Chapter 11 — While Your Son Was Listening

“Jessi, listen to me, I can explain —”

“You just proposed to your mistress over the intercom of a commercial flight,” I interrupted, and my voice dropped into a register I did not know I had, quiet and flat and final.

“While your seven-year-old son was listening in row twenty-eight.”

He reached out to grab my arm.

“Jessi, please —” “Don’t touch me,” I said, and stepped back, and he froze with his hand in the air.

At that moment the first officer leaned out of the cockpit, his face taut with alarm.