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  Neal stood up again, out of sight. “I can’t talk to you right now. I’m going upstairs to help with dinner.”

  Georgie pushed the photo album back down into her lap and flipped to the end.

  “Where are you flying today?” the woman behind the counter asked without looking up at Georgie.

  “Omaha.”

  “Last name?”

  Georgie spelled out McCool, and the woman started clacking at her console. She frowned. “Do you have your reservation number with you?”

  “I don’t have one,” Georgie said. “I need one. That’s why I’m here.”

  The ticket agent looked up at Georgie. She was a black woman in her late fifties, early sixties. Her hair was pulled up into a bun, and she was eyeing Georgie over a pair of gold-framed reading glasses. “You don’t have a ticket?”

  “Not yet,” Georgie said. She’d walked up to the first counter she came to. She didn’t know if this airline even flew to Omaha. “Can I get one here?”

  “Yes . . . You want to fly out today?”

  “As soon as possible.”

  “It’s Christmas Eve,” the woman said.

  “I know.” Georgie nodded.

  The woman—her nametag said ESTELLE—raised her eyebrows, then looked back down at her console, clacking away again.

  “You want to get to Omaha,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Tonight.”

  “Yes.”

  She clacked some more. Every once in a while, she’d make a discontented hmmm-ing noise.

  Georgie shifted on her feet and rattled her keys against her leg. She’d already forgotten where she’d parked.

  The ticket agent—Estelle—walked away and picked up a phone that was attached to the wall. It seemed like a special phone. There was an orange light built into the wall above it. Now, that’s what a magic phone should look like, Georgie thought.

  Then Estelle came back to her clackity-clack console. “All right,” she sighed, after a minute.

  Georgie licked her lips. They were chapped, but she didn’t have any lip balm.

  “I can get you to Denver tonight on United. From there, you’re just going to have to cross your fingers. We’ve got delays across the system.”

  “I’ll take it,” Georgie said. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me,” Estelle told her. “I’m the lady who’s about to get you stranded in the Denver airport on Christmas Eve. ID?”

  Georgie handed over her driver’s license and credit card.

  The ticket was exorbitantly expensive, but Georgie didn’t blink.

  “You could fly to Singapore for this much,” Estelle said. “Nonstop . . . Do you have anything to check?”

  “No,” Georgie said.

  Estelle held her hand over a printer, waiting for the tickets. “What’s in Omaha anyway? Besides two feet of snow.”

  “My kids,” Georgie said, then felt her heart squeeze. “My husband.”

  The other woman’s face softened for the first time since Georgie had stepped up to the counter. She handed Georgie her boarding passes. “Well, I hope you get there sooner than later. Hurry up. You’ve got twenty minutes to get to your gate.”

  For the next twenty minutes, Georgie felt like the heroine of a romantic comedy.

  She even decided what song would be playing on her soundtrack—Kenny Loggins doing a big, triumphant, live version of “Celebrate Me Home.” (Slow and gentle at the beginning, building up to an irresistible crescendo. Excessive amounts of blue-eyed soul.)

  She ran through the airport. No luggage to drag, no kids to hang on to.

  She ran by other people’s families. By loving elderly couples. By volunteer carolers wearing red and green sweaters.

  With every step, Georgie felt more sure of herself.

  This was what she should have done ten minutes after Neal left last week. Flying across the country to reunite with your true love was always the right move. (Always.) (In every case.)

  Everything would be all right if Georgie could just get to Neal. If she could hear his voice. If she could feel his arms around her.

  Just like everything had been all right when he’d showed up on her doorstep fifteen years ago. (Tomorrow morning.) As soon as she’d seen his face that day, she’d forgiven him.

  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 alw
ays 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.

  The glass behind her was cold. Georgie squinted out the window. She couldn’t see anything—no snow, nothing more than shadows—but she could hear the wind. It sounded like she was still in the airplane.

  Across from her, a woman was breaking a cookie in half and splitting it between her kids, two girls small enough to share a seat. They had napkins folded in their laps and boxes of milk. The woman was sitting next to her husband, and his arm hung lazily over the back of her chair, stroking her shoulder absently.

  Georgie wanted to move closer to them. She wanted to brush crumbs from the littlest girl’s coat. She wanted to talk to them. “I have this, too,” she’d say to the woman. “This exactly.”

  But did she?

  Still?

  Georgie kept testing herself, cataloging her memories, tracing them backwards. Alice’s seventh birthday. Noomi’s first Disneyland Halloween. Neal mowing the lawn. Neal getting frustrated in traffic. Neal shifting toward her in his sleep when Georgie had insomnia.

