Now, every decision belonged to me alone, and the margin for error felt incredibly thin. If I made one mistake, if I failed to protect Emma from the noise and the crowds, the consequences would fall entirely on my shoulders.
I sat on the couch and stared at the dark television screen, waiting for the clock to reach midnight.
By midnight, the house had grown cold, and the wind outside rattled the kitchen window. I sat at the desk again, the old printer warming up with a series of loud clicks and whirs that sounded too loud in the sleeping house. The clock on the microwave read twelve twelve.
I opened the airline website and logged into our booking, my heart rate rising as the loading circle spun.
The screen finally resolved into the flight details.
Our boarding passes appeared on the screen, ready to print.
I looked at the first pass, which had Emma’s name on it.
The seat assignment on the white digital paper did not say seven A. I rubbed my eyes, thinking the bright light of the screen was playing tricks on me, but the black letters remained the same.
It read twelve B.
I clicked on my own boarding pass, and the screen showed twelve C.
“This is a mistake,” I said aloud to the empty kitchen.
I grabbed the mouse and tried to open the seat map, but the screen flashed a red error message stating the flight was fully booked and seat changes were no longer permitted online.
I printed the passes anyway, the paper sliding out of the machine with a dry, mechanical hiss.
The black ink was still warm when I picked them up. I stared at the numbers, twelve B and twelve C, feeling the fragile security of the last month dissolve.
Twelve B was a middle seat, and twelve C was the aisle directly beside it. There was no window, no view of the sky, and no way to escape the elbows of the people walking up and down the aisle.
There was no window.
Emma would be sandwiched between me and a stranger, with no view of the sky she had been counting down the days to see. She would have nothing to focus on when the noise of the cabin became too much for her to bear.
