CHAPTER THREE MAKAYLA
CHAPTER THREE
M AKAYLA
“Folks, this is your captain speaking. We have reached our cruising altitude of thirty-six thousand feet. We’ve smoothed out sooner than we expected, so I’ve turned off the fasten seat belt sign. But just a reminder, it is our policy here at Pacific Air that you keep your seat belt fastened anytime you are seated, just in case we encounter some unexpected turbulence.”
Makayla shifts in her seat. Spending two weeks with her dad in Anchorage, where everything seemed to slow down, left her relaxed. Already, the thought of returning to New York and its streets—filled with all those people—makes her lungs seize up. Soon, she’ll go back to spending her days alone with Liam in their condo, with Jack’s early-morning promises to “see you tonight” followed by his return from the Financial District almost inevitably after she and Liam are asleep.
Makayla eyes the small blanket she tucked around Liam after laying him in the bassinet, cocooning his lower half. Sweet Liam didn’t fuss at all during takeoff, when she held him against her chest, despite having been jolted awake by the man with the dog carrier when they boarded. Now, beneath the blanket, his body is still.
A female voice comes through the overhead speakers, announcing the variety of drink options for the first in-flight beverage service. Makayla’s eyes drift to a screen flashing across the aisle. The young woman wearing bright-pink headphones searches through the in-flight entertainment options.
When Makayla’s mother’s face pops up on the girl’s screen, Makayla’s breath catches. The girl lingers on the Netflix documentary that recounted Lydia’s life and death, particularly her infamous TV interview on Mornings with Sally . Makayla didn’t realize the airline was showing it. She swallows the bitterness that rises to the back of her throat, wondering if the mention of her mother in Jack’s Forbes article prompted the airline to acquire the eight-year-old documentary.
She’s glad that she’s let her hair return to its natural color since her documentary interviews. Her being nearly a decade older, and no longer being blond, should help keep anyone who watches the documentary on the flight from recognizing her.
As Pink Headphones swipes right and selects the latest Reese Witherspoon movie, Makayla relaxes against her seat. She doesn’t like how the documentary portrays her mother, highlighting her memory lapse and sensationalizing the home invasion by a fan turned stalker. That incident had traumatized her mother for years afterward.
Even worse, she hates to think of her mother being remembered—and defined—by her final moments. The media circus surrounding her death was everything her mother had worked so hard to escape. It’s what spurred Makayla to create an awareness campaign after it happened. In the years following her mother’s death, the campaign garnered a substantial following—thanks to her mom’s fame and an interview Makayla did on True Investigations .
The rom-com begins to play, and Makayla watches a jean-jacketed Reese Witherspoon drag her suitcase down the streets of New York, gaping at her surroundings like a tourist. Makayla turns away and leans her head back, surprised to still feel the tender spot on the back of her head from her fall yesterday. She hopes it doesn’t bring on a headache. She hasn’t had one in a while, but the last one she had, while she was pregnant with Liam, kept her in bed for a whole day.
She’s well aware that migraines are also a precursor to developing her mother’s amnesia disorder. Her mom had them for years before it happened. Initially, it frightened Makayla when she started getting headaches, but she didn’t get them often—not like her mother. She attributed the last one to her pregnancy.
Makayla closes her eyes, recalling the scared look in her dad’s eyes when she tripped on their hike, losing her balance from the weight of her backpack and bumping her head against a large rock on her way to the ground. Thankfully, her dad had been carrying Liam. She had to assure him more than once that she was fine, refusing his suggestion that she see a doctor. For the rest of their hike, Makayla downplayed the throb at the back of her head, knowing her dad’s overconcern stemmed from losing her mother so suddenly.
“Anything to drink?”
Makayla opens her eyes, surprised to see the blond flight attendant who offered her headphones before takeoff standing behind the drink cart, waiting eagerly for her answer. She couldn’t have had her eyes closed for more than ten minutes.
