Chapter 3

Nadia did not sleep again for the rest of the flight. She sat upright in her seat, the voucher folded in her pocket, her fingers returning to it again and again as if to confirm it was still there. Her cheek had stopped stinging. The thin red line was just a mark now, fading, already learning to be a memory.

She kept thinking about the order of events. The hand hitting her cheek. The word "Sit down" from a man who had barely spoken above a whisper. The way Vance had looked at him, like a dog who had bitten the wrong hand. The flight attendant's face, the careful way she had stepped forward and then stepped back, as if she had known something the rest of the cabin didn't.

And now the paper. The voucher. The words.

*Your mother is waiting. You belong here.*

She had read them so many times she had memorized them, but they kept producing new questions. How did he know about her mother? How did he know anything about her? She had said nothing. She had closed her eyes before takeoff. She had slept on his shoulder for hours. She hadn't told a single person in this cabin why she was flying.

But he knew. The line under his signature did not sound like a guess. It sounded like a fact.

Forty minutes before landing, Ines came down the aisle. She stopped beside Nadia's seat, her round face pleasant but unreadable, her burgundy uniform pressed and neat.