“I would.”
That almost made Maya smile.
Amara made a small sound.
Maya bounced her gently.
“There you go.”
She pulled a clean muslin cloth from the diaper bag and began dabbing sauce from the gown.
The stain was hopeless.
She knew fabric.
The oil alone would be difficult.
The feathers near her lap were speckled with salad dressing.
Her sister was going to laugh until she cried.
The thought helped.
Then Maya’s phone buzzed.
She ignored it.
Buzz.
Again.
She cleaned one of Amara’s tiny socks.
The phone buzzed a third time.
Maya sighed and checked the screen.
The first notification read:
BOARD MEETING MOVED TO 3:00 PM EST. SECURE LINK UPDATED.
Below it:
12 MISSED CALLS — ANDERSON
Maya stared at the name.
Twelve?
That was unusual.
Richard Anderson did not call twelve times unless something had gone very wrong.
He was chairman of Crown Atlantic Holdings, the parent company that owned Crown Atlantic Airways and three regional carriers.
He was also one of the calmest men Maya knew.
He had once sat through a six-hour regulatory hearing while a senator shouted at him and never changed expression.
Twelve missed calls meant trouble.
Maya locked the phone.
Not now.
Amara needed her.
Jessica was still gone.
And whatever emergency waited inside the boardroom would still exist in ten minutes.
Maya placed the phone face down on her lap.
Two rows behind her, Sarah Kim’s livestream viewer count crossed twenty thousand.
Sarah knew because comments were moving faster than she could read.
She was twenty-seven, worked in digital marketing, and had started recording because the spill looked bizarre.
Now her audience was exploding.
DID THAT ATTENDANT JUST QUESTION HER FIRST-CLASS TICKET AFTER SPILLING FOOD ON HER??