He set down a tube of plastic cement and tipped his head back to watch a commercial jet draw a thin white line across the high blue sky.

“Mom?” he said.

“Yes, Leo?” “Do you think that plane has a good pilot?”

I understood the weight under the question — a boy whose faith in pilots, in fathers, in the men who fly the big planes, had been broken over a loudspeaker, looking up at a stranger’s aircraft and wondering whether the sky could still be trusted.

I reached over and wiped a speck of glue from his cheek.

“I don’t know who’s flying that plane, buddy,” I said.