“M…
Mason…?”
Tyler whispered, his voice cracking into an ugly, paper-thin whistle from the bottom of an open grave:
“Mason…?!
What… what are you doing here?!”
Mason did not smile.
He did not wave.
My seven-year-old son looked at his father’s four gold captain stripes.
Then he looked at the five-carat diamond ring blazing on Vanessa Sterling’s hand.
And then Mason reached into his small denim jacket pocket, pulled out the crumpled sheet of green construction paper, and dropped it squarely onto the blue carpet between his father’s polished Oxford shoes:
SLIP.
The drawing lay face-up on the floor, the crooked crayon letters screaming into the silence: BEST PILOT EVER.
Tyler’s gaze drifted from the drawing up to my face.
I stood five feet from him in the narrow aisle, wearing my faded trench coat, my dark hair pulled back into an unyielding chignon, my slate-gray eyes boring straight through his pupils into the bankrupt, treacherous hollow of his marrow.
