PART 9:

I have to do the project thing,” she said. “The presentation’s tomorrow.” “I know.” She paused at the doorway. “Are you going to be rich now?” He almost laughed. “No.” “Okay.” She said and went upstairs. And Victoria called at 7:00 that evening. Not a text, not an email, a direct call, which struck Ethan as an oddly old-fashioned choice for someone who ran a company with the efficiency of a military operation.

He answered on the second ring. “I’ve been doing preliminary research on aviation training programs,” she said without preamble. “No. How are you? No. Is this a good time?” He found he didn’t mind. “There are a handful of existing models that the well-known ones attached to major carriers, a few smaller regional ones. Most of them are academically focused.

Flight theory, regulatory compliance, not a lot of hands-on technical work with actual aircraft.” “No,” Ethan agreed. “Most of the good technical learning happens on the job. By the time someone’s in a position where they’re working on real aircraft, they’ve already had to figure out how to get there.” “Which is the part that the money filters,” Victoria said.

“Yes.” “I talked to our foundation director today and to two people on my board who I trust to give me honest assessments rather than just agreeing with me.” A brief pause. “The concept is viable. More than viable, honestly. There’s a significant gap in the industry for hands-on technical training at the apprenticeship level that’s accessible to people without existing financial resources.

” Ethan leaned against the kitchen counter. Through the ceiling, he could hear Sophie moving around in her room. The particular pattern of footsteps that meant she was pacing while she practiced something, which was what she did before presentations. “What would a program like that actually look like?” he said.

“The “That’s what I want to figure out with you,” Victoria said. “Not at me, with you.” She said it in a way that made the distinction clear. This wasn’t a PR conversation, wasn’t a billionaire being performatively generous. “You’re the one who knows what training actually matters, what your father gave you that the official programs didn’t, what the gap actually looks like from the inside.

I don’t have a background in running programs,” he said. “I didn’t have a background in running a company at 24. I figured it out.” “That’s not the same.” “No,” she agreed. “It’s not. I had more resources than you did. But the principle applies. You know the problem better than I do. That matters more than knowing how to run a program because that part can be learned.

” He was quiet for a moment. “My father kept 11 notebooks,” he said. “Everything he learned. He meant them to be passed on. He just never built the mechanism for it.” “So let’s build the mechanism,” Victoria said. It was delivered flatly, matter-of-factly, with none of the inspirational inflection that people usually put on that kind of sentence.

Just, “This is a problem. Here’s the next step.” He found that quality in her extremely easy to work with. “I want to be honest with you about something,” he said. “Go ahead.” “I have a shop I can’t close, a daughter I need to pick up from school and make dinner for and drive to things. I’m not I can’t be someone who goes to galas and gives speeches and appears in press releases.

” “Good,” she said. “I have enough of those people.” He didn’t quite know what to do with that. “Two days I said,” she continued. “I’m calling it 7:00 at night so you know I’ve been working on it. Can you come in Thursday? Sit down with me and the foundation director and start building something real?” “Thursday I have a repair job in the morning.

Afternoon? Yeah, afternoon works. 2:00, she said. Come to the main building, not the hangar. Ask for Sandra at the front desk. Okay. A brief pause. In the silence, he could hear her doing something. Papers, maybe, or a keyboard. She was a person who was always in the middle of something. He was already sure of that. One more thing, she said.

Yeah? The million dollars. I understand you don’t want it for yourself. But the offer was public, and I intend to honor it one way or another. Whether it goes into the program directly or into a separate structure we set up, it’s going into something. I need you to understand that this isn’t optional on my end.

I understand, he said. Good. Another brief pause. Your daughter. You mentioned her earlier today. Sophie. How old? Eight. Is she curious about what you do? He thought about Sophie on the stool, turning the test connector over in her hands, asking exactly the right questions in exactly the right order. Yeah, he said. She is.

Bring her Thursday, Victoria said. Kids who grew up around this work and still find it interesting. That’s the demographic we’re trying to reach. Ethan was quiet for a moment. He was thinking about Sophie asking, “Why didn’t they just look at the file?” And about how most 8-year-olds wouldn’t have thought to ask that.

And about how his father would have loved her. I’ll ask her, he said. She has opinions about her schedule. For the first time, he heard something that was unmistakably amusement in Victoria Ashford’s voice. Brief, unguarded, and quickly re-contained. Of course she does, she said. Thursday at 2:00. She hung up. Ethan stood in the kitchen for a moment after the call ended, holding the phone at his side, looking at the refrigerator.

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