Chương 2
Louise answered instead.
“Because she knew Dad.”
“Louise, what are you talking about?”
“I saw her when we got on.”
Mara stared at the woman’s profile.
Nothing about it was familiar.
The orange shirt.
The sunglasses resting in curly hair.
The flushed cheeks that had now lost most of their color.
“No,” the woman said.
It came too quickly.
Louise’s eyes narrowed.
“You were at Dad’s work.”
“I don’t know what you think you saw.”
“I saw you.”
“Louise.”
Mara heard warning enter her own voice.
Her daughter flinched.
That hurt worse than the stranger’s words had.
Mara softened immediately.
“Honey, show me.”
Louise hesitated.
That hesitation changed everything.
Louise had hidden something.
Mara could see it now in the way she held the tablet too close to herself.
“How long have you had this video?”
Louise looked down.
“A while.”
“How long?”
No answer.
“Lou.”
“Since after the funeral.”
Mara stared at her.
The woman beside Louise reached for the call button.
Then stopped.
Her hand remained suspended beneath it.
Mara noticed.
So did Louise.
“Why are you scared?” Louise asked.
“I’m not scared.”
“You look scared.”
“Don’t speak to me like that.”
“You told my mom she should feed Noah in a bathroom.”
“That has nothing to do with this.”
“No,” Louise said.
“It doesn’t.”
Mara stood.
This time she moved into the aisle.
A flight attendant was coming toward them now, alerted perhaps by the gathering attention or simply by the instinct experienced crew members developed for trouble.
“Louise, give me the tablet.”
Her daughter handed it over.
The screen showed Daniel.
Mara forgot the airplane.
She forgot the stranger.
She forgot, briefly, how to breathe.
Daniel stood in the parking garage beneath the medical office building where he had worked as an operations manager.
He wore the blue button-down shirt Mara had donated three weeks after his funeral because it still smelled faintly of his deodorant.
The timestamp was from eleven days before his death.
Someone had apparently set his phone against the dashboard of his car.
Daniel was not alone.
The woman in the orange shirt stood several feet from him.
Her hair was different, straighter and shoulder length, but the face was unmistakable.
The video had no clear dialogue at first because of traffic echoing through the garage.
Then Daniel stepped closer to the phone.
“You can’t keep changing the records, Karen.”
The woman beside Louise shut her eyes.
Mara looked at her.
“Karen?”
“My name is not Karen.”
Daniel’s voice continued from the tablet.
“You know exactly what happens if somebody audits those files.”
The approaching flight attendant stopped beside Mara.
“Is everything okay here?”
Nobody answered.
On the screen, the woman said something too distant for the microphone to capture.
Daniel responded clearly.
“I’m not signing it.”
Mara’s knees weakened.
Daniel had died eleven days later when his car crossed the center line on a wet county road after midnight.
The police had found no mechanical failure.
No alcohol.
No drugs.
Nothing except a widowed wife who had been told that exhaustion, rain, and one terrible second could explain almost anything.
Karen finally looked up at Mara.
Her hostility was gone.
In its place was something far less simple.
“Turn that off,” she whispered.
Mara did not.
“Why?”
Karen looked toward the passengers watching them.
“Not here.”
The flight attendant’s expression sharpened.
“Ma’am, do you know this passenger?”
Mara barely heard her.
On the tablet, Daniel stepped out of frame.
His final words came from somewhere near the driver’s door.
“If anything happens, she gets everything.”
The recording ended.
Mara stared at the black screen.
Her reflection stared back, pale and hollow-eyed, with Daniel’s widow still wearing Daniel’s ring.
Louise reached for her hand.
Karen whispered something.
Mara looked at her.
“What did you say?”
Karen swallowed.
“I said he wasn’t talking about money.”
Mara stared at Karen until the woman’s face blurred at the edges.
The flight attendant remained beside the row, one hand resting lightly on the headrest in front of her, her expression carefully neutral now.
“What was he talking about?” Mara asked.
Karen looked toward the aisle.
“Not with everyone listening.”
“Everyone was listening when you told me to feed my baby in a bathroom.”
Karen’s mouth tightened.
“That was different.”
“No.”
Mara heard the steadiness in her own voice and did not recognize it.
“It wasn’t.”
Louise stood beside her now, small enough that her shoulder barely reached Mara’s upper arm.
She held the tablet against her chest again.
The flight attendant leaned slightly closer.
“If there’s a safety issue involving another passenger, I need to know.”
Karen shook her head.
“There isn’t.”
Mara looked at her.
“You knew my husband.”
Karen said nothing.
“You were arguing with him eleven days before he died.”
Still nothing.
“And now you’re sitting next to me on a flight.”
“That part is a coincidence.”
The word landed badly.
A man across the aisle gave a quiet, humorless snort.
Karen turned toward him.
“Would you mind?”
He raised both hands.
“Didn’t say anything.”
The flight attendant glanced toward the rear galley.
“Ma’am, I’m going to ask you to stay seated for now.”
Karen’s eyes sharpened.
“I am seated.”
“And remain seated.”
Mara’s stomach turned cold.
The flight attendant was not accusing her of anything, but the phrasing changed the air around them.
Karen heard it too.
“This is ridiculous.”
“Then help me make it less ridiculous,” Mara said.
Noah stirred beneath the cover.
Mara felt him pull away and fuss against her chest.
For one strange second, the crisis became ordinary.
Her son had finished eating.
He wanted to burp.
Her left arm was going numb.
The nursing cover had twisted beneath her cardigan.
She adjusted him automatically, because motherhood had no interest in whether the past had just opened under her feet.
Louise reached toward the diaper bag.
“I can get the cloth.”
“No, honey.”
“I know where it is.”
“I know.”
May you like
Mara regretted the sharpness immediately.
Louise withdrew her hand.
