Then they broke through the top of the clouds into sunlight.
It was always a shock, even after a hundred times. The sudden brilliant light, the sky an impossible deep blue overhead, the clouds spread out below like a vast white country, rolling away to every horizon. The sun came in through the window and fell across Naomi's lap and her hands and the cream sleeves of her suit and lit them gold.
She sat in 2A and looked out at it for a long time.
* * *
Somewhere south of Nova Scotia, an hour and a half into the flight, the old woman from 3C came and stood beside the empty seat in 2C and asked whether she might sit down for a minute.
Naomi had been working. She had her laptop open on the tray table and a document on the screen that had started as a list of notes and was slowly becoming something more like a plan. She had written at the top of it, in capital letters, WHAT HAPPENED, and under that a plain account of the morning, from the check-in desk to the jet bridge, as factual and unadorned as she could make it. Below that she had written WHY IT HAPPENED, and under that, so far, only a few lines. Below that she had written WHAT CHANGES, and under that nothing at all.
She closed the laptop. "Of course," she said. "Please."
The old woman sat down carefully in 2C, lowering herself with one hand on the walnut console. She was perhaps seventy-five, small and neat, with short white hair and a cardigan the color of oatmeal and a pair of glasses on a chain around her neck. Up close, her face was lined and kind and very alert.
"I'm June Pryce," she said. "That's my husband Walter back there, pretending to sleep. He's not asleep. He's listening. He's been dying to come and talk to you but he's too shy, so he sent me."
Naomi smiled. "It's nice to meet you, Mrs. Pryce."
"June. Please." June settled herself in the seat. "We're from Dayton, Ohio. We're going to London to see our granddaughter. She's studying at the London School of Economics. Very clever girl, much cleverer than either of us. We've never flown in the front of the airplane before. Walter saved up his miles for six years for this. Six years. He wanted it to be a surprise for our anniversary. Fifty-one years."
"Congratulations."
"Thank you, dear." June looked at her for a moment. "I wanted to tell you something. About this morning. I hope you won't mind."
"Not at all."
June folded her hands in her lap. "When that woman said what she said," she began. "About who belongs here. I want you to know that I heard it, and Walter heard it, and we both knew exactly what she meant. We're not stupid, and we're not young. And I want you to know that I didn't say anything either. I sat right there in 3C and I didn't say a word." She paused. "I've been thinking about that for an hour and a half. Why I didn't say anything."
Naomi did not answer. She waited.
"Walter and I were schoolteachers," June went on. "Forty years, both of us, in the Dayton public schools. Walter taught history and I taught fourth grade. Our schools were mostly Black, most of the years we were there. We were very proud of that. We thought we were very good people." She smiled faintly. "We were good teachers. I'll stand by that. But I've been sitting back there thinking that in forty years, I never once told another white person, to their face, that they'd said something wrong. Not once. I'd think it. I'd come home and tell Walter. I'd write a letter to the newspaper sometimes. But to their face, in the room, when it was happening. Never. It was always somebody else's job. It was always a little bit too uncomfortable." She looked down at her hands. "And then this morning, there it was, right in front of me, and I sat in my seat and I didn't say anything. And I'm seventy-six years old and I don't think I'll get many more chances."
Naomi was quiet for a moment.
"I don't think it was your job, June," she said finally. "Not this morning. It was ours. It was the airline's. My crew should have said something, and they didn't, and that's on me."