Then she stepped into the aisle and did not look back, because she knew herself well enough to know that looking back was how you lost the next minute, and the next minute was the only one that was going to matter.

She walked forward through the dark cabin toward the glow at the front of the aircraft, past the rows of upturned faces, and with every step the tired mother in the green sweater receded a little further and the other woman, the one she had buried, came forward to meet the work.

By the time she reached the galley curtain her hands were loose and her breathing had gone slow and her mind had emptied of everything that was not the next thing.

She had not felt that particular cold clarity in eighteen months.