I should have enforced the seating the way it was booked.

I took the easy path because the flight was late and she was loud, and I’m sorry.

Your daughter is the one who paid for that, and she shouldn’t have.”

I looked at her.

She was not a villain; she was a tired person caught between airline delays and rigid rules and a passenger who had decided to be immovable, and she had done the thing exhausted people do under pressure, which is to lean on whoever seems least likely to make it hard for her.

That did not undo what it had cost my daughter.