There was a strawberry on top of it. Her mother had asked for the strawberry because Imani had had a phase at 6 where she would only eat things with strawberries on them. And her mother had remembered a phase from 3 years ago from 400 m away 11 days in advance. She remembered, Immani said. Of course she remembered, said Zuri.
No, but she remembered. I know. Zuri for once was not loud. I know. Across the aisle in 3F, Margarite Vance watched a flight attendant put a piece of cake on real China in front of two unaccompanied children and say the words happy birthday from your mom and something in her chest went sideways in a way she did not have a name for and would not have accepted a name for.
She had not been in a room where somebody said happy birthday out loud to her in 6 years. Her son called usually sometimes the day after. She looked at the cake. She looked at the girls looking at the cake. And what she felt, and this is the true thing, the thing she would never once say to anyone, not to the police, not to her attorney, not to the son, who eventually stopped answering entirely.
What she felt was a wave of something so acidic and so bottomless that the only way to survive being inside it for one more second was to make it be about the cake instead. "Well," she said. Zuri looked over. Immani didn't. That's quite a production.
Margarit's voice was pleasant. It was genuinely terribly pleasant. Do they do that for everyone or just for the two of you? Dileia, four steps up the aisle, stopped walking. Ma'am, it's their birthday.
Oh, I heard. Margarite smiled at the girls. 9 10 9 said Zuri. Nine. Margarite nodded slowly.
And mom's not with you. Dileia turned all the way around. Ma'am, I'm making conversation. Margarite didn't look at her. She was looking at Immani, who had not said a single word and had put both hands in her lap.
It's just unusual, that's all. Two children in this cabin by themselves. Somebody spent quite a bit of money on that. And that that specific sentence, that specific tone at 4:43 in the afternoon at 36,000 ft was the last moment in Margarite Vance's life when she could have picked up her magazine and gone back to her chicken and landed at 7:52 as a woman who had said something slightly rude to a child on an airplane and been forgotten by everyone, including herself. She had a way out.
It was sitting right there. She reached across the aisle instead. The reach took about a second and a half. Later, much later, in a windowless room with a table and two people from an airlines corporate security department and a lawyer who cost $400 an hour, Margarite would describe it as a gesture. She would use that word 11 times.