"If we lose the APU on the ground at a divert," Grant said, "we need ground power availability confirmed at the alternates. Not assumed."
"Roanoke and Greensboro are good," Harrell said. "Raleigh's tight on gates if the whole region's bouncing."
Grant nodded. "Approve the release. Close when you're ready. I'll be in 3A if the weather desk wants a live call."
Felicia exhaled, just slightly. "Yes, sir."
He almost corrected her—he preferred Grant from people who had flown with him—but the cabin was listening now in that soft way, and formality had its uses. Titles could be armor. He turned back toward his seat.
Gretchen had returned to 2A. She was sitting very straight, cheeks flushed, eyes fixed on the seatback screen as if it contained absolution. She did not look at him as he passed. One passenger across the aisle—the white man in the navy blazer—met Grant's eyes for half a second and then looked away, embarrassed on behalf of a stranger, which was something, and also not enough.
Grant sat. He fastened his seatbelt. He opened the tablet again because the work did not pause for mortification, his or anyone else's. His hands were steady. That mattered to him more than he liked to admit. Anger that shook your hands was anger that had already started spending you.
During the silent minutes after Grant returned to 3A, the cabin performed its usual pretense of normalcy. Seatbelt clicks. A cough. The soft thud of a bag being resettled. Gretchen felt every sound as accusation. She wanted to stand and leave the airplane somehow, which was impossible, so she wanted the airplane to leave her, which was also impossible. She was trapped with the person she had tried to diminish and with the witnesses who now knew what she was capable of when she felt small.
She thought of her father, who had loved rules and hated ambiguity, who had once sent a steak back three times in a restaurant while teenage Gretchen sank into the booth. She had sworn she would never be that person. Looking at her hands now, she understood that she had become a quieter version of the same hunger: the need to correct the room until the room reflected her.
***
Pushback came with the usual choreography: the tug, the salute, the cabin announcement about electronic devices. Gretchen heard none of it clearly. Her ears were full of her own blood. She kept replaying the lean, the question, the smug line about the gate mistake. In her memory it already sounded worse—sharper, more theatrical. She wanted to believe she had only been checking a boarding irregularity. She wanted to believe the man's race had been irrelevant. Wanting did not make it true.
She had a history of this, if she was honest, and honesty was expensive. In offices she corrected people's badges. In restaurants she asked to be reseated when the table "felt wrong." On airplanes she had once reported a family for being "too loud" in a cabin where her own phone calls had been the louder thing. She told herself she was a person who cared about standards. Standards were easier to love than the people they sorted.