“Um. I’ll take a ginger ale.” Makayla glances behind the blond, past the male flight attendant standing on the opposite end of the cart, remembering most of the seats on the flight were open.
“I meant to ask you earlier about your mom, Derek. How is she?” the attendant asks her male counterpart as she pours Makayla’s soda from the can.
Derek sighs. “Not good. Her latest treatments haven’t been working. There’s a new immunotherapy drug that her doctors are hopeful could put her in remission, but because it’s still considered experimental, her insurance won’t cover it. It’s why I picked up the extra trip.”
The blond attendant places a hand over her heart. “I’m sorry; that’s so tough.”
“I’m fine. I’m just worried about her . Thankfully, there’s been a ton of overtime shifts available lately. I’m trying to help however I can.”
She hands Makayla a plastic cup with a napkin underneath. “Here you go. Would you like the can?”
“No, thanks.” Makayla takes the cup. Her eyes fall to the attendant’s name pin. Britt.
Makayla turns around to see the male attendant, her heart going out to the stranger faced with losing his mom. A pain she knows all too well. Britt turns to Pink Headphones across the aisle while Makayla reaches across the seat beside her and manages to pull the tray table out of the armrest without waking Liam. She takes a few sips before setting her half-full cup on the tray table.
Makayla reaches inside the diaper bag for her phone. She connects to the in-flight Wi-Fi, hoping to have gotten a good-night text from Jack. Instead, she has a new text from her friend Cori. Are we still on for coffee tomorrow? Excited to see you!
She met Cori at a Tribeca mother’s group before most of its members flocked to their summer homes during the city’s hottest months. The group’s park day was the biggest outing she’d attended with Liam since his birth. It was windy. She remembers having to chase after his blanket several times after it blew off his stroller. Toward the end, Liam spit up all over her shirt, and she discovered she’d only packed one burp cloth. She felt like a mess compared to all the other put-together Tribeca mothers and had come home exhausted.
Afterward, she and Cori connected through the group’s social media page while Cori summered in the Hamptons. Through texts and a few phone calls, they’d grown close over the last few months, discovering several things they had in common.
Makayla types a reply. Yes. Can’t wait to see you too!
Dots appear below her message seconds before a new text pops up. I have some exciting news about that preschool close to your condo!
A month ago, Cori asked which preschool waiting lists Liam was on. Makayla laughed and told her none, reminding Cori that her baby was only two months old. Cori warned her that if she waited any longer, Liam’s only options would be preschools in New Jersey. After Makayla got over her shock that she needed to start so early, Cori offered to help her navigate through the best preschools in their neighborhood.
Unlike Makayla, Cori had lived in Manhattan her whole life and was well connected. Over the last few weeks, she had managed to get Liam added to three waiting lists after the schools turned Makayla down. With Cori home from the Hamptons, maybe Makayla will feel less alone.
Being an only child, Makayla always dreamed of one day having a big family. But losing her mom so suddenly took a toll on her, and it was several years before she felt ready to become a parent. Then it took a few years of trying before she finally became pregnant with Liam. Jack practically living at the office hadn’t helped.
The cabin is now quiet, and Makayla’s gaze falls to Liam’s sleeping form. The plane hits a bump, lurching upward. Makayla is pulled against her seat belt, instinctively extending her arms toward Liam as his pacifier rolls to the top of the bassinet.
She prepares to give it back to him if he cries, but he remains quiet. She sits back, and her attention drifts to the white clouds floating outside the half-shaded window.
She thinks of her dad, back at home on Lake Anchorage, and tears spring to her eyes. How long will it be before she sees him again? She closes the window shade, wondering why it’s hitting her so hard.
She hasn’t seen him more than a few times a year since she moved to New York, when she was eighteen, back when her parents still lived in Seattle. While she wishes he lived closer, she can’t remember the last time she got this emotional about it.
She tells herself it’s the hormones and lack of sleep causing her overreaction, but the sight of Liam’s peaceful, sleeping face in the bassinet consoles her. Her dad promised to try to visit for Christmas. She swallows back the lump that forms in her throat, reminding herself the holiday is less than five months away.
