She watched the passing trees for a while.

“Can we go get pancakes?”

I almost cried from relief.

“Yes.

Absolutely.”

At the diner, she ordered blueberry pancakes and carefully separated the biggest blueberries to eat last.

I watched her concentrate on a tiny, ordinary pleasure.

Nothing could change the morning at the airport, but perhaps there would still be thousands of mornings in which she could be eight years old and think mostly about syrup.