Arthur returned an hour later, his shoulders slumped, his face ashen. He moved through the kitchen like a ghost, not meeting Eleanor's concerned gaze or Robert's desperate, silent inquiry. He poured a glass of water, his hand trembling slightly, and drank it in one long, slow draught.
"How is he?" Eleanor finally asked, her voice hushed.
"The doctor's with him," Arthur said, his voice hollow. "Internal injuries. A broken back. He… he won't last the night." He set the glass down with a definitive click. "They said the wing just… came off. Like a bird shot from the sky."
Robert, who had been standing frozen by the doorway to the workshop, felt the words like a physical blow. The wing came off. The BT-9. It was the wing spar. The very thing he had known, the specific, preventable flaw he had held in his mind. The knowledge was a hot, corrosive poison in his veins.
He didn't say a word. He just turned and walked back into the workshop, the half-built bookcase a mocking monument to his impotence. He picked up a hammer, his grip so tight the wood of the handle groaned in protest. He wanted to smash something, to shatter the pristine silence, to scream his frustration to the uncaring, pre-dawn sky.
But he did nothing. He just stood there, weapon in hand, trembling with the effort of containment.
James Miller died just after midnight.
The news traveled through the small town of Oak Creek the next morning like a slow, cold fog. The flags were lowered to half-mast. The cheerful sign outside Miller's General Store was left unlit. The town, which had swelled with pride at his graduation, now collectively bowed its head in grief.
Robert and Arthur worked that day in a silence heavier than any that had come before. It was a silence filled with the ghost of a conversation they hadn't had, a choice that had been made. Arthur wouldn't look at him. Every time Robert glanced up, he saw the profile of a man carrying a burden he never asked for, a burden Robert had placed upon him.
Two days later was the funeral. The entire town turned out, filling the small white church to overflowing. Robert stood at the back with Arthur and Eleanor, feeling like a fraud, an intruder upon a sacred grief. He saw old Mr. Miller, his proud face collapsed into a map of sorrow, being supported by his wife. He saw the flag-draped coffin, a brutal, tangible reality of the death he had only known as a name on a plaque.
The pastor spoke of sacrifice, of a life cut short in the service of his country, even if that service had been in peacetime. He spoke of God's mysterious plan.
Robert wanted to vomit. There was no mystery. There was a design flaw. There was a minus sign where a plus should have been in a ledger of metal and stress. There was no plan, only physics, and he was the only one in the entire congregation who knew the equation.
As the mourners filed out, a somber procession heading for the cemetery, Robert's eyes were drawn to a group of young men in uniform, Jimmy's classmates from West Point. They stood tall and rigid, their faces masks of stoic grief. One of them, a dark-haired young man with intense, intelligent eyes, was staring at the coffin with a look that was not just sad, but deeply, furiously thoughtful.
The crowd shifted, and Robert lost sight of him. But the image was seared into his mind. Another young man in uniform, another potential name on a future plaque. The war was still years away, but it was already claiming its victims, one lost pilot at a time.
That evening, the silence in the house was unbearable. Eleanor had gone to bed early, exhausted from crying. Arthur sat in his chair by the cold fireplace, not reading, not whittling, just staring into the ashes.
Robert couldn't take it anymore. He stood before Arthur, his hands clenched at his sides.
"It was the wing spar," he said, his voice quiet but razor-sharp in the stillness. "On the BT-9. There's a structural weakness. It's a known… it will be a known issue. They'll eventually reinforce it, but not before more men die in training. I could have told them. We could have told them."
Arthur didn't look up. He continued to stare into the empty hearth. When he finally spoke, his voice was weary beyond measure.
"And what would you have said, Robert?" he asked, not with anger, but with a profound, devastating sadness. "'Pardon me, Dr. Miller, in my time we read about this in a book'? You would have been dragged away. We would have lost you. And Jimmy would still be dead."
He finally lifted his head, and his eyes were red-rimmed and full of a pain Robert couldn't fathom. "You carry the weight of what you know. I understand that now. It's a terrible weight. But I carry the weight of what is. And in this world, in this time, a man who talks like you do is a dead man. Or worse. My choice wasn't to let Jimmy die. My choice was to keep you alive."
The simple, brutal logic of it was inescapable. Arthur hadn't chosen a life over a principle; he had chosen Robert's life over Robert's freedom. He had chosen to keep their secret buried, even if it meant letting the earth settle over a coffin.
Robert had no response. The righteous fire in him guttered and died, leaving only cold, gray ash. He turned and walked away, climbing the stairs to his room.
He didn't take out his dead phone or his strange money. He didn't look at his student ID. He just stood at the window, looking out at the quiet, grieving town. James Miller was dead. Not a historical figure, but a young man from the corner store. And his death had just drawn a line in the sand of time, a line Robert now understood he could never cross. He was not a savior. He was not a prophet. He was a prisoner, and the walls of his prison were not made of years, but of the unchangeable, unbearable facts of the present. The echo of Jimmy Miller's life had faded, leaving behind only the chilling silence of a future that refused to be rewritten.