agitated. "No," Ano said. "I know what you mean by helping me. It means you're going to call St. Agnes's and tell them where I am."

Cy hadn't even known the name of the orphanage, but, when Ano said it, he recognized it as the name of the Catholic Church in the little town center. It must, he thought, have an orphan's home affiliated it -- run by nuns, probably.

"Ano," Cy said, as the boy starting to back out of the hut in fear, "I'm not going to do that."

Ano looked at Cy, sure that the older man was lying to him; he turned and began to run down the beach, as fast as he could. Cy couldn't have kept up with him if he'd tried.