That had been the whole condition, the single non-negotiable term she had set on her return to the sky, and she kept it the way she had once kept altitude and heading, as a discipline that other things arranged themselves around.

Leo was flourishing in the ordinary way that is the most that any parent can rightly ask, growing out of his shoes too fast, losing teeth, developing fierce temporary passions for dinosaurs and then for astronauts and then for the exact workings of the espresso machine.

He told his teacher his mom flew jets, and the teacher, who had read the news, told him yes, she certainly did, and he came home enormously satisfied with the confirmation.

He did not know the whole of what had happened on the airplane.