Then she removed a small object.
I couldn’t identify it from three rows away.
All I could see was Emma holding it carefully.
She looked down at it once.
Then she looked directly at the woman.
Her voice was still steady when she asked one simple question.
Around them, the atmosphere inthe cabin changed.
Conversations stopped.
A few passengers who had been holding phones lowered them.
Magazines and newspapers dropped into laps as people turned their attention toward row eleven.
The woman who had spent the entire boarding process refusing to move was suddenly very still.
Whatever confidence she had shown when she told me that traveling with my children was my problem seemed useless against the object in Emma’s hand.
Because the item hadn’t come from Emma’s backpack originally.
Emma had put it there only after discovering it.
