Chapter 13 You Can’t Plan for What You Can’t Plan For
You Can’t Plan for What You Can’t Plan For
The last time I was in Paris, I was with Owen.
We were there for a belated honeymoon, almost a year after we got married. We spent six nights there, just the two of us. Bailey was spending a week at Interlochen, a performing arts camp in Michigan. A camp for which she had to audition—a camp she would have moved into if Owen had let her.
We dropped her at camp and then went straight back to the airport. Straight to France from there.
It was the longest Owen had ever been away from Bailey.
The longest the two of us had been away together alone.
It was much-needed time alone together, especially when those were the days Bailey could barely stand to look at me.
I remember our last exchange when I left her at Interlochen was me telling her that I couldn’t wait to hear all about her experience there, and Bailey just staring at me blankly. Sure, she’d said.
Now, Bailey eyes me, and I know she is making the same calculation. Especially because she saw it too. Just yesterday. She saw the folder on the flash drive, marked O&H Honeymoon. She knows we spent it in Paris.
I motion for her to come sit beside me, on the same side of the small table, as I power on the laptop, inserting the flash drive.
And I go immediately to that photo album.
I don’t need the photo album to remind me, but the photographs hit me just the same: that first day, walking through Luxembourg Gardens, letting the fresh air and rich coffee fight off the jet lag.
The next day at the Musée d’Orsay. There’s a photograph of one of Picasso’s paintings, Ulysses and sirens.
Did we see that in Paris? I don’t remember seeing it in Paris…
But I do remember that night, and the perfect dinner at Le Voltaire on the Left Bank: omelets and french fries and ice-cold martinis, the moon showing off over the Seine. Owen included a photograph of me holding that martini, smiling at him in the way that only Owen made me smile.
I pull up the last photograph, a knot rising in my throat as Bailey zooms in, Owen and I coming into sharp focus. We were taking in the sunset on our hotel balcony—the Eiffel Tower in the distance. Owen kissing my neck, while he held the camera out, capturing both of us. When it was both of us.
And I remember the conversation we had later that night.
It was that night, I’m fairly certain. He asked me if I could imagine living there.
He confessed that he’d had a secret fantasy to move to Paris when he was in college.
He imagined spending his days on the Left Bank, teaching at the Sorbonne.
He’d even studied French, had become proficient, just in case it turned into more than a dream.
I look up and meet Bailey’s eyes. But I won’t let myself say it out loud—not to Bailey. I won’t let myself think it. Not until he is actually in front of us again. Not until I know whether it’s real.
This could be the place where he’s figured it out.
How we get to be safe.
I must have fallen asleep.
I’m not entirely surprised I did. I didn’t sleep at all last night. What is surprising is that it’s the shaking of the plane that wakes me. The shaking of the plane as we are descending—almost, in fact, on the ground.
Bailey is asleep next to me, her head on my shoulder. I rub my eyes, still groggy, and look out the window as the wheels touch down.
I feel a drumbeat starting in my head, loud. It makes me uneasy.
Because I should have been ready for it. I should have been waiting for it. I look over at the flight plan. According to the map, it’s not New Jersey that we’ve landed in. Not Teterboro as planned.
It’s Miami.
I feel that in my chest, the drumbeat getting louder. Miami is the home of Fisher Island. Home base of the organization.
The last place—the very last place—I want to be. The last place I want Bailey to be.
“What’s going on?” I say.
I say it a little too loudly, Sally looking up from where she is sitting in a jump seat in the galley—Bailey stirring awake.
I’m up, out of my seat, Bailey staring up at me.
“What’s happening?” she asks.
I don’t answer her. I look out the window, trying to scan who is heading toward the plane.
There’s a fuel truck (is it really a fuel truck?), several airport personal trailing behind it.
They are all coming our way. The boarding stairs to the plane are not yet down, but they will be down any moment.
They will be down any moment unless I do something.
