Then he stopped.
“Wait.”
He turned it toward the overhead light.
“What?”
“Do you see this?”
He pointed under one wing.
There was a faint gray line I’d always assumed was a scratch.
He rubbed the surface gently with his thumb.
Letters appeared.
Tiny ones.
Almost erased by years of handling.
I couldn’t read them.
The captain could.
“I wrote that.”
“You?”
He nodded.
“What does it say?”
His eyes stayed on the toy.
“‘For when you forget I’m getting back in the cockpit tomorrow.'”
I stared at him.
“I don’t understand.”
He laughed softly.
“It was after one of the worst weeks I had. Daniel spent days convincing me that fear wasn’t the same thing as failure.”
He looked down at the writing.
“I wrote this as a joke because he kept carrying the airplane around during our talks. I told him I was getting back in the cockpit whether he liked it or not.”
