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“No,” I say instead.

His expression doesn’t change much. Just a slight shift, like he’s filing that away. “Bad day?”

“That’s one way to put it.” I should stop there. “My sister is missing.”

He doesn’t react the way most people do. There’s no immediate barrage of questions, no awkward sympathy. “Missing how?”

Precise.

I like that.

“I don’t know,” I admit. “She just… left. Or that’s what her boyfriend says. But it doesn’t make sense. She’s not the most reliable, but she has a young daughter now and so needs to be more stable, you know?”

The plane starts to move, the low rumble beneath us building as we taxi. I grip the armrest without meaning to.

“I got on this flight thirty seconds before they closed the door,” I continue, words coming faster now. “I didn’t pack properly. I didn’t…” I stop, exhale. “I don’t do things like this.”

“Like what?”

“Unplanned. Reactive.” I glance at him. “Messy. Hopefully, it’ll just a brief visit”

He huffs out a sound that might be a quiet laugh. “Sounds like life.”

“Not mine.”

My life's structured. Built on careful decisions and contingency plans.

Maggie’s life is chaos.

And somehow, I always end up in the fallout.

“Not yours, …?”

His dark brows rise and I catch on to what he’s asking me. “Laurel.”

“Torin.”

We exchange nods.

The plane accelerates, pressing me back into my seat. I focus on breathing, on the rhythm I’ve trained myself into when things feel like they’re slipping.

Inhale. Four counts.

Exhale. Four counts.

The plane lifts, the ground dropping away beneath us, and everything feels suspended. Like maybe I can still turn around, maybe I don’t have to go back. Redwood Run. I haven’t been there in years.

Not since…

I cut the thought off.

No.

Not doing that here.

“I can’t believe how much work I’m missing for this,” I blurt out, mostly because it’s easier to think about my job than anything else.

“What do you do?”