Four
Hannah did not want to walk into the security scanner alone the following morning.
It was the new one where you stood and lifted your arms, and she was having nothing to do with it.
She had even watched Sam do it first, after the exhausting checking in of his gun in his gun case and the examination of all his credentials, and then Kola, but still, it looked weird to her.
“It only beeps if you have any dog hair on you,” I said, using the last trick in my arsenal.
That quickly, I had all her attention.
“I have a cat.”
“I know, so you’ll be okay.”
“I want to call Chilly at Auntie Dylan’s house when we get our shoes back.”
“Okay.”
And with that, she walked through.
I followed her and got picked for the routine search thing and taken to the side and wanded.
The woman swiping me for metal told me how cute my kids were.
I thanked her, and then she thanked me, and I was back to my family, pulling on my harness boots.
I had to get water to put in the kids’ bottles, plus more snacks for the plane.
Sam thought that the feast I had schlepped with us was enough, but I explained that it couldn’t possibly be.
“Daddy, we only have Goldfish and pretzels and grapes and apples and graham crackers and yogurt, cheese and crackers, and pudding.”
Sam gave me a look.
“We don’t have any gum, and Pa said we have to chew it or our ears will explode.”
“Does blood come out when your ears blow up?” Hannah asked her all-knowing big brother.
Kola nodded.
“Eww.” Hannah’s face scrunched up as she covered her ears.
“That was a good idea to tell them?” Sam asked me.
“Well, they’re gonna chew the gum now, right?”
“I want the mint Trident.”
“I like the fruit one,” Hannah told her brother. “The mint one is hot.”
“Not the cinnamon one, stupid.”
“Don’t call your sister stupid,” I told him. “That’s a bad word.”
“But Riley says it about Pete.”
“Well, they’re stupid for saying that,” I stated.
“Does earwax come out of your ears before the blood?”
“I dunno.” Kola thought about that. “Probably.”
She nodded.
“Can we go?” Sam asked me irritably. He was already grouchy.
At the store to buy the water, Hannah wanted a stuffed animal, Kola wanted a key chain, and Sam bought three different kinds of gum, water, and magazines for me.
I had given both kids Dramamine before we left home and had it in my laptop bag for the return trip.
I grabbed some antacids for Sam’s dad, in case he forgot, and a deck of playing cards because, sometimes, you just wanted to do something mindless and talk to someone else.
Once we were at the gate, I called Dylan so Hannah could talk to Chilly. Afterward, I thanked her again for keeping the snow demon since I hadn’t wanted to put him in a kennel and Dane and Aja’s two Dalmatians didn’t much like cats.
By the time the airline personnel called for people with small children to go on after the first-class passengers, the rest of the family still wasn’t there. I wasn’t worried, but I was surprised since Regina was normally right on time.
We had nothing to go in any of the overhead bins, and it was nice because we had space in front of both kids’ seats for stuff as well.
By the time everyone else started showing up around us—Michael and Beverly, Rachel and her kids, Jen and Doug and their kids—it was getting close to departure time.
When Regina and Thomas finally showed up, I saw how flustered she was.
“What happened?” Jen called over to her mother.
“I don’t know. There was trouble with our tickets. They had an itinerary, but no flight number.”
“How is that possible?”
“I have no idea,” she breathed out and then tried to take her seat.
The man who was sitting on the aisle was supposed to be sitting by the window, simple as that.
He had read the little seating icon thing wrong—everyone knew the curve represented the window, but he had read that as the aisle.
Thomas had to sit on the aisle because if his claustrophobia started to kick in, he needed to be able to get up.
People thought it was a prostate thing, but it was all about feeling confined.
Unfortunately, it turned out the other passenger was drunk.
I got how the flight crew had missed it because he had been quiet the whole time, but once he got belligerent, he got loud, and from the slurring words, you understood that he was sloshed.
He was so out of it that he started swearing and then stood up and pushed Thomas.
It was a ballsy thing to do because Thomas Kage was a big man.
Both Sam and Michael had inherited their height and broad shoulders and heavy muscles from the man, so for the guy to go straight to physicality before anything else was gutsy.
There was a flight attendant right there, and Beverly, who had been one herself, immediately stood and explained what had happened.
