She went back to slide four.
At four o'clock a woman in a navy uniform with a first officer's stripes came in through the glass doors from the ramp, shaking rain off her jacket. She was in her thirties, with dark hair pulled back tight, and she went to the boy before she went to anyone else.
"Hey, Theo," she said, crouching to his level but not too close. "Captain says the weather's moving off to the north. We're going to have a bumpy first ten minutes and then it'll be smooth. You want to see the radar picture?"
The boy didn't look at her, but he stopped humming. He held out one hand, palm up, and she put her phone into it, and he studied the green and yellow blotches on the screen with total concentration.
"I'm Dana," the woman said, standing, and this time she was talking to Celeste. "First officer. You must be Ms. Varga. And Mr. Bell." She shook Jonah's hand. She did not offer hers to Celeste, perhaps because Celeste had not stood up. "We'll board in about ten. It's a CJ3, so it's cozy. Six seats in the cabin. There's a lav in the back, but it's more of a closet, so I'd go here if you need to."
"Is there Wi-Fi?"
"No, ma'am."
Celeste closed her eyes for exactly one second. "Of course there isn't."
Dana looked at her a moment longer than necessary, then went back out into the rain.
* * *
The jet was white with a thin blue stripe along the fuselage and a tail number that ended in OS. Up close, in the wet light, it looked smaller than Celeste had expected, more like an expensive car with wings than an aircraft. The air stair folded down out of the side. Dana stood at the bottom of it with an umbrella, and the boy went up first, counting the steps out loud, all six of them, and then counting them again from the top as if to make sure.
Inside, the cabin was cream leather and walnut veneer. Four seats faced each other in a club arrangement, two forward-facing and two rear-facing, with a fold-out table between them; behind those, two more seats sat side by side across a narrow aisle. Celeste took the forward-facing club seat on the right without asking anyone, because it was the best seat, and Jonah took the one across the aisle from her, and that left the father and the boy the two rear-facing seats across the table, directly opposite.