Not all the questions were light. They got into other topics, too.
One sunny day, as Ben stood on a small ladder to check the oil level in the Cessna’s engine, she asked him about his time in the Air Force. “Do you miss it?”
“I miss the brotherhood, the sense of purpose, like you’re a band of superheroes saving the world.” He bent over to peer at the dipstick; the pose made her mouth water. “My dad always saw me as the soft one in the family, you know that. Will was going to be a lawyer, Tobias was the fighter. Me, I was the lover.” He smiled ruefully at her over his shoulder, since only the two of them knew that they’d done everything in the book except make love.
“Dad didn’t have a whole lot of respect for that. When I was on active duty, I kept thinking ‘if only Dad could see me now.
