“Something urgent?”
“Not yet.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m deciding.”
“About?”
“If it matters.”
Ethan sat opposite her.
“That sounds serious.”
Mia looked at him.
“Big job today?”
“Routine inspection.”
“At the airport?”
“Private terminal.”
“The helicopter place?”
“The helicopter place.”
“The expensive helicopter place?”
Ethan smiled.
“They’re all expensive.”
“How expensive?”
“Some of them?”
Mia nodded.
“Very.”
“That’s not a number.”
“No.”
She narrowed her eyes.
Ethan surrendered.
“The largest one over there is around eighteen million.”
Her spoon stopped.
“For one helicopter?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because people will pay eighteen million for one.”
She stared at him.
“That doesn’t answer why.”
“It answers economics.”
“Not engineering.”
Ethan smiled into his coffee.
“You’re getting dangerous.”
Mia wrote something.
He tried to lean forward.
She covered the page.
“What?”
“Nothing ready yet.”
The notebook was never secret.
It was simply patient.
Mia released thoughts when she believed they were finished.
Halfway through breakfast, she asked, “Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“If somebody knows something important and nobody asks them, should they still say it?”
Ethan looked up.
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“Whether it actually matters.”
“What if it matters a lot?”
“Then yes.”
“What if people don’t want to hear it?”
Ethan sat back.
The question opened an old door in his memory.
His father had once answered almost the same question.
Usually, his father had said, that is when it matters most.
Ethan repeated the words.
Mia considered them.
Then wrote one sentence.
Ethan drove her to school at 7:15.
Three traffic lights.
One railroad crossing.
Two right turns.
A bakery on Grant Avenue that made the truck smell like cinnamon for nearly a full block every morning.
Mia looked out the passenger window.
“Are you going to tell somebody something today?”
Ethan glanced over.
“What makes you ask that?”
“You answered too fast.”
He laughed.
“No idea.”
She nodded.
“You will.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t.”
She opened the notebook.
“But I’m writing it down in case I’m right.”
Ethan dropped her at school, waited until she entered the building, then drove toward Hartwell Aviation Services.
Hartwell Aviation occupied several hangars along the private side of the municipal airport.
The facility handled executive aircraft belonging to Hartwell Capital and several outside clients.
Ethan’s official position was senior maintenance systems technician.
The title was accurate.
It was also incomplete.
Almost nobody there knew how incomplete.
The workshop Ethan used occupied the oldest maintenance hangar on the property.
Tools lined one wall.
Inspection equipment filled another.
Technical manuals sat in organized shelves, though most current information was digital now.
Above Ethan’s workbench hung a small white card beneath a strip of clear tape.
MACHINES ALWAYS TELL THE TRUTH.