"It's not okay. You need a bandage."
"Mila..."
"I can do it. I know how. Diego showed me at the farmhouse."
The cabin went quiet. Then the sound of Jasper shifting, a small hiss of pain, and the rustle of fabric as Mila moved.
"Hold still," she said, and she sounded so much like me when I'd stitched Lorenzo back together that my throat closed.
"I'm holding still."
"No, you're not. You keep moving your head."
"Because you keep pulling the bandage too tight."
"It's supposed to be tight. That's how it works."
I kept my eyes on the horizon and let the tears run down my face without wiping them away. She'd called Zeus Patéras in Greek because that was the language he'd raised her in, the word he'd taught her. Papa was different. Papa was a word she'd chosen herself, in a language Zeus hadn't given her.
"There," Mila said. "Better?"
"Better." A pause. "Thank you, dochenka."
"You're going to be okay, Papa."
Another pause followed, longer this time. He caught his breath. Then he steadied.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "I am."
I wiped my face on my shoulder and let the tears dry on their own.
"Mila." I kept my voice easy, conversational, like we sat on the porch instead of bleeding in a Cessna. "Can I ask you something?"
"Yes."
"All those weeks at the farmhouse. You never said a word. Not to me, not to Jasper, not to anyone." I adjusted the yoke against a gust. "Why?"
The back seat went quiet. Then: "Patéras taught me not to talk to strangers."
The laugh that came out of me surprised us both.
"Fair enough," I said. "So, what changed?"
"You're not strangers anymore."
I glanced back. She said it the way she said everything now: direct and certain, like the conclusion was obvious and we were slow for not seeing it sooner. Jasper tightened his arm around her. He pressed his face into her hair and swallowed hard.
"No," I said. "We're not."
"You're family," she said. She tested the word like she was trying it on, turning it over in her mouth the way she'd turned over the puzzle boxes in her room. Then she nodded once, satisfied with the fit. "You're my family."
Jasper pressed his face harder into her hair. His shoulders shook once.
I turned back to the instruments because if I looked at them for one more second, I was going to lose it completely, and somebody had to fly this plane.
I checked the heading, and we pointed west, toward Morocco, toward home.
I hoped it was still standing.