  “You okay?”

  “Can’t sleep.”

  “Come here, crazy.”

  Neal teaching Alice how to make Jiffy Pop. Neal doodling a sleepy gerbil on Georgie’s arm . . .

  Georgie could never remember the difference between a gerbil, a hamster, and a guinea pig—so Neal had taken to drawing them on her when he was bored. “Cheat sheet,” he’d say, writing I am a guinea pig in a word balloon on her elbow.

  She ran her hand up over her blank arm. The little girl across from her knocked over her milk—Georgie leaned in and caught it. The mother smiled at her, and Georgie smiled back. I have this, too, Georgie’s smile said.

  She missed her girls. She wanted to see them. There were photos on her phone. . . .

  Georgie scanned the gate for an outlet and found one on the wall a few feet down; two people were already plugged in. She walked over and asked if she could charge when they were done. “I just need a minute,” she said, “just to check something.”

  “Go ahead,” a twenty-something boy said. He was Neal’s age—1998 Neal. The boy unplugged his phone and moved a few inches away to give her room.

  Georgie knelt down awkwardly between him and a woman who was typing on her laptop. She broke open the new charger and dug her phone out of her pocket, then plugged it in and waited for the white apple to appear.

  Nothing happened.

  “Has it been dead awhile?” the boy asked. “Sometimes it takes a few minutes.”

  Georgie waited a few minutes.

  She plugged and unplugged it at both ends. She pushed the two buttons.

  A tear fell onto the screen. (Hers, obviously.)

  “Do you want to use my phone?” the boy asked.

  “No, that’s okay,” Georgie said. “Thanks.” She unplugged her phone and stood up, rocking backwards awkwardly once she was on her feet. She turned away. Then back. “Actually, uh, yeah. Could I use your phone?”

  “Sure.” He held it up to her.

  Georgie took the phone and dialed Neal’s cell phone number. “We’re sorry. This mailbox is . . . full.” She gave the kid back his phone. “Thanks.”

  Her spot on the wall, by the little girls, was gone. A woman was sitting there now with her toddler.

  Georgie checked the sign over the desk again. Still delayed. One of the other flights had been canceled. She walked away from the gate and dropped her phone in the trash.

  Then she thought better of it and reached into the trash can to get it back. (It was right on top.) (Airport trash is relatively clean.) An older man wearing a big puffy jacket watched her. She tried to wave her phone around, so that he wouldn’t think she was digging for food.

  Then she shoved it in her pocket and walked over to the people mover. She rode it as far as she could in one direction, then came all the way back, then got on again.

  Just because Georgie couldn’t see the photos of her kids on her phone didn’t mean that the photos weren’t still there.

  Just because she couldn’t see the photos of her kids on her phone didn’t mean that her kids weren’t still there.

  Somewhere.
/>   Noomi’s bed with a dozen stuffed kitties. Alice’s paper dolls. Noomi chewing on her pigtail, Neal pulling it out of her mouth. Noomi chewing on her other pigtail, Neal tying her pigtails in a knot on top of her head.

  Neal in the kitchen. Neal making hot chocolate. Neal making Thanksgiving dinner. Neal standing by the stove when Georgie got home late for work. “I wasn’t sure what you wanted to pack, but I washed everything in your hamper. Don’t forget that it’s cold there—you always forget that it’s cold.”

  If Georgie could just look at her photos, she’d feel better.

  If she just had a little proof—not that she needed proof—but if she could just have a little proof that they were still there. She rubbed her naked ring finger. She emptied her pockets for signs of life: All she had was a credit card and a driver’s license, both in her maiden name.

  It got darker in the airport.

  Airports are always dark at night, and this one was even darker with all the sleeping storefronts and the snow. Georgie could still hear the wind, even though she was nowhere near the windows now. The whole building keened with it.

  At some point, she stepped off the people mover. The ground was too still beneath her, and she staggered. When she recovered her bearings, she went to the nearest bathroom and stood in front of the full-length mirror.

  As soon as the room was mostly empty, she lifted up her T-shirt and ran her hand along the stretch marks and the ropy scar under her belly.

  Still there.

  CHAPTER 33

  Georgie knew something was wrong because she’d been through this once before, and that time, the baby had come right out.

  With Alice, there’d been an incision, then a slippery pull—like someone had just hooked a wide-mouthed bass and yanked it out of Georgie’s guts. Then a nurse had rushed away with the baby, Georgie thanking God for the screams.

  The slow part, after Alice, had been putting Georgie back together again. Neal told her that the doctors actually took out her uterus and set it in on her stomach, then poked around inside her abdomen to make sure everything checked out.