She had told everyone, including herself, a clean story: that she had left flying because flying had killed her friend, that the grief had simply made the sky unbearable.

But the real story, the one surfacing now with the runway still invisible somewhere below the storm, was less flattering and more human.

She had not left because she was too sad to fly.

She had left because she was too angry to, angry at the sky and the machine and the universe that had let Gabriel fall, and anger has no place in a cockpit, anger flies worse than fear does, and some wise buried part of her had known that she could not be trusted at the controls while she was carrying that much of it.

Leaving had not been grief.