Naomi’s expression softened.
“No.”
“Why?”
She thought about her father.
“Because my dad fixed airplanes.”
Luis waited.
“He used to say if a machine is damaged, you don’t stand around celebrating that you were right about the damage.”
“You decide whether it can be repaired.”
“And if it can?”
“You repair it.”
Luis smiled.
“And if it can’t?”
Naomi looked toward him.
“You stop flying it.”
Ten years after Naomi first walked into the Whitmore Vale hangar, one of the original twelve aircraft was retired from Carter Meridian service.
Not because it failed.
Age.
Economics.
New technology.
It had flown thousands of hours safely after acquisition.
Naomi attended its final company flight.
That amused everyone.
The CEO who owned dozens of aircraft across subsidiaries insisted on being present for one retirement.
She sat near a window while the aircraft descended toward Baltimore.
Below, neighborhoods spread beneath the wing.
Somewhere down there, decades earlier, Samuel Carter had driven an old Chevrolet home after midnight shifts and placed oily work boots beside a kitchen door.
Naomi thought about calling him.
Then remembered, as grief sometimes made people forget for half a second, that she could not.
Samuel had died seven years before the fleet acquisition.
He never saw Carter Meridian buy the aircraft.
Never knew his daughter would eventually employ mechanics working under standards shaped partly by the things he taught her at a kitchen table.
As the plane landed, Naomi stayed seated while everyone else prepared to leave.
Grant Ellison, older and grayer now, sat across the aisle.
“You coming?”
“In a minute.”
He looked toward her.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
Grant smiled.
“You’re doing the dramatic CEO window stare.”
Naomi laughed.
“Get off my airplane.”
“Technically it’s being retired.”
“Get off my retired airplane.”
He left.
Naomi remained.
A maintenance technician entered from the cockpit area.
Young woman.
Maybe twenty-four.
Black.
Hair braided tightly beneath a headset band.
She stopped when she saw Naomi.
“Sorry, Ms. Carter. I thought the cabin was clear.”
“It is.”
Naomi stood.
The technician looked nervous.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Is the story true?”
“What story?”
“The seven hundred seventy million.”
Naomi smiled.
“Parts.”
The young woman looked disappointed.
“So nobody kicked a briefcase?”
“That part is true.”
“And you canceled the deal?”
“Yes.”
“Right there?”
“Yes.”
The woman smiled.
“That’s cold.”
Naomi laughed.
“I suppose.”
Then the technician became serious.
“My supervisor tells that story during training.”
Naomi groaned.
“That worries me.”
“He says the point isn’t that you were CEO.”
Naomi looked toward her.
“What does he say?”
“That everybody in the hangar waited until they knew who you were before deciding what happened mattered.”
Naomi became quiet.
The technician continued.
“He tells us if a mechanic with six months’ experience says something doesn’t look right, we don’t ask whether they’re important enough to stop the airplane.”
“We stop the airplane.”
Naomi looked through the window toward the wing.
Her father would have liked that.
She turned back.