“I’m not going to sleep a wink,” she says with all the confidence of a seven-year-old who knows exactly what she thinks.
“I hope you’ll sleep some. If not, you’ll be too tired to play with your dad when we land.”
“I’m never too tired to play with him.”
“I’m sure he’s never too tired to play with you either.”
She fidgets in her seat. “How long do we have to sit?”
“Awhile, but I brought something for us to read.” I reach into my handbag as if it’s a magician’s hat and pull out three books. Ella picksBloom, a story about an ordinary subject living in a kingdom of glass, a girl named Genevieve who must save everyone in herland.
As the airplane backs away from the gate, Ella reaches for my hand, and I gladly hold it, checking both of our seat belts before we begin rolling down the runway and then lift off into the air. As we climb higher, the city that confounds me seems so small, minuscule. We have a clear view of the entire place insteadoftrying to maneuver through all the confusion on the ground.
Once we’re above the clouds, Ella removes her nose from the window, and I release her hand. Together we begin to read about Genevieve’s quest in this fairy-tale world.
“They will never believe that an ordinary girl could do such an extraordinary thing,” Genevieve worried. “What would I tell them?”
“Tell them there is no such thing as an ordinary girl,” said Bloom.
“See, you can read without your socks,” Ella says when we finish the story, as if I’ve accomplished a feat.
“I guess I can.”
She gives a firm nod of affirmation and picks up another book, this one about a treasure hunt.
“If you could hide a treasure, where would you hide it?” I ask.
“Someplace no one would ever find it.”
“A wise choice.”
“Like in my shoes.”
I glance down at the sparkly silver and teal shoes on her feet, Velcro strapping them together instead of laces. “Interesting...”
“My mom said that you can tell a lot about a girl by her shoes.”
“I believe you must have had the smartest mom in the world.”
“Smart and pretty,” she says before glancing over at me. “Was your mom smart and pretty?”
“I don’t remember much about her.”
Ella reaches for my hand, and I hold it, both of us lost for a moment in our own thoughts. My mother seems pretty enough, I think, on Facebook. I decide that she must be smart, too. Extraordinary.
“None of us are ordinary girls,” I say.
Ella and I read about the grand treasure hunt, a brain candy kind of book, and as she drifts off to sleep, I realize that I’ve forgotten to take my Dramamine. But after our layover in New York, Ifall asleep just fine, waking again on Friday morning when the rays from a Parisian sun flood through the window.
Uniformed French agents check our bags and passports on the ground before I grab a pastry for Ella and a latte for me. Two hours later, Ella reaches for my hand one more time as our plane descends over Austria, this time landing in Salzburg.
The fortress of salt.
Josh beams when he sees his daughter. He swings her in his arms, and then he reaches out toward me.
My mouth drops open. “You’re not going to try and swing me...”
He laughs. “I can if you’d like.”
