For the first time in years, Raymond obeyed her without argument.
The rescue team guided the neighbor toward the extraction point first. Raymond protested until Grace cut in over the radio.
“Dad. He goes first. You stay with the team and you move when they tell you.”
A pause.
“Copy,” he said.
The word was awkward in his mouth.
Smoke shifted across the clearing. Grace’s fellow pilot called out the change, and the crew adjusted. The rescue did not become safe because father and daughter had finally spoken honestly. Conditions remained unstable. Every movement had to follow the plan in front of them.
That discipline helped Grace.
She could not repair a funeral, a marriage, or years of silence from the cockpit. She could fly the aircraft.
Raymond reached the pickup point.
Grace saw him only briefly through the smoke: smaller than the father in her memory, jacket pulled over his mouth, one hand gripping the rescue team member’s arm. He looked up toward the aircraft.
He could not see her face.
She could see him.
The crew brought both men out.
Only after they were moving toward safety did Grace realize how hard she had been clenching her jaw.
Her fellow pilot glanced at her.
“You good?”
“For now.”
He nodded.
No one congratulated her. No one needed to.
At the evacuation center, Grace remained with the mission until relieved. By the time she reached the area where evacuees were being processed, Raymond had been checked for smoke exposure and was sitting on a folding chair beneath a gray blanket.
He looked older than he had over video calls relayed through her brother. His hair had thinned. The lines around his mouth seemed deeper.
Grace stopped several feet away.
Raymond looked up.
Neither moved.
Then he said, “You wore the uniform.”
Grace looked down at herself.
The last time he had mentioned her uniform, he had told her not to wear one to her mother’s funeral if she expected him to look at her.
“I was working,” she said.
“I know.”
