Russell Blake: Jet

“No, just my carry-on.”

“Then I would say no problem. Assuming customs isn’t too bad, you should make the connection to Omaha with half an hour to spare.”

“Thanks.”

Jet made her way to the jetway and submitted to the last-minute security baggage check, then moved down the ramp and into the plane. The stewardess greeted her as she boarded and looked at her boarding pass, then pointed to the left.

“First class is right up there. 2A. Window.”

She slid her bag into the overhead compartment and fell gratefully into the oversized seat, relieved to be leaving France. She had ducked into the casino the following day and claimed her winnings and nobody had batted an eye — as if a young woman walking out of the building with nearly three hundred thousand dollars was an everyday occurrence. The management had even offered a security guard to see her to her bank, which she had politely declined.

The newspapers had been filled with accounts of the shootout on the boat and the ensuing fire, and the tragic explosion in Nice that had claimed the life of one of Russia’s most enigmatic oligarchs, but aside from jumbled and contradictory accounts from some airport personnel, nobody had linked her to the incidents. After laying low for forty-eight hours and dying her hair, she had booked safe passage to the United States with no complications.

The sound of other passengers loading onto the plane reassured her that this was really happening, and that within a few more minutes, she would be winging her way to her daughter — a daughter she’d never met; part of herself stripped away, stolen, punishment for a crime she hadn’t even known she had committed. The surrealism of it all still had her in a daze, and occasionally the force of the unfolding events of the last week would intrude with the impact of blunt-force trauma.

David’s betrayal still devastated her in a profound way, even while at the same time she understood his reasoning — that no matter how careful she tried to be there was no way to completely escape her past, and that meant there was always a chance that an enemy would surface when least expected — as the Russian had with her. And she recognized that she had told him time and time again that she would be the worst mom in the world, given her background.

But.

Even though she appreciated the logic, and also knew that his personality had demanded control over every aspect of whatever he touched…she couldn’t help but feel that a part of her had died when he had confessed, just as a part of her had died when he had.

The contradictions were enormous. She wasn’t sure she would ever be able to make sense of them.

And the thought of David, of their last few days together, when a new future seemed possible and theirs to grab, crushed her in a way nothing had ever before.

How could you both love someone and hate them, simultaneously?

Sometimes things didn’t make sense. Life was messy that way. You mushed on, nursing wounds and displaying your scars, some with pride, some with remorse. The only thing she knew for sure was that in the end, nobody got out of it alive.

A canned warning came over the speakers advising her to pay attention to the screen, and then cheerful, smiling flight attendants warned of steps she’d need to take if they crashed into the ocean at six hundred miles per hour. She adjusted her seat back and turned her head, staring out through the window at a world she didn’t understand, that she didn’t belong to.

The heavy plane rolled to the edge of the runway while the flight crew completed its last-minute preparations and strapped themselves in, and then the pilot’s confident voice announced that they were ready for takeoff. After a few seconds, the jet surged forward and gathered momentum, and then the miracle of physics took over, and the mammoth jet’s wheels left the ground as it hurtled into the warm spring sky.