Outside, the afternoon was clear and warm. The CS7 Meridian was still on the tarmac, still grounded, still catching the light. A formal notice had been attached to the access stairs. Gavin looked at it for a moment as they walked toward the parking lot. It was a beautiful aircraft. That was still true. It was still true even with everything. Maybe more true in a way because it had never been the aircraft’s fault. The aircraft was just metal and composite and hydraulic lines and software designed by engineers who’d done their jobs honestly, built by technicians who’d done theirs. Grounded now because somebody had decided that the numbers in their personal accounts mattered more than the physics. The aircraft hadn’t done anything wrong. Neither had Gavin 3 years ago.
He thought about that for a moment. The strange, slightly uncomfortable thing of standing on the other side of it and recognizing that the outcome had been different this time, not because the system had worked, but because a captain had walked across a terminal at the right moment, and a woman smart enough to be dangerous, had also been honest enough to listen. Wesley held the door of the diner open, and Gavin walked through it. He sat down in a booth by the window. The menu was laminated and slightly sticky, and the specials board had a spelling error in it. The coffee when it came was the kind of diner coffee that tasted like it had been brewed around the time you arrived and not a moment sooner. Gavin drank it anyway.
His phone buzzed on the table. A text from the school. An automated reminder about the spring concert next Thursday. Bring a dish to share. Doors open at 6:00. He looked at it for a moment. Then he looked out the window at the tarmac at the aircraft sitting grounded in the afternoon sun. Then he looked back at the text and typed a reply to confirm he’d be there. He’d been held out of that aircraft once before by people who’d decided he didn’t belong. He’d spent 3 years finding his way back to the work and back to himself, one day at a time at the pace of a man who had other things to show up for. He wasn’t finished yet. There was still the board presentation, the FAA filing, the formal investigator interviews, the three other aircraft sitting in hangars waiting for the inspection that would tell him whether this problem went deeper than the one he’d already found. But for right now, in this particular moment, he was sitting in a diner booth with a man who’d once been his student and had 30 years later walked across a terminal for him, and the coffee was bad, and the menu had a spelling error. And somewhere across town, his daughter was in her classroom doing spelling of her own. And the day was what it was, large and complicated and full of things that weren’t resolved yet. He was still there for all of it. That was the thing that mattered. He picked up the menu and asked Wesley what the eggs were like.
The board meeting was called for 9:00 on a Thursday morning, 6 days after the grounded flight. Gavin knew about it because Marissa had told him the evening before in the same glass-walled conference room that had become something like a temporary office for the inspection team over the past week. She’d come in around 7 after most of the legal team had gone back to their hotel down across from him without her tablet for once, just her and a cup of coffee she’d been carrying around long enough that it was probably cold and told him that Derek’s legal team had spent the day lobbying the board members individually. “Lobbying them for what?” Gavin had asked. “To proceed with a modified demonstration flight,” she said. “This week before the federal investigators arrive on Monday.”
Gavin had looked at her for a moment. “That’s not possible. The aircraft is formally grounded. The FAA notification has been filed. No one can authorize a flight while—” “The board controls the company,” Marissa said. “And Derek’s argument apparently is that the grounding was premature. That the inspection findings are the opinion of a disgruntled former employee with a personal grievance, that the component issue is within manageable parameters, and that proceeding with the demonstration is necessary to protect the $2.4 billion in investor commitments that are contingent on the inaugural flight happening before the end of the quarter.” She said it flatly without inflection. The way you say something when the words themselves are already doing enough damage without your voice adding to it.
Gavin was quiet for a moment. Outside, through the glass wall, he could see the tarmac in the evening light, the CS7 sitting where it had been sitting all week. “He’s going to argue that to the board,” Gavin said, “in a room where the federal investigators aren’t present yet before the full forensic accounting is complete.” “Yes, and some of them will listen.” “At least four of them,” Marissa said. “Possibly five. The investor commitments are real, Gavin. The quarter end deadline is real. A $2.4 billion contingency is—” “That’s not an abstract number to people whose portfolios are tied to this company.” “So is a crashed aircraft,” Gavin said, “with 43 people aboard.” “I know that,” her voice didn’t change, but something behind it did. “I’m not telling you I agree with them. I’m telling you what tomorrow morning looks like.”