Scott thinks about it.
“It was a big trip for me. And the plane—having to run for the plane—I was discombobulated—a little. It all seems meaningless now, how much it mattered. Meetings with art reps, gallery visits. I had all the slides in my bag, and—after the run—I wanted to make sure I still had them. For no reason.”
He looks at his hands.
“I was in the window seat, looking out at the wing. Everything was foggy, and then suddenly the fog cleared. Or we rose above it, I guess is what happened. And it was just night. And I looked over at Maggie, and she smiled. Rachel was in the seat behind her, listening to music, and the boy was asleep with a blanket over him. And I don’t know why, but I thought she might like a drawing, Maggie, so I took out my pad and started sketching the girl. Nine years old, headphones on, looking out the window.”
He remembers the look on the girl’s face, a child lost in thought, but something in her eyes—a sadness—hinting at the woman she would one day become, and how she had come to the barn that day with her mother to look at Scott’s work, a growing girl all legs and hair.
“We hit a couple of bumps going up,” he says. “Enough to shake the glasses, but it was pretty smooth, otherwise, and nobody seemed worried. The security man sat in the front with the flight attendant for takeoff on the—what do you—jump seat, but he was up as soon as the seat belt sign was off.”
“Doing?”
“Nothing, standing.”
“No drama?”
“No drama.”
“And you were drawing.”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
Scott shakes his head. He remembers chasing his pencil across the floor, but not what happened before. The lie of an airplane is that the floor is always level, the straight angles of the plane tricking your mind into thinking you’re sitting or standing at a ninety-degree angle to the world, even when the plane is on its side. But then you look out the window, and find yourself staring at the ground.
The plane banked. The pencil fell. He unbuckled his seat belt to chase it, and it rolled across the floor, like a ball going downhill. And then he was sliding, and his head hit something.
Scott looks at Gus.
“I don’t know.”
Gus looks at O’Brien.
“I have a question,” Gus says. “Not about the crash. About your work.”
“Okay.”
“Who’s the woman?”
Scott looks at him.
“The woman?”
“In all the paintings—I noticed—there’s always a woman, and it’s always—from what I can see—the same woman. Who is she?”
Scott exhales. He looks at Eleanor. She is watching him. What must she think? Days ago her life was a straight line. Now all she has are burdens.
“I had a sister,” says Scott. “She drowned when I was—she was sixteen. Night swimming in Lake Michigan with some—kids. Just—dumb kids.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.”
Scott wishes there was something profound he could say about it, but there isn’t.
*
Later, after the boy is asleep, Scott calls Gus from the kitchen.
“Was that okay today?” he asks.
“It was helpful, thank you.”
“Helpful how?” Scott wants to know.
“Details. Who sat where. What people were doing.”
Scott sits at the table. There was a moment, after the helicopter departed and Eleanor and Scott were left alone, when both of them seemed to realize that they were strangers, that the illusion of the last twenty-four hours—the idea that the house was a bubble they could hide in—had dissolved. She was a married woman, and he was—what? The man who rescued her nephew. What did they really know about each other? How long was he staying? Did she even want him to? Did he?
An awkwardness arose between them then, and when Eleanor started cooking, Scott told her he wasn’t hungry. He needed a walk to clear his head.
He stayed out until after dark, wandering back to the river and watching the water turn from blue to black as the sun set, and the moon came out.
He was farther than he’d ever been from the man he thought he was.
“Well,” Gus tells him over the phone, “nobody knows this yet, but the flight recorder’s damaged. Not destroyed, but it’s gonna take work to get to the data. I’ve got a team of six guys in there working now, and the governors of two states are calling every five minutes for updates.”
“I can’t help you with that. I can barely open a tube of paint.”
“No. I’m just—I’m telling you because you deserve to know. Everybody else can go to hell.”
“I’ll tell Eleanor.”
“How’s the boy?”
“He’s not—talking, really, but he seems to like that I’m here. So maybe that’s therapeutic. Eleanor’s really—strong.”
“And the husband?”
“He left this morning with luggage.”
A long pause.
“I don’t have to tell you how that’s going to look,” says Gus.
Scott nods.