Not because the investigation required it, but because the principle required it. Which was that when a machine has been compromised in one place, you do not assume all other places are intact. Nolan Briggs reviewed the completed logbook 3 days after the regulatory hold on the aircraft was formally lifted, verified every entry from the first page to the last, and handed the book back to Grant without words in the way that experienced people confirm completed work. Not with praise, which would be insufficient, but with the act of returning authority to the person who holds it. Grant signed the maintenance release in the early morning before anyone else arrived at the field, using the pen his wife had given him when he opened the shop.
A plain steel pen engraved with a single word on the barrel, right. He added the date, the certification number, and the aircraft identifier, and placed the carbon copy in the logbook, and he did not feel the need to show it to anyone before putting the book back in its place. The first flight of Sterling One under the restored release was not a demonstration and was not a press event. It was a functional check flight conducted as functional checks are conducted with minimum crew and undivided attention. Nolan at the controls, the first officer in the right seat, and Grant at the systems monitoring station in the cabin watching the flight management data the way he had watched it in simulations for 6 months of rebuild.
Vivian was the only passenger seated across from Grant and she did not speak for the first 40 minutes of the flight which Grant took as evidence that she understood the occasion well enough to treat it with the respect it deserved. When she finally spoke, she asked him whether he believed the aircraft was safe. Not whether the paperwork was in order, not whether the legal exposure had been resolved, but whether he believed it. He said that every question had been answered, every system had been verified, and every record was accurate and complete, and that in his professional judgement the aircraft was airworthy, and that this was the first time since the project began that he had been able to say that with certainty without a reservation he was keeping to himself. They landed at Blackridge Field 2 hours after departure and the aircraft touched down cleanly the way a well-made thing moves when all of its parts are in their proper place and functioning as designed.