I looked at the letters. I was in seat 14D, an aisle on the right side of the aircraft. Allison was assigned to 14B, the middle seat across the aisle on the left.
“We are not sitting together,” I whispered.
“Exactly,” I said, the nervous word slipping out before I could catch it. I tried to smooth my voice, to make it sound like a minor inconvenience. “But don’t worry. I will find whoever is in fourteen-A or fourteen-C and ask them to swap with me. People do it all the time for kids.”
Allie looked up, her blue eyes wide behind her plastic-rimmed glasses. “What if they say no?”
“They won’t say no,” I said. “Nobody wants to sit next to a nine-year-old they don’t know when her mother is sitting right across the narrow aisle.”
The gate agent’s microphone crackled, announcing Group Three. The line of passengers began to shuffle forward into the jet bridge. Allie tucked her phone into her pocket, her fingernails still clicking against her pants.
We moved down the narrow, carpeted ramp, our shoulders brushing against the corrugated metal walls. The transition from the warm Colorado afternoon to the cool, recycled draft of the cabin was immediate.
Row fourteen was situated just behind the overwing exit doors. A woman was already sitting in seat 14C, the aisle seat next to Allie’s assigned middle position.
She was dressed in a tailored gray blazer, her silver-rimmed glasses resting low on her nose. Her posture was stiff, her back not even touching the cushion. She was rubbing her temples with her index fingers, her eyes scanning a printed spreadsheet on her lap.
“Excuse me,” I said, leaning over the headrest of row thirteen.
The woman did not look up immediately. She finished reading her line, then slowly turned her head. Her features were sharp, her eyes a cold, direct gray.
