Well, it worked for me.
What Would Nancy Drew Do?
I was convinced that, in similar circumstances, being the nanny in an ambassador’s home, there were a lot of things I did that Nancy would never do. But I was sure she would hug and kiss those two dear children goodbye and tell them she loved them and was proud of them and was only a phone call away should they ever need her, and I did all that. I don’t know if Nancy would have cried when she hugged and kissed Stevie and Kim goodbye, but I did that, too.
The flight from New York to Reykjavik takes seven hours, more than enough time for a person to relive the biggest mistake of her life while sitting next to an old man who now hates her guts because she won’t tell him what ideas she has for what she wants to write about, because she doesn’t know, nor will she steal his.
But all bad things must come to an end.
Or so I thought.
Just as I was envisioning the plane touching down without incident, the copilot emerged from the cockpit, tool kit in hand, as the pilot made an announcement.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a slight problem with the landing gear…”
“Slight problem?” George gulped beside me, his old eyes suffused with fear as the copilot bustled past us and proceeded to cut a big rectangle out of the carpeting.
“I’m sure everything is fine,” said the pilot, “probably just a malfunction on the landing-gear light.”
“Malfunction?” George looked as if he was going to be sick.
I felt sick, too.
Why had I ever gotten on this plane? my mind shrieked. Sure, people said that flying was safer than driving a car, but that was for other people who were not control freaks like me who never felt safe unless she could feel the earth. Besides, I didn’t even drive a car!
I was about to go into a panic, like most of the people around me, when I saw how truly upset George was, silently praying to himself as he watched the copilot disappear down into the plane.
What Would Nancy Drew Do? I wondered frantically.
I pictured that titian-haired retro girl and suddenly I knew exactly what she’d do: she’d remain calm on the outside, no matter what thoughts were going through her head, and she’d offer comfort to anyone who needed it.
I put my hand over George’s wrinkled one.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said.
George was still muttering, saying tearful goodbyes to his grandchildren.
“Really,” I said. “I’ve been through this kind of thing a hundred times.”
That stopped him. “You have?” he asked.
“Yes,” I lied, wondering if Nancy Drew ever lied to make someone else feel better. Probably not, I figured: one, she was probably morally against lying; and, two, with fifty-six cases under her belt, she really had been through everything a hundred times!
“Yes,” I said again, “and it always turns out okay in the end.”
“It does?” George asked, wanting to believe.
“Of course,” I said. “You’ll have an exciting story to tell your grandkids the next time you see them. Why, you should just look at this as material for that story you’ll one day write.”
“Ha!” he said, regaining some of his former spirit. “I thought you were the writer!”
Still, he clung to my hand right up until the copilot emerged from the bottom of the plane.
“Everything’s fine,” the copilot announced to cheers. “It was just as the pilot said—must have been a malfunction with the light.”
Even still, it was treated as an emergency landing, fire trucks screaming beside the plane as we hit the runway.
“Thank you,” George said so softly I almost couldn’t hear him over the sirens. “You made me feel better.”
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