“I need to talk to the pilot,” I call out to Sally. “Now.”
Then I’m reaching for my burner phone, before they reach the plane, tapping out Grady’s number.
I’m on the last digit—the very last digit—when Daniel walks out of the cockpit. He is walking toward me.
“Ms. Roberts? Is everything okay?”
“What are we doing in Miami?”
My tone is sharp, almost hostile. And I can see Daniel react to it, his brow tightening.
“We ran into a bit of weather,” he says.
A bit of weather? Wouldn’t a bit of weather have taken us somewhere closer to New York than Miami? Shouldn’t we be stopping somewhere like Pennsylvania? Delaware at the farthest?
“All the way along the Eastern Seaboard?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
My heart starts racing faster. Who knows exactly what Daniel has been told: Daniel, who might not even understand that the plane being diverted here could be a setup.
Or worse (unlikely, but worse), Daniel, who could have made a deal with the organization, selling out Owen.
Selling Bailey and me out along with him.
“OPF can attend to us immediately,” Daniel says. “They were the only airport who could. This will ensure we stay on time for your arrival to Paris, which I’m sure is your primary concern here…”
He says this last part loudly, as if saying it for Sally. Sally, who is now standing in the galley, pretending not to listen, but moving closer to us. Moving closer and clearly listening. He says this part for Sally, so she thinks I’m just another entitled passenger—not someone suspicious.
I look back out the window. The fuel truck is nearly beside the plane now.
I’m running out of time. This is the moment to decide.
If I call Grady now—if I tap the call button—then someone will come and help.
I can keep the plane doors locked until they get here.
I can hold my ground until they send us someone safe.
Someone safe to get us out of here. But someone who probably won’t be taking us any closer to Owen.
I turn back to Daniel, his hands folded in front of him, but one hand is shaking. I can see it shaking. And I see it in his eyes—what he wants me to understand. This wasn’t the plan. This wasn’t his plan, at least. That he, like me, is nervous about what it means that we’ve been diverted here.
Daniel is flying us to Paris because he can. Because he wants to help us, to help Owen. Because his brother is Owen’s best friend. But beyond that, Daniel is out of his depth.
It nearly undoes me. I look down at my phone, zero in on the call button. Then I look over at Bailey. Bailey, who is staring back at me.
I’ve shielded her the best I can, but she knows enough to know that Miami is not good. She knows that the organization’s upper management is based out of here. She knows enough to know this is the last place we want to be.
This is the thing about organizing your life the way I do—about knowing that you are only safe when you are completely prepared.
When you are the one who takes control. In the rare moment where you aren’t in control, you feel like you are giving someone else the chance to undo it: all the ways you work to protect her.
“What the fuck?” Bailey says.
I put my hand on her shoulder. I put my hand on her shoulder and I try to calm her—to let her know I’ve got this.
I try to believe that myself.
“No one deplanes,” I say. “And the plane door stays closed, understood? So that we can take off as quickly as possible.”
Daniel offers a small nod. “Understood.”
Then, he heads back to the cockpit—past Sally, who will certainly be telling her new boyfriend later about the entitled woman she had on board today. Sally, who I pray will have the opportunity to say this.
You make a million decisions. You make a million decisions and one of them can undo you. One of them can save you, but any one of them can undo you. Which decision will this be?
“Grandpa said we should never come to Miami,” Bailey whispers. “Isn’t that the one thing he said?”
I nod. “I know.”
My heart cracks in my chest, thinking of Nicholas.
Nicholas, who I still can’t believe is gone.
Nicholas, who would be so upset that I’ve allowed his granddaughter to end up here, even for a moment.
I can feel his arm on my shoulder, I can hear what he’d say if he were here: We need to get her out of this.
I sit back down next to her. And I put my arm around her, looking out the small airplane window at the fuel trucks and all the ground workers—at everyone starting to come closer to us.
“Mom,” she says. “What do we do?
“At the moment?” I say. “I think we pray.”