“Worth it,” Kit declared.
She also forced me to buy my first lingerie in over a year. “What if you meet a handsome stranger in the airport?” she demanded, pulling a pair out of my dresser. “Are you going have your way with him in a sports bra and sad gray Jockeys?”
I gave her a look. “I’m not spending two hundred more dollars on uncomfortable underwear that no one will ever see.”
“Don’t be such an old lady,” she said, holding the panties out. “I have to room with you. I’ll see your underpants, if no one else. And this situation right here”—she dropped the pair in the wastebasket—“makes me lose my will to live.”
In the end, she gifted me the lingerie. Against my will.
She also Instagrammed photos of our shopping day—but then she refused to post the final outfit. “You’re too gorgeous,” she declared. “You’d break the Internet.”
*
I ALMOST CHICKENED out. This couldn’t possibly be a good idea. But then I’d circle back around to the sad, quiet version of herself that my mom had been this whole long year, and my resolve would come back. I didn’t honestly know if she could win my dad back. The plan seemed like a long shot with deep potential for crushing humiliation.
But it didn’t really matter. I knew I had to help her try.
Besides, my mom had already spent all of her frequent flyer miles to get us an upgrade to first class.
Kit gaped when she told her.
My mom shrugged. “Go big or go home.”
I looked at Kit. “We’re going to need that on T-shirts.”
The morning-of, I had a few more second thoughts.
“What was I thinking?” I demanded of Kit as we shotgunned our morning coffees. “How am I supposed to lug this wheelchair all around Europe? That place is one hundred percent stone steps! Stone steps and fashionable people. This is lunacy. They’re going to stop me at the gates and send me home.”
Kit wasn’t having it. “You’re not a quitter.”
Maybe not—but I wanted to be. “It’s going to be the worst thing ever.”
My mom was walking by, and she paused to squeeze my shoulders. “No,” she said. “You’ve already survived the worst thing ever.”
And there was the crux of it. This would be my first flight since the crash. “I’m not sure I can do this,” I said.
Kit drained the dregs of her coffee and clanked her empty mug down in the sink. “Loving the self-doubt,” she said. “Let’s definitely run with that. But let’s get on the plane first.”
*
FIRST CLASS WAS like a VIP party.
Not only had I never flown to Europe before, I’d never flown anything but coach before. Now I was ruined, because I found out what I’d been missing. First class greeted us with champagne and strawberries, and it only got better from there. It practically had a swimming pool and a DJ.
We had to fly direct to London, then hop over to Belgium on a second quick flight, then take a train out to Bruges. It was going to be a long day and a half. But I couldn’t complain. They gave us warm blankets and steamed hot towels for our hands, like we were at a spa. We had our own little sleeping pods with seats that reclined into beds. Plus, our seats were in the closest row to the door, so it was easy to wheel right to my spot.
Still, no amount of luxury could change the fact that this was my first flight since the crash. Despite all my attempts to focus my brain on something else—and I was doing a valiant job—my body could not be fooled. My hands felt cold and quivery. My eyes darted left and right like a trapped rodent’s. My heart stumbled around in my chest like it was being attacked. There was no point worrying about it, I knew. This was happening. It was out of my hands. I’d made my choice, and now I just had to survive it.
Once we were buckled in, when my mom reached across the aisle to squeeze my hand, it was ice cold.
She met my eyes. “Are you terrified to fly again?”
I wrinkled my nose. “Just a smidge.”
Kit leaned over. “Remember that time we went to Hawaii—and you lived?”
“We all lived, as I recall,” my mother said.
“Would you like me to distract you?” Kit asked, nodding as she said it to let me know that Yes, I absolutely would.
My hands were turning kind of a bloodless gray. “I really can’t imagine any possible way you could do that.”
Kit wiggled her eyebrows at me. “I can.”
The engines were whirring into action. Our seats faced each other. I leaned forward. “How?”
She met my mother’s eyes and gave her a little nod, like they shared a yummy secret. My mom fished around in her carry-on and pulled out a little wrapped box that I recognized instantly. It was Ian’s birthday present to me.
“Hey,” I said. “I threw that in the kitchen trash.”
“I fished it back out,” my mom said.
I stared at it.
“Do you want it?” she finally asked.
The captain was making final announcements over the loudspeaker. I nodded.
She handed it over, and I peeled off the paper and the tape. Then I lifted the lid off the box. Inside was a necklace—a delicate silver chain attached to each end of a small silver bar, and stamped into the bar, in tiny typewriter-like letters, was one word: Courage.
“What is it?” Kit asked.
“A necklace.”
“What does it say?” my mom asked.
“Courage.”
Kit and my mom looked at each other. “Well,” my mom said, “aren’t we glad I rescued it?”
As I fastened it behind my neck and felt the cool pressure of the silver bar against my breastbone, the plane started to back away from the gate.
I felt a surge of fear.
“I’ve got another distraction for you,” Kit said, watching me. “A better one.”
“What?”
“The address Rob got you for Ian is wrong.”
Okay. That was distracting. “Wrong?”
She nodded. “That’s his parents’ address in Edinburgh, but he doesn’t live there.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
She gave me a mysterious I’ve got so much to tell you smile. “We’re in touch.”
I felt an anxious jolt of Where is this going? What could she possibly tell me that was that juicy? Without permission, my brain jumped to a worst-case scenario. “Please don’t tell me you are dating Ian,” I said.
“What? No! Gross! I’m back with Fat Benjamin.”
“Why on earth would you be in touch with Ian?”
That smile again. “He found me online. He wanted to know how you were doing.”
The plane stopped a second, then started rolling forward. “He did? When was this?”
“A few weeks after I went back. He asked if he could check in with me from time to time.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“He asked me not to. He didn’t want to freak you out.”
I tried to absorb the idea. “Did he? Check in?”
She nodded. “He did indeed.”
Off her tone, I said, “A lot?”
“About once a week.”
“Once a week!” She was enjoying this reveal too much. “He called you?”
“Mostly just email. Also, you know all those articles I sent you?”
The plane sped up on the runway. “The ones I’m pretty sure you never read?”
“They were from him.”
He’d sent the articles! That explained a lot. But why? “How did he sound?”
“Like a concerned professional.”
“Did you ever talk about anything else?”
She shook her head. “Mostly just your health. Pretty dry.”
The nose of the plane lifted. I nodded. “Okay.”
“But my personal opinion? He still likes you.”
“He never liked me.”
“I disagree.”
“He told me in no uncertain terms,” I said. “He never liked me. It was all just me being delusional, and he let it go on so I’d have, you know, a reason to live. Trust me. If there were any possibility for hope, I’d have found it.”
Kit shrugged, like, Okay. Have it your way. The plane left the ground now, rattling and shuddering as it rose. I touched my fingers to my necklace. Courage.
Kit said, “There is one other thing, though.”
I looked up.
“He started following me on Instagram.”