I knew that posture.

It was the one she used when she was determined to prove to me, and to herself, that she was big enough to handle a hard thing — that she could sit next to a cruel stranger for three hours and not need rescuing.

It was the posture of a child being brave, and there is almost nothing that undoes a mother faster than the sight of her child being brave about something the child should never have had to be brave about at all.

Beside her, the woman had stretched her bare foot back out into the extra legroom I had paid for so that my daughter would have room, and put her headphones back on, and turned to the window, as though Maya were not there.

Chapter 9 — The Quiet Before

Then I saw Maya bend down again, toward the floor, toward whatever she had spotted when she stowed her bag.