She retrieves her phone and scrolls through the photos she took on her trip. She pauses, smiling at a photo of Liam asleep in her dad’s arms. She opens the cloud storage on her phone and swipes through the nature photos she took with her Nikon, debating which ones to post on her blog. The moss-covered evergreens in Chugach State Park and driftwood-lined shores of Kincaid Beach remind her of the countless photos she took while growing up on Bainbridge Island.
Her childhood home offered views of Seattle beyond Elliott Bay. After getting a Kodak for her third birthday, Makayla started capturing images of the beach. By high school, her bedroom walls were covered in photos she’d taken on the island. That little camera was why she moved to New York to major in photography at Columbia. She remembers her younger self standing in the darkroom on campus over a chemical bath, dreaming of having her work on display in photography galleries around the city.
Instead, she put her photography on hold after her mother died to raise awareness about the condition that killed her mother. All these years later, it is still hardly more than a hobby. She hopes that someday, maybe, it will be more.
Her gaze travels out the window. It’s still daylight, but all she can see is a layer of clouds beneath them. She wishes Jack could slow down and realize all that he’s missing. He works so hard for them, and she’s grateful. But she doesn’t need all the things Jack feels so compelled to give them.
She and Liam need him to be present. Part of their lives. Not just providing for the life they’re living mostly without him.
Jack has already missed so much of Liam’s first few months, small everyday moments that she’ll have forever. Time he’ll never get back. She thinks of her mom. You never know when your time with someone could be your last.
She rests her head against her seat, careful not to put pressure on the tender spot from her fall. Someday, Liam will be grown and living his own life. She worries for Jack. And Liam, too, as she knows the resentment Jack holds for his own father’s absence—and why he feels so bonded to Lionel.
She feels a spark of sadness at the realization that she doesn’t know Jack well enough to guess what he’s thinking anymore. All the years he’s spent working around the clock have taken a toll on their relationship. They are starting to feel like strangers. Even when she does see Jack lately, he seems preoccupied, consumed by his work. Or someone he works with .
A sinking feeling forms in her gut at the thought of Sabrina, his boss Lionel Rothman’s daughter and Jack’s childhood best friend, who serves as the firm’s managing director. Jack and Sabrina dated briefly in college before Makayla met him. While Makayla has always suspected Sabrina still has a thing for Jack, she never worried about it being reciprocated. Until lately.
Years ago, Jack told her that he and Sabrina had a falling out after Sabrina gave one of his client accounts to someone else at the firm. The image of Sabrina and Lionel in the recent Forbes article, each with a hand on Jack’s shoulder, flashes in her mind. It’s all in the family, the article said. Like Jack and Sabrina were some power couple both working for her father. Her cheeks flush with anger just thinking about it.
Then, there was the other photo of Jack and Sabrina laughing together, and the article’s mention of how they grew up as next-door neighbors. From the way Sabrina beamed at Jack in the photo, it was hard to imagine a rift between them. If not impossible.
When Makayla commented on it to Jack, he was quick to dismiss her misgivings. It’s not real, just a publicity stunt for the firm. We were only doing what we were told by the photographer.
But she couldn’t help but wonder if Jack and Sabrina’s falling out was over something personal. And now, had they rekindled?
She thinks of all the late nights when she believed he was at work. Has she been a fool to trust her husband so blindly? She cringes inwardly, recalling Jack’s menacing tone when she asked him how things were at work a few days before she and Liam left for Alaska.
He was so defensive. So mean . He’d never snapped at her like that before.
Her phone vibrates in her hand, tearing her from her thoughts. Makayla opens the text from Cori. As usual, her friend is reading her mind.
Are you going to confront Jack when you get home?
Makayla bites her lip before sending her reply. I haven’t decided.
She’s sure Jack is hiding something, but what she’s not sure of is whether she’s ready to handle the truth.
