Part 4
Dana slipped Victor’s jacket from her shoulders and handed it back.
He accepted it without trying to help her stand. She was grateful for that. She needed the seat arm, a firm place for her right foot, and a few seconds to make the left leg take its share.
Nathan started to rise, but she shook her head gently.
“Give me a minute, Captain.”
She carried the duffel toward the lavatory. Elaine stood beside the door, keeping the narrow space clear.
Changing took longer than Dana wanted. There was nowhere useful to put her elbow, and bending for her shoes sent a sharp complaint through her knee. She paused with one hand against the wall, waited, then finished fastening the uniform.
The mirror gave her only pieces of herself at once: the gold oak leaves, the neat blue collar, the scar above it. She adjusted the ribbons, including the Purple Heart and the Distinguished Flying Cross, and ran a thumb beneath a fold that hadn’t settled properly.
Then she opened the door.
Nathan and Peter stood when she entered the aisle. Both saluted.
This time she returned it.
Her hand was steady. She held the salute for a moment, lowered it, and looked at Nathan.
“Your dad’s waiting. Let’s go.”
Elaine led them off the aircraft and through a service access beside the jet bridge. At the bottom of the stairs, cold rain struck Dana’s cap and darkened the shoulders of her coat.
The honor guard was already in position beneath the wing.
Beyond the uniformed soldiers and airmen stood baggage handlers in reflective vests and airport officers with rain collecting on their hat brims. Nobody spoke. One of the baggage workers had removed his cap and held it against his chest.
Nathan’s mother and younger sister waited to one side under an umbrella. His mother lifted a hand when she saw him, then let it fall. He went to them briefly before taking his place beside Dana.
The cargo door opened.
A level loader brought the flag-draped transfer case out from the hold. Six white-gloved pallbearers received it and settled their grips before moving together.
Dana raised her hand at the command to salute.
The flag passed beneath the aircraft that had carried Ray west. Rain tapped against the fabric of her sleeve. She followed the case with her eyes, keeping her body still even as her knee began to tremble from standing.
For years, an unexpected smell in a parking lot or a burst of static on a radio could put her back inside the wreck. She had learned to wait those moments out without letting anyone see.
Now she could hear water running from the edge of the wing. She could smell wet pavement and the wool of her uniform.
As the pallbearers passed her, she spoke barely above a breath.
“You can stand down, Ray. You’re home.”
She kept her salute until the hearse door closed.
Nathan remained beside her. When she finally lowered her hand, he offered his arm without looking down at her leg, and she took it for the few steps across the wet pavement.
The formation began to release in quiet, practiced movements. A baggage handler stepped back toward his equipment. One of the airmen carefully adjusted the empty loader before moving it away.
Nathan’s mother crossed to them with the umbrella hanging unused at her side. Water had soaked the front of her coat.
Dana started to speak.
The other woman reached for her hand instead.
They stood together while rain gathered along the umbrella’s closed edge and fell onto the pavement between their shoes.
Above them, Victor waited behind the glass of the jet bridge with the other passengers.
His phone had been vibrating in his pocket. When it stopped, he took it out, silenced it, and put it away without opening the meeting reminder.
Below, the woman from 18C was holding another woman’s hand beside a hearse. Her duffel rested against her ankle, the blank place on its strap turned outward.
Victor stayed until the vehicle had gone.
For years afterward, he would remember his own impatient sigh while she struggled into the seat. Airport noise would bring it back with an unwelcome clarity, along with the sight of her scarred hand raised in the rain.
Inside the terminal, Dana sat with the duffel between her feet while the family’s ground arrangements were finished. Nathan came over after his mother and sister had stepped away together.
“You think you’ll fly again?” he asked.
She looked up at him.
“As a passenger,” he added quickly. “Sorry. That came out wrong.”
“I understood.”
He sat beside her, leaving enough space for her to straighten her leg.
Dana watched a drop of rain work its way from the brim of her cap onto the tile.
“I don’t know yet.”
Nathan nodded. He didn’t try to persuade her.
“For a long time, whenever I thought about that valley, I got stuck at the same place,” she said. “The knee. Losing the cockpit. Everything I couldn’t get back.”
She turned the cap in her hands.
“Today I got farther.”
Nathan reached down and set the duffel upright when it began to tip. His father’s name was on the folded orders in her pocket. Her own was still missing from the strap.
She attended the burial and stayed until the duty she had accepted was finished.
Afterward, she did not abandon the hoodie. When she traveled, she still sometimes drew the collar up before she noticed what her hand was doing. Crowded aisles remained difficult, and she continued to take her time getting into a seat.
But the old patches went back onto the duffel. A fresh name strip joined them, sewn carefully through canvas that had already outlasted several sets of stitches.
People occasionally asked about the limp. She no longer always found a way to change the subject. Sometimes she gave them only a few words; sometimes, if there was time, she told them about a ground team and a man named Ray.
And when she set the bag beside her now, she left the name facing out.