"Not mine. He's got his own union." Gretl looked at her. "What I hear, he's off the line. Some kind of leave. Grief counseling through the company program, and a whole lot of meetings. He's sixty-two. He might come back for the last couple years. He might not. He doesn't seem to be fighting much, from what I hear."
The letter came in October. Documented counseling. Lead qualification retained. It was, Gretl said on the phone, about as good as a letter got.
Two other envelopes came in October, too.
The first came to the base in care of Billie Faraday, in a plain white envelope with a Littleton postmark, and inside it was a card with a photograph on the front of a field of yellow sunflowers, and inside the card, in a neat schoolteacher's hand: Billie. The cells were infused at 2:50 a.m. Eastern. That is all I know and all I will ever know, unless the family chooses otherwise in a year, which they almost never do. I called Mr. Vandermolen from my hotel room. He cried on the phone and so did I. He says he will see me in Grand Island for the sandhill cranes in March, which I have always wanted to see. I am going again on the 28th. Portland, this time. I will have the letter in my hand. Laverne.
The second was not addressed to her. It was a copy of something Gunnar had sent through the company's customer relations office, which had agreed, after some discussion with lawyers, to forward a sealed letter to the last known address on file for a Mr. Leonard Amadi of Houston, Texas, along with a second sealed letter, from her. Gunnar had mailed her the copy of his own so that she would know what it said. It was one page. It did not ask for anything. It said what he had done, and that he had done it because of what Mr. Amadi looked like, and that he had not understood that for ten years, and that he was sorry Mr. Amadi had missed his mother's funeral, and that he had no right to expect an answer.
Her own letter had been three pages. She had written it eleven times. In the end it said, mostly, that she had seen it, and that she had finally written it down.
She did not know if the address was any good. She did not know if Leonard Amadi was alive, or if he would open it, or if he would read it and put it in a drawer, or read it and throw it away, which would be his right. Customer relations had said they would let her know if it came back undeliverable. It had not come back. That was all she knew.
On the first of November she worked a Denver to Raleigh-Durham, in the A position, on a 737-800 that was not ship 3427 and had a coffee maker that worked without being hit. She stood at the forward door with her shoulder against the bulkhead and one hand on the edge of the galley counter and said good morning, hi there, welcome aboard, good morning, and watched every face that came through the door. A woman with a cane. A man who'd had two Bloody Marys. A boy flying alone with a lanyard around his neck. A tall woman with silver locs and a laptop bag who stopped in the aisle by row 3 and checked her boarding pass against the placard over the seat, twice, in the careful way of somebody who has learned to have it ready, and the man already sitting in the aisle seat looked up at her, and Billie watched his face. He just stood up to let her in.
Billie let out a breath she did not know she had been holding. Then she turned to the next face in the door, and said good morning, and kept watching.