She had earned the right, she told herself, to be only a passenger, only a mother, to let someone else be the one who stood up.

But down the aisle she could hear a flight attendant moving, stopping at row after row, her low voice asking the same question and getting the same frightened nothing in reply, coming closer, and Maya understood that the silence was not going to answer the captain, and that the water below them did not care how tired she was.

Chapter 3 — A Pilot Doesn’t Leave People Behind

The flight attendant reached row 8 with her face carefully arranged and her eyes not matching it.