Radio.
Exactly what systems were supposed to do.
Lily arrived later with the ambulance.
She saw the wing symbol on a volunteer’s jacket.
For one second she remembered being seven.
A freezing man.
A soup cup.
Shaking hands.
After the family was safe, Lily called Everett.
He answered on the fifth ring.
“What?”
“You sleeping?”
“I’m seventy-nine.”
“Of course I’m sleeping.”
She laughed.
“They worked.”
“What?”
“The winter team.”
Everett became quiet.
“The family on Sixteen?”
“Yes.”
“Everybody okay?”
“Yes.”
He exhaled.
“Good.”
Lily leaned against the ambulance.
“Everett.”
“What?”
“I think you fixed it.”
He immediately answered:
“No.”
She smiled.
“You helped.”
“That I’ll accept.”
He paused.
“You fixed something too.”
“What?”
“An old man.”
Lily closed her eyes.
“You’re emotional because it’s late.”
“Probably.”
Everett died two years later.
Heart failure.
Peacefully.
Not on a motorcycle.
He would have found that disappointing.
Sarah and Lily were with him.
So were several riders.
The room was too crowded.
Everett complained.
“You people spent forty years refusing orders.”
“Now suddenly nobody leaves when asked.”
A rider laughed.
Lily sat beside the bed.
She held the wing pin.
Everett noticed.
“You kept it.”
“Of course.”
“Good.”
He reached for her hand.
His once enormous grip had weakened.
Lily closed both hands around his.
Exactly as she had around the soup cup decades earlier.
Everett smiled faintly.
“Look at that.”
“What?”
“Tables turned.”
Lily cried.
Everett looked toward Sarah.
Then Lily.
“I spent half my life thinking legacy meant people remembering your name.”
He breathed slowly.
“It doesn’t.”
Lily leaned closer.
“What does it mean?”
“Something good keeps working after nobody needs your name anymore.”
He closed his eyes briefly.
Then opened them.
“Promise me something.”
“What?”
“Don’t let them turn me into a saint.”
Lily laughed through tears.
“That’s impossible.”
“I was difficult.”
“Yes.”
“Stubborn.”
“Yes.”
“Wrong often.”
“Very.”
Everett looked offended.
“Could hesitate.”
Lily smiled.
He did too.
Then his expression softened.
“Tell the truth.”
“I will.”
“Especially the bad parts.”
“Why?”