“No one wants to talk on planes. I saw that on YouTube.”
“You might get lucky.”
“I have to go. They’re boarding.”
“Text me when you land. Both times.”
“I will. Love you.”
“Love you, too, baby girl. Be safe, and don’t be scared. It’s safer to fly than to drive in a car.”
“Great, now I’ll be scared the next time I’m driving.”
“You should be scared every time you’re in a car.”
“Bye, Daddy.”
“Bye, baby.”
He was her best friend in the world, her port in a storm, the one who’d raised her on his own after her mother was murdered. If asked, he would say he’d had tons of help from his parents and siblings as well as her mother’s sisters, but it had mostly been the two of them, and despite what he said, he’d done the majority of the work required to successfully raise a child.
As she presented her boarding pass to the gate agent, she thought of all the things the two of them had been through together, from kindergarten to middle school to her first period and getting her ears pierced, to high school, college and then the police academy, which had been the source of their one major disagreement.
Her father had been vehemently opposed to her becoming a police officer.
They’d argued for days about it, but Neveah had refused to back down. In the back of her mind, always, was the hope that maybe one day she might be able to work on her mother’s unsolved case, but she never told him that.
He knew, though. Of course he did. He seemed to know everything where she was concerned. “They’ll never let you anywhere near that case, so if that’s your plan, find another one.”
They hadn’t talked for days after that argument, which was a first. She’d suffered in that silence and knew he had, too.
Pulling her suitcase behind her, she stepped aboard an airplane for the first time in her life, nodded to the flight attendant, and made her way past first class, where some of the passengers already had cocktails. She watched people stowing luggage in the overhead bins and followed suit when she reached row fifteen.
Neveah was settled in her window seat, watching the activity on the tarmac below when a young man settled into the middle seat.
She looked over at him, startled by the most extravagant eyelashes she’d ever seen on a man, framing golden-brown eyes.
He smiled. “Hey. How’s it going?”
“Not bad. You?”
“Eh, middle seat. Not my favorite thing.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, having never experienced sitting in the middle seat on a plane.
“You headed to Minnesota or just connecting there?” he asked.
“Flying on to Spokane.”
“It’s pretty there. My cousins lived there when we were growing up. Spent some summers out there.”
“It’ll be my first time. Looking forward to seeing it. What about you?”
“Going to Seattle for a work conference.”
“What do you do?”
“IT. How about you?”
