“Then keep your mouth shut now,” she snapped.

It came out so nasty, so disproportionate to a polite sentence from a ten-year-old, that a woman in the row behind them looked up from her tablet, and the man across the aisle went still, and something in the air of the cabin shifted and gathered.

I unbuckled my belt to stand — but Leo, feeling me move, stirred and began to fuss against my chest, and I had to press him close and stay down.

Up ahead, the flight attendant had seen it too, and was already moving toward Row 11 to head off whatever was about to happen.

But she did not get there in time.

Because my daughter had already stood up.