12. Declan
Declan
The Foundation building smells like fresh paint, sawdust, and the kind of optimism people only risk putting into unfinished rooms.
I stand near the entrance of the new child development wing with a rolled set of plans tucked under one arm, watching two contractors debate ceiling access above what will eventually become a sensory room.
Graham asked me to walk the site before the next merger review, partly because operations needed another set of eyes on the expansion timeline and partly because he knows I’m better at spotting future problems when someone else is responsible for pretending they don’t exist.
Normally, this kind of visit would be another item on my calendar.
Necessary, useful, and easy enough to complete between calls.
The Foundation, however, has a way of making business feel uncomfortably human.
Every room I pass has a purpose that doesn’t fit neatly into spreadsheets.
Family counseling, early learning support, occupational therapy, and resource coordination for parents who are already carrying too much and still being asked to carry more.
Allison, the site director, walks beside me with a tablet in one hand and the calm expression of someone who has spent months translating construction delays into language donors will not panic over.
“The family resource room will be here,” she says, gesturing through an open doorway. “We widened the entry after the accessibility review.”
“Good,” I say, marking the note on the plans. “If a parent has to fight their way into the room before they even reach services, we’ve failed before the appointment starts.”
Her eyes flick toward me, surprised for half a second before she smiles. “That’s exactly what Tessa said.”
I make a sound that is not quite a laugh. “Tessa is usually right.”
“She’ll be thrilled to hear you admit that.”
“She’ll have to survive without knowing.”
We continue down the hall, stepping around stacked boxes of flooring samples and plastic sheeting taped against doorframes.
Somewhere deeper in the building, children’s voices rise and fall in excited bursts, the sound strange and bright against the unfinished walls.
Allison glances toward the activity room with a fond kind of resignation.
“The field trip arrived early.”
“Field trip?”
“Local elementary school. They’re touring the space and doing an aviation project in the activity room. The museum donated model airplane kits.”
I stop walking, not because of the airplanes, not exactly. The word elementary catches first. Then aviation. Then the distant sound of a child laughing with the kind of unfiltered joy adults spend fortunes trying to rediscover.
Allison notices my pause. “Everything okay?”
“Fine,” I say, because it’s possible to be fine and suddenly aware that the universe has a sense of humor that borders on cruel.
We reach the activity room a minute later.
The room is organized chaos. Folding tables sit in loose rows across the open space, each one covered with wooden airplane pieces, construction paper, markers, child-safe scissors, tape, and enough glue to make every adult in the room appear slightly nervous.
A teacher stands near the front, reminding everyone that wings belong on airplanes and not on foreheads.
A volunteer crouches beside a little girl whose propeller has apparently suffered a catastrophic failure.
I’m still taking in the room when a familiar voice cuts through the noise.
“Mr. Watch!”
Flynn is halfway out of his chair before the teacher can remind him to walk.
He remembers at the last second and converts the run into an urgent speed-walk that somehow looks less safe than running.
In both hands, he carries a half-built wooden airplane with one wing drooping at a deeply troubling angle.
I glance toward his teacher, then back at him, trying to decide which boundary applies when your son unexpectedly appears in the middle of a Foundation site visit holding a broken airplane and looking at you as though you’re the obvious solution.
“You’re here,” he says.
“So are you.”
“It’s a field trip.”
“I gathered that.”
“We’re making airplanes, but mine has a problem.”
He holds the model up for inspection, and the left wing immediately slides farther out of place.
“I see that.”
“Can you fix it?”
The question is simple enough to answer and complicated enough to make my chest tighten. I look toward the teacher again, and she offers a quick smile.
“If you have a few minutes, he could probably use another set of hands. The glue is winning right now.”
A few minutes seems safe, even reasonable.
A few minutes, I learn almost immediately, is a lie told by people who have never been handed a wooden airplane by a six-year-old with serious opinions about wing placement.
Flynn leads me back to his table with complete confidence, as though my agreement was never in doubt.
The moment he sets the airplane down, the left wing gives up entirely and drops onto the table with a soft clatter.
Flynn sighs with the exhausted disappointment of a man facing yet another supply-chain failure.
