They'll let anyone up here now. He heard himself say it, tinny through the phone speaker, and winced. Had he really said that? Out loud? On camera?
His PR chief, a razor-sharp woman named Diane, arrived at 3 PM with a crisis plan and the expression of a surgeon delivering bad news.
"Options," she said, without preamble. "One: full apology, today, on camera. Own it completely. Two: statement through the company, no camera, let it blow over. Three: fight it — claim selective editing, threaten to sue the passenger who filmed."
"Who filmed it?" Walter asked.
"A woman in 5C. She's already been interviewed. She's very sympathetic. Do not sue her." Diane set down a folder. "Walter. I've been with you twelve years. I'm going to be honest: option three ends your career. Option two probably ends it slower. Option one — " She met his eyes. "Option one gives you a chance. But it has to be real. Not the hostage-video kind. Real."
Walter stared out at the fog. "She called her father," he said quietly. "The captain. Did you know? When she said 'my dad's flying the plane' — " He laughed, a hollow sound. "I thought she was bluffing."
"She wasn't."
"No." He swirled the whiskey. "She wasn't."
Diane waited. She was good at waiting — it was half her job.
"What do you know about her?" Walter asked finally. "The girl."
"Dr. Maya Chen. Thirty. Trauma surgeon at Halloway General. Her mother died three years ago. Her father's Captain Thomas Chen — thirty years with AeroNova, two months from retirement." Diane paused. "She saved a man's life the night before the flight. Nine-hour surgery. The hospital confirmed it."
Walter closed his eyes. A surgeon. A dead mother. A captain father, two months from retirement. Every detail was a knife, and the internet was holding all of them.
"She didn't want this," he said quietly. "Did she? The video. She's not — she's not doing interviews."
"No. She's gone dark. Which, frankly, makes you look worse."
Walter nodded slowly. He thought about the hoodie — the coffee stain, the torn knee. He'd seen poverty, or what he thought was poverty, and he'd acted accordingly. He hadn't seen the thirty-one hours. He hadn't seen the heart in her hands at 4 AM.
"Diane," he said. "Draft the apology. The real kind. I'll do it on camera."
She blinked. "Today?"
"Today." He stood, walked to the window. "And Diane? Find out where she's staying. Not to bother her — just... I want to write her a letter. A real one. Not through lawyers."
Diane studied him for a long moment. Then she nodded, and left to make it happen.
Alone, Walter looked at his reflection in the dark glass — silver hair, expensive suit, the face from the meme — and didn't recognize himself at all.
His phone buzzed. His daughter — his actual daughter, twenty-eight, who ran a nonprofit and hadn't spoken to him in three months over what she'd called "the soul problem."
Dad, she'd texted. Saw the video.
Walter stared at the message. His thumb hovered. Then he typed: I'm sorry.
The reply came fast: Not to me. To her.
He set the phone down. His daughter was right, as usual. She'd been right three months ago, too, when she'd said, "Dad, when's the last time you were kind to someone who couldn't do anything for you?" He hadn't had an answer then. He didn't have one now.
Diane knocked and came in with a draft statement. Walter read it — the usual crisis language, regret, reflect, learn — and felt sick.
"No," he said.
"No?"
"This — " He held up the paper. "This is what someone says when they're sorry they got caught. I want — " He stopped. What did he want? "I want to say what actually happened. I saw a young woman in a hoodie and I decided she didn't belong. I was wrong. Not about the seat — about everything. About how I see people."
Diane stared at him. "Walter. If you say that on camera, there's no taking it back."
"Good." He stood. "Schedule it. Tomorrow morning. And Diane — the letter to Dr. Chen. I want to write it myself. Tonight."
She nodded slowly. "Okay. But Walter? One piece of advice, off the clock." She waited until he looked at her. "Don't make it about you. Not the apology, not the letter. Make it about her."
After Diane left, Walter sat at the desk and took out a sheet of hotel stationery — his own hotel's, embossed, ridiculous — and stared at it for a long time. Then he began to write, in longhand, crossing out, starting over, the way he hadn't written anything in decades.
Dear Dr. Chen,
You don't know me, though the internet now ensures you know more than you'd like. My name is Walter Grady. I was the man in 2B.
I am writing to say what I should have said on the plane: I was wrong. Completely, inexcusably wrong...
He wrote for an hour. When he finished, his hand ached and his eyes were wet, and the letter said what he meant — or as close as he'd ever gotten.
He folded it, sealed it, and set it aside. Tomorrow, the apology. Tonight, the letter. One step at a time, toward becoming someone his daughter might call back.
Chapter 8 — The Airline Responds
AeroNova's crisis team met in a windowless conference room at headquarters, and the mood was funereal.
On the screen: the video, frozen at the worst frame — Grady pointing, Maya small in 2A. Below it, the numbers: 14 million views. #Seat2A trending worldwide. Three boycott hashtags. A Change.org petition with 800,000 signatures demanding Grady be banned for life.
"This is bad," said the VP of Communications.
"This is catastrophic," said the General Counsel.
"This," said the CEO — a woman named Katherine Holt, who'd built her career on operational excellence and had never faced anything like this — "is an opportunity. If we're brave enough to take it."