In the months after the flight she had waited to feel like a hero and had felt, instead, only this: steady, and present, and home.

Richard Sterling would grow old in a federal prison, and the airline he had robbed flew safer now than it had in a decade, and a girl who had been eleven in row 6 was learning to fly, and a boy who had slept through the whole thing wanted to learn too.

The sky had taken something from Maya once and nearly taken everything twice, and she had stopped, somewhere in all of it, being afraid of it, because fear had turned out to be a thing you set down rather than a thing you defeat.

Leo tugged her hand, ready for dinner, ready for home, ready for the ordinary evening that was the whole prize she had been flying toward all along.

She stood and let him lead her toward the car, and she took one last look back at the long gold runway and the settling light, and she was not looking for a ghost in it, and she did not find one.

Ready to go home, sweetie? she asked.

He said he was.

So am I, she said.

I’m home.