My seat was next to the aisle; the guy had started out across from me, stood up, gotten in Thomas’s face, and then shoved him down into the seat.
I got up to help Thomas because Regina yelled, and Doug and Michael were stuck on the other side.
The attendant came up behind the drunk man, explained that he was to be escorted off the plane, and he lost it.
He shoved her, which meant he was so going to be taken off the plane in handcuffs, and I reached for her.
She grabbed hold of my arm so she didn’t fall down.
“Thank you,” she said quickly before turning and bolting down the aisle, calling for security.
When I moved to reach Thomas, who had banged his head hard on the overhead bin, the drunk guy barred my way.
“Please move,” I asked nicely, but in response, he came at me.
“Pa!” Hannah shrieked.
I never liked her to be scared.
“I’m gonna get Dad,” Kola yelled, and I saw him scramble out of his seat.
Sam had gone to the bathroom; that was where Kola went, I was certain. But I wasn’t worried about him. He couldn’t go far. I was more worried about the man looming in front of me.
“Just sit down.” I tried to sound soothing. “You’re drunk.”
“Fuck you!”
Thomas would have kept him off me as soon as he got up, I had no doubt, as would the other passengers who were moving in the aisle, but Kola had gone to fetch his father, and Sam was running.
He came over the seats, stepping on the armrests.
He had to duck down, and really, for a man Sam’s size, it was impressive.
And so fast. The guy was on his feet one minute; the next, he was on the floor, face pressed to the carpet, his shoulder under Sam’s boot.
Before the flight attendant could even get back, before anyone else came to my aid, my man was there.
When the air marshal arrived, Sam had his badge out for him before he could even get a word out.
The applause was instant.
“What the hell?” Sam barked at me.
“I—”
“Daddy, that man pushed Papa and wanted to hurt Pa,” Hannah told her father.
The guy groaned from the floor as Sam looked down at him.
“Oh God, somebody, hurry and get him off the plane,” I almost whined.
The guy was dead if they didn’t move.
Policemen came and took the guy off. They exchanged cards with Sam. All in all, the delay only cost us maybe twenty minutes. What was nice was that Sam was golden after that, and since the kids and I were in his reflected glow, we got the star treatment as well.
Thomas was very impressed with his son and had Regina trade places with Sam for a while so they could talk.
I gave Thomas the antacids I had gotten for him, and he gave me a pat on the cheek for being such a good boy.
Having never had a father of my own, I was always thrilled when I made him happy.
Kola showed his grandmother how to play Fruit Ninja on my iPad and read her all the fun facts.
Hannah leaned against me, using Kola’s DS since they had switched diversions two hours into the four-hour flight.
I had passed the cards to Jen and Rachel, who ended up sitting together, with Doug passed out beside his wife. We were a low-key group, and when we landed in Phoenix at eleven in the morning, Kola thought that was the coolest thing ever.
“We time-traveled,” he told me.
I agreed that we had.
Even though we had sat in economy-plus class on the 747 because both Sam’s and his father’s legs were too long for us to sit in coach, he was still complaining when we walked to the baggage terminal.
“You should have asked the pilot for an upgrade for the ride home,” I teased him.
“You’re funny,” he groused at me.
But I knew that. It was a gift.
Kola was sick of sitting by the time the shuttle got us from the airport to the hotel in Scottsdale.
The driver talked as he drove, explaining about the two hundred acres the boutique hotel sat on, the amenities, the dessert bar that the kids would enjoy, the waterslides, the pools, the horseback riding, and so on.
Even the drive in to the hotel was amazing.
The grounds were gorgeous, beautifully landscaped, and a staff member greeted us and walked us to the front desk.
Hannah loved the fountain in the lobby. Looking at it reminded Kola that he had to pee, and then Hannah had to go too.
I excused us and went to take my kids to find a bathroom.
Another nice person walked us there, and once you went inside, there were individual rooms with sinks inside the bathroom, plus a place to sit down and relax when you came out.
I had never seen five different kinds of hand soap and lotions and towels and pitchers of ice water with lemon in a bathroom before in my life.
I had a feeling we were swimming in the deep end of money.