Chapter 10
I waited.
“I talked to my instructor.”
My stomach tightened.
“About what?”
“You.”
I closed my eyes.
“Tyler—”
“Don't worry. I didn't tell him anything private.”
He sounded almost embarrassed.
“I just asked whether he'd ever met the pilot from the Aleutian Dawn rescue.”
“What did he say?”
“He said no. But he'd wanted to for years.”
I sat down.
Tyler continued.
“He said if he ever met her, he'd thank her for giving him one of the best teaching tools he'd ever used.”
I pressed my fingers against my eyes.
“And then?”
“I told him she was my aunt.”
I laughed softly.
“What did he say?”
Tyler's voice broke.
“He said, 'Then you're a lucky young man.'”
I couldn't speak.
After a moment, Tyler added, “I told him I was.”
Two weeks later, he passed his night overwater hover check.
He called me before he called his father.
“Passed,” he said.
I smiled.
“Good work.”
“Want to know what I heard in my head the whole time?”
I already knew.
But I let him say it.
“Easy now. Easy now. Let her come to you.”
I laughed.
And then I cried.
Not because I was sad.
Because a sentence Grandpa had spoken on Mobile Bay decades earlier had traveled from a little wooden skiff to a Coast Guard helicopter above the Bering Sea, into a training video, and finally into the cockpit of another young aviator.
It had outlived every lie my brother told.
At Christmas, I went home again.
Not because everything was fixed.
Because Grandpa had asked me to.
When I walked into my parents' living room, I stopped.
Above the fireplace hung a framed photograph.
My winging ceremony.
Grandpa standing beside me in his old blue suit.
His shaking hands resting against my gold aviator wings.
Beside it was another frame.
My Distinguished Flying Cross citation.
I turned toward Mom.
She was standing near the tree.
“I hope you don't mind,” she said. “Your grandfather helped us choose where to put them.”
I looked at Dad.
He nodded.
“We should have done it years ago.”
Across the room, Mitchell stood beside Tyler.
He didn't make a joke.
He didn't look away.
He walked over and said, clearly enough for everyone to hear, “Kate, I'm proud of you.”
It was a beginning.
Nothing more.
But for once, he let the words stand without making himself the center of them.