Her plane was already boarding when Georgie—flushed and breathless—arrived at the gate. A pretty blond flight attendant took her ticket and smiled. “Have a great flight—and Merry Christmas.”
CHAPTER 32
The plane didn’t take off.
Everyone got buckled up. They turned off their electronic devices. The pretty flight attendant told them which exit to head for in case of catastrophe or near-certain death. Then the plane taxied for a few minutes.
Then a few minutes more.
There was twenty minutes, probably, of taxiing.
Georgie was sitting between an extremely polished and sanded woman who tensed every time Georgie bumped her thigh and a boy about Alice’s age wearing a THIS SUUUUUUUCKS T-shirt. (He was way too young to watch Jeff’d Up, in Georgie’s opinion.)
“So, you like Trev?” she asked him.
“Who?”
“Your T-shirt.”
The kid shrugged and turned on his phone. A minute later, the flight attendant came by and asked him to turn it off.
After forty minutes of taxiing, Georgie realized the boy was the up-tight woman’s son. She kept leaning over Georgie to talk to him.
“Would you like to trade seats?” Georgie asked her.
“I always leave an empty seat between us,” the woman said. “Usually that means we end up with extra space because nobody wants to sit by themselves in the middle.”
“Did you want to sit together?” Georgie asked. “I don’t mind moving.”
“No,” the woman answered. “Better stay where we are. They use the seat assignments to identify bodies.”
The captain came on the intercom to apologize because he couldn’t turn the air-conditioning on—and to tell them to just “hang in there, we’re fifth in line to take off.”
Then he came back to say they weren’t in line anymore. They were waiting for news from Denver.
“What’s happening in Denver?” Georgie asked the flight attendant the next time she stopped to tell the boy to turn off his phone.
“Snowpocalypse,” the flight attendant said cheerfully.
“It’s snowing?” Georgie asked. “Doesn’t it always snow in Denver?”
“It’s a blizzard. From Denver to Indianapolis.”
“But we’re still leaving?”
“The storm is shifting,” the flight attendant said. “We’re just waiting for confirmation, then we’ll take off.”
“Oh,” Georgie said. “Thanks.”
The plane returned to the gate. Then taxied out again. Georgie watched the boy play a video game until his phone died.
All the tension and adrenaline she’d felt in the airport drained out through her feet. She was hungry. And sad. She slumped forward in her seat, so she wouldn’t brush against the woman next to her.
Georgie kept thinking about her last phone conversation with Neal, their last fight. Then she started wondering if it might actually be their last fight. If she’d scared him away from proposing, wouldn’t it erase all the fights they’d had since?
By the time the captain came back with good news—“We’ve got a window”—Georgie’d run out of urgency. This is purgatory, she thought. Between places. Between times. Completely out of touch.
Everyone around her cheered.
Georgie wasn’t a good flier. Neal always held her hand during takeoff and turbulence.
Now that there were too many people in their family to sit in one row, they’d sit across from each other two and two—Georgie and Neal in both aisle seats, so he could take her hand if he needed to.
Sometimes he didn’t even look up from his crossword, just reached out for her when the plane started to shake. Georgie always tried not to look scared, for the girls’ sake. But she always was scared. If she made a noise or took too sharp of a breath, Neal would squeeze her hand and look up at her. “Hey. Sunshine. This is nothing. Look at the stewardess over there—she’s dozing. We’ll be fine.”
Georgie’s plane ran into turbulence an hour into the flight to Denver. The woman sitting next to her wasn’t bothered by it, except for when the lurching shifted Georgie’s hips into hers.
Her son had already fallen asleep against Georgie’s right side. Georgie leaned against him, clenched her fists and closed her eyes.
She tried to imagine Neal, driving through this blizzard to get to her.
But there was no blizzard in 1998.
And maybe Neal wasn’t trying to get to her.
She tried again to remember what she’d said to him last night on the phone. She tried to remember what he’d said back.
Neal probably thought she was a maniac. She should have just told him about the magic phone. Full disclosure. Then they could have solved it together. They could have Sherlocked and Watsoned it from both ends of the timeline.
Or Neal could have figured it all out—he was the Sherlock and the Watson in their relationship.
The plane heaved, and Georgie pressed her head back into her seat, forcing herself to hear Neal’s voice. It’s nothing. We’ll be fine.
The sun was setting in Denver. The plane circled (and shook) for forty-five minutes before there was a break in the storm they could land through.
When she finally stepped out onto the jetway, Georgie was sure she was going to throw up, but the feeling quickly passed. It was cold in the tunnel. She hurried by the untouchable lady and her son, and got out her boarding pass for Omaha.
Georgie’d missed her next flight, but there had to be another one—Omaha was the biggest city between Denver and Chicago. (Neal said so.)
She took a few confused steps into the airport. The gate was so full, people were sitting on the floor, leaning against the windows. Every gate, up and down the concourse, was full.
Georgie needed to get to the other side of the terminal. She found a people mover and walked quickly. It felt like time was moving faster for her than for the people she was passing. No one else seemed to be in a hurry. And most of the shops were shuttered and dark, even though it was only six. Christmas Eve, she thought. And then, Snowpocalypse.
When she got to her gate, every seat was taken. People were standing around a muted TV, watching the Weather Channel. There was a sign over the desk with three flight numbers, all delayed. Technically she hadn’t missed her flight—because it had never taken off.
Georgie got in line, just to make sure that staying put was her best bet to get to Omaha.
When she finally got to the desk, the airline employee was surprisingly upbeat. “Your best bet is to Apparate.”
“Sorry?”
“Just a little Harry Potter humor,” he said.
“Right.”
Georgie hadn’t read the Harry Potter books. But she’d gone to see most of the movies with Seth on days when he felt like getting out of the office. She didn’t care about wizards, but she thought Alan Rickman was dreamy.
“When did you start lusting after middle-aged guys?” Seth asked.
“When I became middle-aged.”
“Rein it in, Georgie. We’re still thirty-somethings.”
“God, I loved that show.”
“I know,” he said.
“That’s proof that I’m middle-aged,” she said. “I miss Thirtysomething.”
The Starbucks next to her gate was closed. And the McDonald’s. And the Jamba Juice. Georgie bought a turkey sandwich from one vending machine and an iPhone charger from another. She got terrible coffee at the only place that was open, a Western-themed sports bar, then walked back to the gate and found a spot against the wall to lean against.