She touched Austin’s shoulder and whispered, “Safe flight,” and he said, “I’ll see you in July,” and they were gone.

When Dad said, “Would you come back with me?” Austin didn’t pause a moment. There was no thinking to be done, no considerations, no weighing one side or another. “Yes,” he said.

“I’ve been a crummy father,” said Dad. “That’s all there is to it. My life caved in, and I was glad to see my kid go, because then I could concentrate on how crummy my life was. And when we talked, and you needed me, it turned out I had to be on the next plane.”

That his father had not waited; that Dad dropped everything, grabbed a taxi, rushed to O’Hare Airport, found a plane, any plane, to take him to his son—it erased all the months of separation. “Is Mom living at the house still?” said Austin anxiously. “Will she be there when we get home?”

“She’s picking us up at the airport.”

Aus was so glad. “You two are back together?”

“I didn’t say that. I said she was picking us up at the airport.”

“Oh. What does that mean?”

“It means she’ll have a car, Aus. But we’ve both missed you terribly, and we’re both sorry we let you go so easily and missed a whole school year of you.” When his father gave a hug, it was quick and fierce, but now the hugs came in a row, one after another, as if Dad were counting out the days they’d missed.

“You sure it’s okay to leave before the end of the school year?” asked Dad.

“It’s okay.” Aus hugged his father back, and when he thought of Mom waiting for them at the airport, he didn’t care about anything that had gone wrong; not one harsh word mattered. He just wanted to see her.

“And Macey?” said his father tentatively.

Aus didn’t want to talk about Macey. So he just nodded.

It stabbed him that he was leaving her. She needed an ally, and he was the only one, and if she decided to wage a war now, she would fight alone.

He would have fought alongside her if he had stayed. But Austin was not making war. He was making peace.

As for Grandfather, Austin still ached to be the kid Grandfather could do neat things with. But that was gone.

The plane took off.

It would land in his city; his state.

Austin loved takeoff. Planes leaving the ground never seemed to be going fast enough, and the sense of risk, which he loved, enveloped him, and his pulse rose, and he wished he could be the pilot.

He had a sense of leaving a legacy to Macey: Mr. Sibley in 1959 and Venita in 1997 were hers now.