Chapter 10: Houston Night

Grady took his sister by the arm and walked her down the hill.

Lorna looked back once, over her shoulder, at the grave.

They left the wreath leaning against the stone.

Loyd sat down on the snowy bench beside it.

"Tell me," I said.

"Son."

"Tell me where you were."

He looked at his hands.

"She was home, at the end," he said.

"We set up a bed in the sitting room, so she could see the maple."

Dinah had gone very still behind me.

"That whole winter she kept asking about your engine."

"She knew about me?"

"She read about you in a magazine."

"She said, 'That boy is going to light a fire under the sky, and you should be there.'"

He swallowed.

"The test was March fourteenth, and the nurse said it could be weeks."

"She heard me book the flight, and she took my hand."

His voice cracked.

"She said, 'Go.'"

"You didn't have to."

"I said I'd watch it on a screen. She said I'd watched other people's lives from the edge of the room for forty years."

"She said, 'Go and stand where you can feel the ground shake.'"

He wiped his face with his sleeve.

"So I went. I stood at the back behind a fence in a borrowed hat."

"Your engine lit, the whole world shook, and I was so proud of you I couldn't breathe."

My own breath was gone.

I remembered that night.

The roar and the cheering and the weeping engineers.

For one second I had looked at the back of the crowd and thought I saw a broad stooped shape in a tan jacket.

I'd told myself I was tired.

"My phone buzzed in my pocket," Loyd said. "I didn't pick up. I thought, one more minute."

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