Cori’s response appears less than a minute later. You have to! You deserve so much better. I think you’re being way too passive about it. If I thought Fletcher was cheating on me, I’d chop him up into tiny pieces and dump every last bit of him into the East River.
Makayla stifles a laugh at the three knife emojis that appear below Cori’s message. She smiles as she sends her reply. You’re sick.
It’s why you love me.
That I do. Makayla rests her phone on her lap after sending the text, remembering the moment she and Jack first met at Columbia.
It had taken her a few moments to dial in the settings on her newly purchased Nikon in order to imbue the campus’s lion statue with a negative emotion. A group of laughing students entered her frame, and she waited for them to move past. She took the photo right as more movement entered her lens.
“Oh. Sorry.”
She lowered her camera to find an athletic-looking guy blocking her view of the statue, his shaggy brown hair reminding her of Zac Efron’s.
“That’s okay,” she said, but when she lifted her camera in front of her eye, the guy didn’t move.
Instead, he stepped toward her.
“I’m Jack.”
She lowered her camera a second time. “I’m Makayla.”
He gestured to her Nikon. “You a photography major?”
“What gave me away?” A flush of red appeared on his cheeks, and she smiled. “What about you?”
“Business.” He flashed a crooked smile. “Your degree sounds more fun.”
A tingle ran down her spine. Jack was decidedly hotter than Zac Efron.
He pointed toward the statue. “This an assignment?”
“Yeah.”
Jack made no effort to continue wherever he was going.
Makayla tucked a strand of hair behind her ear that blew forward in the wind. “We’re learning how to manipulate lighting to evoke emotion in the viewer.”
He came a little closer. “Can I see?”
“Oh. Sure.”
When his eyes locked with hers, she noted the yellow flecks in his hazel irises. He stood beside her, and she held up the camera, clicking through the photos she’d taken earlier that morning.
“Here.” She paused on a bright photo of the lion statue. “This should evoke a positive emotion. Where this”—she flipped to the image she took right after the laughing students walked by, where she’d reduced the exposure—“conveys a gloomier feeling.”
“Amazing.”
She looked up from the small screen on her camera and found him staring at her. Her pulse quickened.
He cleared his throat. “Would you want to get a coffee with me later? Or something?”
“Oh.”
His face faltered, reading her surprise as disinterest. She immediately berated herself for being at such a loss for words.
“Sorry.” He put up his hand. “I know we just met.”
“I’d love to.”
His grin reappeared. “Okay.” He stepped backward, keeping his eyes on her as he grabbed the straps on his backpack. “You free at three?”
Her last class ended at two. “Yeah.”
“Cool. Meet you here?”
She nodded. “Okay.”
“See you then.” He turned, and she watched him stride away until he disappeared around the corner of a building.
She flipped back through the photos she’d taken, trying to refocus on her assignment that was due in less than an hour. She’d gotten the assignment last week but left it to the last minute, knowing the lighting would be best today.
When she got to the last photo, she stopped and found herself zooming in. She’d gone too far in reducing the exposure, trying to evoke negative emotions in the image. The image was underexposed, making the lion statue behind Jack appear as a dark blob. Despite the shadows, she could clearly see the startled expression on Jack’s face. She stared at Jack’s open-mouthed realization of being in her photo. Biting her lip, she felt a smile reach the sides of her mouth.
She keeps the photo on her phone to this day. She lifts the device, still in her hand. After finding the photo, she studies the image she’s seen a thousand times, wondering if they’ll ever get back what they had.
Makayla yawns. For the last month, she’s been trying the sleep training method Cori used to get her daughter to sleep through the night at only ten weeks. Liam finally started sleeping through most of the night this week.
She sends Cori one last message before closing her eyes. Liam is already out. Fingers crossed he’ll stick to his new sleep schedule after we get home. Looks like I might get to sleep on the flight!
Aware for the first time how tired she is, she feels the tension fade from her shoulders. She relaxes against her seat, succumbing to sleep.