“It keeps doing that.”
“I can see why that might be frustrating.”
“I think the glue is wrong.”
“That seems possible.”
“Or I used too much.”
“That also seems possible.”
He gives me a look that suggests diplomacy has no place in aviation repair. “It was too much.”
“Then we have identified the problem.”
He nods, satisfied, and pushes the airplane toward me. “Now we fix it.”
There are days when I negotiate with men who believe they control entire industries. None of them have ever issued instructions with Flynn’s level of certainty.
I take the chair beside him and study the mess of glue, wood, and earnest ambition in front of us.
The model itself is simple enough, but the wing has been placed slightly too far back, and the drying glue has created a ridge that prevents it from sitting flat.
Flynn watches my face as though waiting to see whether I understand the gravity of the situation.
“We may need to clean this part first,” I say.
“With the wet paper towel?”
“That would be my recommendation.”
He leans closer and lowers his voice. “The teacher said not too wet because then everything gets soggy.”
“Sound advice.”
“I know things.”
“I’m beginning to notice.”
That earns me a grin so sudden and familiar that I have to look back down at the airplane for a second.
The next ten minutes disappear into glue removal and wing realignment.
Flynn narrates most of the repair, occasionally correcting my technique with the firm patience of a person accustomed to adults needing guidance.
When I use too much pressure, he tells me airplanes are delicate.
When I hold the wing at the wrong angle, he shifts my hand with sticky fingers and says, “More straight, please.” When I ask whether the propeller has to spin, he stares at me as though I have suggested the pilot sit on the roof.
“Yes,” he says. “That’s the point.”
“Of course.”
“You didn’t know?”
“I suspected. I wanted confirmation from an expert.”
He accepts this with a solemn nod.
At some point, the little girl across the table slides her own plane toward me.
“My tail fell off.”
Flynn looks at it critically. “That’s bad.”
“I know.”
I glance between them, then at the table of supplies. “All right. Let’s form a repair queue.”
“What’s a queue?” Flynn asks.
“A line.”
“Then why didn’t you say line?”
“Because adults like making simple things sound more complicated.”
He thinks about that, then nods. “That’s true.”
From across the room, one of the volunteers laughs.
I should check my phone. The thought comes and goes without much force.
Carl has probably sent me at least three messages.
Marcus may be looking for an update. Graham will eventually want to know whether the site can support the expansion timeline without embarrassing everyone involved.
And for the first time in a long time, none of it pulls me away.
I’m sitting in a half-finished activity room with glue on my fingers, a crooked airplane in front of me, and Flynn beside me explaining why pilots need snacks because “flying makes people hungry even when they’re sitting.
” Two more children join the table after discovering we have tape, and before I fully understand how it happens, I have become responsible for structural repairs on four aircraft and one paper runway that has been declared “too bumpy for landing.”
Flynn takes this responsibility very seriously.
He assigns jobs. He distributes paper towels.
He tells a boy named Ethan that propellers are not for poking people, which seems both accurate and necessary.
When the teacher comes by to check on us, she looks at my rolled sleeves, the glue on my watch, and the row of wounded airplanes waiting for repairs.
“Everything under control?” she asks.
Flynn answers before I can. “Mostly.”
The teacher wisely accepts that and moves on.
I laugh then, not because anything is particularly funny, but because the whole thing is absurdly ordinary.
There’s nothing impressive happening here.
No deal being won. No boardroom being managed.
No crisis requiring a controlled statement or a quiet call to legal.
Just children, glue, crooked wings, and the small satisfaction of helping a little boy fix something he cares about.
Peace, I discover, doesn’t always arrive dramatically. Sometimes it sits beside you at a craft table and tells you your wing is still crooked.
“You’re smiling,” Flynn says.
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
“Is that allowed?”
He shrugs. “I guess.”
A fair ruling.
We manage to repair his plane on the third attempt. The wing dries straight enough to satisfy him, the propeller spins after only minor negotiation, and the tail sits at a slight angle Flynn declares “fine because airplanes can still be brave if they’re a little weird.”
I have no argument for that.