And there was this, plain and ungentle, that decided it: if the airplane went into the ocean, her caution would not save Leo.

Hiding would not pull him out of the water.

The only thing on this aircraft that might get her son home was the thing she had spent a year and a half refusing to be.

She reached over and squeezed Leo’s hand once, lightly, so as not to wake him, and tucked the blanket up around his shoulders, and when she spoke her voice had already changed, had dropped into a register the flight attendant straightened to hear.

“I’m a pilot,” Maya said.