Chapter 21

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  • Dedicated to pam
                                    

By midnight, I’d come to accept two very important things.

The first was that airline representatives have no souls, if their collective refusal to tell me anything about the airport’s reopening was proof enough of their stone hearts. As I’d expected, Sophie’s and my flight to L.A. had been delayed, first by an hour, then three, until the departure board was finally updated to read that it had been cancelled altogether. I begged and bribed the men and women behind the service desk for information after each status change, yet they’d done little more than look up from their computer screens with matching blank expressions.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the last representative that spoke to said with irritating calm. The nametag clipped to her blazer’s pocket read ‘Martha’ in neatly engraved letters. “We’re still waiting to receive clearance to resume our outbound flights. If you’d like to take a seat, we’ll make an announcement once we have new information.”

“That guy said the same thing an hour ago,” I protested, hoisting the strap of my duffle bag higher up on my shoulder and motioning towards the expressionless man beside her. “How is it possible that none of you know anything?”

“Sir, if you would please calm down--”

“No, listen, we need to be in L.A. by 9 A.M., so can you please just tell me if that’s going to be possible?”

Growing annoyed, Martha pointed out the window behind her with an angry jab of her thumb and my heart sank another notch when I saw the thick snowfall beating against the glass, wind lifting the flakes into wild flurries. If anything, the storm had gotten worse since we landed, not better. Dropping all pretenses of politeness, Martha snapped, “Look, hon, I don’t control the weather, alright? Everyone here needs to get somewhere, so please just take a seat and wait for us to make an announcement.”

“But--”

Wearing a dark pink baseball cap from the airport’s gift shop, Sophie strode up to the service counter from where she’d been waiting and rested a hand on my forearm to silence me. Turning to face the airline representative, she asked, “Since you don’t know how long we’re going to be stuck here, can you give him a pass to the first class lounge? We’re traveling together so it’d be nice if we could at least wait in the same area, you know?”

She pulled her boarding pass from her purse and set it on the counter, waiting for Martha to stop scowling at me long enough to look at it. Behind her oversized sunglasses, I had a hunch that Sophie was eyeing the woman with a similar look of thinly veiled disdain.

Sighing, Martha scanned the ticket, her eyes widening when she saw the name flash on her computer screen. She looked up at Sophie who remained nonplussed before looking back down at the ticket. “Of course,” she said, impeccably poised once again. Giving me a thin-lipped smile that threatened to curl into a sneer, Martha added, “May I see your ticket as well, sir?”

Once I’d been cleared to enter the walled off section of the terminal, Sophie and I tossed our bags onto adjacent recliners, though not before she whipped off her sunglasses to glare at me.

“What?” I asked, checking my phone to see three voicemails waiting, each close to a minute long.

“I realize the irony of me saying this to you, but can you please stop causing a scene every time you talk to those people?” Sophie sat down on the well-maintained leather seat, lowering the back until she was nearly horizontal. “It's not their fault that they don’t know what's going on.”

“I’m stressed,” I muttered, my finger hovering over the redial button as my screen simultaneously lit up with an incoming call. My stomach churned—Michael.

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