He did not raise his voice. He did not lower it either. He said it in the plain, even tone of a man reading an instrument aloud, and the effect on Theo was not immediate, but it was real. The sobbing hitched.
"First Officer Hale. I've got a problem up front and I need your help with it."
Theo's face was wet and blotched red. His eyes went to Ferris's shoulder, to the four gold stripes on the epaulet, and stayed there.
"We're level at flight level three-seven-zero," Ferris went on. "Autopilot's engaged. Dana's got the airplane. But I came back here and I find our logbook's not where it's supposed to be. You know a crew can't finish a flight without the logbook. You remember what I told you about that."
"Every flight goes in the log," Theo said. His voice was hoarse and wobbling. "Every flight. Or it didn't happen."
"Or it didn't happen. That's right. So where is it?"
Theo's eyes moved, finally, from the epaulet to the floor, to the spiral notebook lying face down under Jonah's seat. Jonah, who had been sitting frozen, bent and picked it up and held it out, and Ferris took it and smoothed the bent page against his knee and handed it to Theo, and Theo clutched it to his chest with both arms.
"Good," Ferris said. "That's good. Now. Your dad and I are going to pick up the rest of it. Every page. We're going to put them back in order. You know the order better than us, so you're in charge. You tell us. What's first?"
Theo sniffed, enormous and wet. "Schedule," he said. "Schedule is first."
Marcus found it, a sheet of paper with a row of small pictures across it—a car, an airplane, a building with a red cross, a bed—and held it up.
"Schedule," said Ferris. "Check. What's next?"
"About Me."