* * *
The jet touched down at Hanscom Field at 8:34 p.m. Eastern. It was a beautiful landing, so gentle that Celeste never felt the wheels meet the runway, only heard the change in the engines, and she thought, distantly, that the man who had just told her she was the thing wrong in his airplane was very good at his job.
As they taxied in, she heard Theo's voice from the front of the cabin, high and clear and very serious. "Landing checklist complete. After-landing checklist. Lights. Flaps. Transponder."
And from behind the curtain, Ferris: "Copy that, First Officer. Nice work."
The door came down. A cold wet wind blew in, smelling of jet fuel and the sea. Dana came out of the cockpit first and helped Marcus with the bags, then helped Theo down the stairs, counting them with him, and Celeste saw a minivan waiting on the ramp with a magnetic sign on the door, OPEN SKY GROUND CREW, and a gray-haired woman in a fleece jacket beside it, waving.
Ferris came out last. He stood at the top of the stairs and watched the van load, and Celeste, who was still in her seat because she did not know when she was allowed to move, watched him watch.
Theo stopped at the van door. He turned around, the blue folder clutched to his chest, the red headphones on his head, and looked up at the jet. Not at Ferris. At the jet. Then he lifted one hand, flat, and held it up, and kept it there.
Ferris lifted his own hand, flat, and held it there too.
Then Theo climbed in, and the van drove away.
Celeste stood. Her legs were stiff. She gathered her laptop and her bag and her empty coffee cup with its brown ring, and she went down the aisle, and there by Jonah's seat, half tucked under the carpet edge where the cabin floor met the wall, was a piece of paper.
She bent and picked it up.
It was a drawing. Colored pencil. A Citation jet, white with a blue stripe, the tail number lettered carefully on the side, every row of rivets drawn in. Underneath, in the same big careful hand as the letter to Dr. Osei: FLIGHT 4. CAPTAIN WALT. FIRST OFFICER DANA. FIRST OFFICER THEO. In the cabin windows were small round faces. Theo had drawn everyone who would be on board. A big face for his father. A small one for himself. Faces for the captain and for Dana in the cockpit windows.