“Brace for impact.”

Chapter 20

We went to the airport on a Saturday, five years after the wedding.

It had become a family thing: a day trip, a window seat, a little girl with her nose against the glass. Claire had chosen the airport on purpose, that first time, and it had become a tradition — as if to say: the place we nearly lost each other is the place where we’ll always begin again.

“Grandma, is that your airplane?” Hazel said, one palm flat against the terminal window, wearing a yellow raincoat against a sky that had not yet decided to rain.

“No.”

“That one?”

“No.”

“Did you fly that one?”

“No.”

She frowned, deep and tragic. “Then who did?”

“The pilots did. I just helped once.”

“Was it scary?”

“Yes.”

“What did you do?”

I looked past her, through the glass, at the runway where jets came and went like great silver migrations.

“The next thing I could,” I said.

She turned that over for a moment — a four-year-old’s machinery, solemn gears in a small head — and then she said, “Grandma, were you Phoenix?”

I looked up at Claire, who was standing behind us carrying two coffees and wearing the face of someone who had definitely taught this child that word, and who was bravely pretending innocence.

“Yes,” I said. “A long time ago.”

“Why?”

“Because sometimes pilots have nicknames.”

“Were you a bird?”

“No.”

“Could you fly without an airplane?”

“Definitely not.”

She seemed disappointed by the honesty.

“Can we get cookies?” she asked, moving on at full speed, as four-year-olds do.

“Yes.”

“Two?”

“Ask your mother.”

Claire groaned. “Coward.”

“First rule of family,” I said. “Arbitrate up.”

Ethan laughed and said, “I’m going to write that on a mug.”

We boarded last — Claire had done it on purpose, choosing a window seat, the one she had always chosen, the one she said an old friend of hers told her about once. Hazel climbed into it like a captain into a cockpit and immediately began narrating everything she saw.

“Look, Grandma. Baggage. Look, Grandma, another plane. Look, Grandma, a man carrying a box.”

The engines started. The cabin filled with the particular hum that means something heavy is about to become something light. Hazel’s voice dropped to a whisper.

“Grandma?”

“Yes?”

“Are mountains going to follow us?”

I looked across the aisle.

Claire’s mouth had fallen open. “What did she just say?”

“I used to say that,” I whispered.

“I know. I didn’t tell her. I didn’t tell her, Mom — I’ve never told her that.”

Ethan leaned forward from the row behind and said, mildly, “I did.”

Claire turned in her seat. “You remembered?”

“You told me once, the first year we were together. Out of nowhere, on a rainy drive. You were watching the mountains and you said, ‘I used to think they followed us when I was little.’ You laughed about it.”

“You — you kept that?”

“I keep everything,” Ethan said. “I’m a professional rememberer. It’s on my business cards.”

Hazel tugged my hand, insistent, four years old and done with adult archaeology.

“Grandma! Are they?”

I looked out the window.

Mount Rainier stood far beyond the runway, pale and enormous under the afternoon light, doing its eternal job of making every other thing in the world look small and temporary.

“Yes,” I said. “That mountain might follow us for a while. She’s done it before.”

Hazel pressed her nose to the glass, satisfied, and the engines rose, and the aircraft began to roll.

Emma — no. Not Emma. Claire. Claire took my hand across the aisle, and I took Hazel’s — two hands, one scarred, one impossibly small — and the aircraft lifted smoothly off the runway at Sea-Tac, climbing through the ordinary Seattle air into the pale blue of a Saturday afternoon.

No alarms. No warning tones. No trembling voice over the intercom.

Just the quiet, ordinary roar of engines doing their job, and a four-year-old saying, “We’re flying, Grandma! We’re flying!”

“Yes,” I said. “We are.”