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CHAPTERONE
Ethan
“I’m notsure I feel comfortable with this,” my mother says as I pull the large blue tarp off the old plane. “When was the last time this thing was flown?”
I sigh as I step back and survey the old beast. “I’m not sure. When did Gramps lose his license?”
She chuckles with a sad smile. “Do you think losing his license would have stopped your grandfather from flying?”
I shake my head and smile. “No. That probably would have just made him fly even more.”
She crosses her arms as she turns back to the old plane with a worried look. “I don’t like this idea. It doesn’t feel safe.”
“It was Gramps’ last wish,” I say as I inspect the propellor.Is that a nest in there?I quickly move on before my mother sees it. “I have to fly it back.”
“You don’t,” she says firmly. “That was just like my father. I loved him, Ethan, but the man was reckless. You don’t have to follow in his footsteps. And you definitely don’t have to risk your life because he didn’t want to pay to have the plane shipped back to Florida. Come on now, use some common sense.”
Gramps was reckless, but that’s what I loved about him. He was the only one who got me. Sometimes in a family, there’s only one other person who understands you because you’re cut from the same cloth. You’re driven by the same things. No one else understood why I joined the Air Force, but he did. He told me it would be the best decision of my life when everyone else told me it would be a mistake. Well, old Gramps was right.
Hopefully, he’s right about this too.
We all flew down to Costa Rica when we heard that he was nearing the end. Lung cancer. The old devil smoked a pack a day and the habit finally caught up with him.
When I was saying goodbye to him for the last time, he asked me for one final favor. It was his dream to take one last adventure in his seaplane, but his time had run out.
“Take it for me, Ethan,” he whispered in that deep raspy voice. “Fly it back to Cape Coral for me. It will be the best thing that’s ever happened to you, I can feel it.”
Gramps and his premonitions. He always did have a knack for seeing what others couldn’t. He did pick those lottery numbers that won him half a million dollars. He took his winnings and bought a place on the beach in Costa Rica and had been living here since.
“Can the plane even fly?” I had asked him.
He just grinned under that ventilator he was connected to. “It will fly,” he said. “It takes you right where you need to go. Always.”
“Alright, Gramps,” I said, placating him. “I’ll fly it home for you.”
I was just telling an old man what he wanted to hear, but after he died and I helped sprinkle his ashes into the sea, I vowed to actually do it. I promised him—wherever he was—that I’d fly his plane the 1,200 miles back to our home.
“Ethan,” my mother says as I run my hand along the smooth belly of the plane. “I just lost my father. Don’t make me lose my only son too.”
I exhale slowly as I go over and hug her. She melts into my arms and wets my shoulder with tears.
“I’m an experienced pilot, Mom,” I remind her. “I flew in the Air Force and I flew those cargo planes up north, remember?”
“For one summer,” she says. “And that was nine years ago!”
“These planes were built solidly back in Gramps’ day,” I say as I turn and look at it. Geez, the left wing looks like it’s about to fall off and one of the propeller blades is bent.
“It doesn’t even have GPS,” she says, getting all worked up now. “How are you going to know where you are?”
“Maps.”
“Maps?”
“Yeah, Mom, maps. I’m a licensed pilot, I can read a map.”
She closes her eyes and shakes her head. “Why couldn’t you have taken after your other grandfather?”
“Pappy? The dermatologist?”
