The three days before his departure were a waking nightmare, a slow, painful unraveling of the fragile life Robert had built. The house, once a sanctuary, now felt like a holding cell. Every meal with Arthur and Eleanor was steeped in a silence thick with unspoken fear and sorrow. The workshop, his place of solace and purpose, was now just a collection of tools and unfinished projects—a life interrupted.
Arthur was a storm contained. He spoke in monosyllables, his movements sharp and angry. He wasn't angry at Robert, not truly. He was angry at the world, at the inexorable pull of a government that had reached into his home and plucked out his secret. He spent the final day sharpening every tool in the shed to a razor's edge, the screech of the file on metal a fitting soundtrack to their shared anxiety.
Eleanor, in contrast, busied herself with a frantic, heartbreaking practicality. She packed a small, worn suitcase for Robert with the clothes she had made for him, along with a few of Arthur's old shirts. She wrapped sandwiches for his journey and tucked a twenty-dollar bill of 1935 currency into a hidden pocket, her hands fluttering like trapped birds.
"Are you sure you have enough socks? It'll be colder up north," she fretted, her voice trembling. "And you must write to us. Let us know you're… safe."
The word "safe" hung in the air, a desperate, impossible hope.
The evening before he was to leave, Arthur finally broke his silence. He gestured for Robert to follow him out to the back porch. The night was cool, the sky a vast, indifferent tapestry of stars he knew by different names.
Arthur leaned on the railing, his broad back to Robert for a long moment. When he turned, his face in the moonlight was etched with a profound weariness.
"I don't know what you are, son," he said, his voice low and rough. "A genius, a ghost, or an angel sent to try us. But I know you're a good man. You've got a good heart in a world that's about to turn very, very cruel."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, carefully whittled wooden object. It was a bird in flight, its wings swept back, its form sleek and strong. It was carved from a piece of scrap oak, but the detail was exquisite. It was a piece of art.
"I've been working on this," Arthur said, pressing it into Robert's hand. "A swallow. They always find their way home."
Robert looked down at the carving, the smooth wood warm from Arthur's pocket. It was more than a gift; it was a plea, a testament, a father's blessing for a son he was losing to a war he couldn't comprehend. Tears he didn't know he had left welled in his eyes.
"Thank you, Arthur," he whispered, his voice thick. "For everything."
Arthur gripped his shoulder, his calloused hand firm and real. "You listen to me. You go to that place. You look. You listen. You be the smartest man in the room, but for God's sake, act like the dumbest. Your life depends on it. Our lives depend on it." His eyes were fierce in the gloom. "You come back to us. You hear me? This is your home."
The next morning, a black, unmarked sedan pulled up in front of the house precisely at eight o'clock. John Albright stepped out, looking just as crisp and impassive as he had days before.
The goodbye was swift and brutal. Eleanor hugged him tightly, sobbing quietly into his shoulder before turning and fleeing into the house. Arthur shook his hand, a hard, desperate grip, his eyes saying everything his voice could not.
"Ready, Mr. Vale?" Albright asked, holding the car door open.
Robert nodded, unable to speak. He slid into the leather-upholstered back seat, the small suitcase and the wooden swallow his only possessions. He didn't look back as the car pulled away. He couldn't. He kept his eyes fixed forward, watching the only home he had in this time—the house, the workshop, the two people who had saved him—shrink and disappear in the rearview mirror.
The familiar streets of Oak Creek gave way to open road. The putter of the sedan's engine was a world away from the noisy rumble of Arthur's truck. Albright sat in the passenger seat, occasionally making a quiet remark to the driver, but otherwise leaving Robert to his thoughts.
Robert stared out the window at the passing landscape. He was leaving the small, contained world of his exile and heading straight for the epicenter of the very storm he had been dreading. Wright Field. The heart of American aviation development. A place filled with the sharpest minds of this era, men who would be legends in his history books.
He was going to walk among them, a ghost with a head full of their future. He would see the prototypes of planes he knew as museum pieces. He would hear the problems they were struggling with, problems for which he held the solutions in his mind like loaded weapons.
The weight of Arthur's warning settled on him. Act like the dumbest.
He curled his fingers around the wooden swallow in his pocket, its smooth wings a tangible link to the life he was leaving behind. He was no longer Robert Vale, the castaway. He was Robert Vale, the consultant. A man with a past he could not reveal and a future he was now, terrifyingly, expected to help build.
The car sped east, carrying him away from the quiet past and into the roaring, uncertain heart of the coming storm. The interview was over. The real test was just beginning.