She did not stop for any of it.

She went down the aisle to row 8, where the kind-faced woman had kept her word and not moved, one hand resting lightly on the sleeping boy’s back, and where Leo was just now sitting up, rubbing his eyes, blinking in confusion at all the crying strangers clapping around him.

Mommy, he said, his voice thick with sleep, where were you?

And Maya folded down into the seat and gathered him up and held him, held the warm solid ordinary weight of him against her chest, and pressed her face into his hair so he would not see what was happening to hers.