He knew his mom had helped land it when something went wrong, and he knew she was a pilot, and he knew she was home every night, and that was the right amount for a seven-year-old to carry, and she intended to keep it that amount for as long as she could.

Mark Davis called now and then, and they talked the easy shorthand of two people bound together by one hour they would never fully be able to explain to anyone who had not been in that cockpit.

He had gone back to the line after a stretch of leave.

He told her the airline had torn its whole maintenance operation down to the studs and built it back honest, that the audit Sterling had tried to sink the airplane to avoid had come anyway and cleaned house, that a great many things were safer now because of a night that had nearly been a catastrophe.

Funny how that works, he said once.