Chapter 2
The Woman in the Yellow Scarf

The chair beside Jonah held a folded walking stick and a yellow scarf.

“Is anyone sitting here?” he asked.

“My temper,” the woman said. “But it can make room.”

He sat carefully, keeping the equipment case beneath his knees. The woman was small, perhaps seventy, with silver hair cut close around her ears. A baggage receipt lay flat on her lap, held down by two fingers.

“She tore it,” the woman said.

Jonah looked toward Counter Nine.

“You saw?”

“I was being sent away myself. My name is Evelyn Shaw.”

“Jonah Mercer.”

“I can tell someone what I saw.”

He thanked her, then asked what had happened to her bag.

Evelyn had requested help moving a heavy suitcase after a scale showed it above the permitted weight. She was willing to pay or remove something. She could not lift it alone. Celia had told her to use the repacking area, which consisted of a narrow shelf behind a pillar and no available assistance.

“My husband packed the bag,” Evelyn said. “He has been dead six months. Apparently I still think he is responsible for everything inconvenient.”

She smiled without asking Jonah to make the sadness smaller.

He offered to help, but she shook her head.

“Sit. You look as if moving one more thing might break your back.”

His phone rang. Ruth.

“Tell me you're through security,” she said.

He gave her the facts he understood. She listened without interrupting, which told him she was angry.

“Did you tell them about the bridge?”

“Yes.”

“About the assignment?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

He watched Celia smile at a man in a navy overcoat who had stepped into the priority lane.

“I'm waiting for someone with authority to check it.”

Ruth breathed out.

“Lila can hear my half of this.”

“Tell her I'm safe.”

“Tell her yourself.”

A pause, a scrape, and then his daughter's voice, carefully ordinary.

“Did the cake picture load?”

“It did. I like the middle.”

“Aunt Ruth said it was rustic.”

“That's a word adults use when they lose an argument with baking.”

Lila laughed once. Jonah closed his eyes. He had missed that laugh in person for eleven days.

Since Mina died, work had become both his way to support Lila and the place where he could make sense of trouble. Concrete did not ask why a person had been absent at the wrong moment. A drawing could be checked. A damaged structure could be measured. Home required forms of attention he could not write into a report.

“Are you still coming?” Lila asked.

“I'm trying to get the booking sorted. I won't promise a time until someone confirms it.”

She was quiet.

“That's what you said last time.”

“I know.”

He did not explain the importance of his work. She already knew it. That had never made an empty chair less empty.

After they hung up, Evelyn held out a tissue without looking at him. He shook his head, then took it anyway.

Evelyn turned the baggage receipt over, then back again. On the reverse she had written the address of the friend she was visiting. The handwriting was large and careful.

“We used to take this trip together,” she said. “He liked arriving so early that we'd be bored before breakfast.”

“My father does that.”

“Sensible man. Today I thought I could manage with less time.”

Jonah looked at the clock. Neither of them needed another reminder that planning could fail at the hands of someone else.

“You got here,” he said.

She folded the receipt along its old crease. He put his phone down and stayed seated.

“Yes. Now someone has to let me leave.”

Nina came around the counter holding a bottle of water. She stopped at a respectful distance.

“Mr. Mercer? The airport duty office has been contacted. Someone will come here.”

“By whom?”

“The civil coordination center, I believe. I also asked our supervisor to look again.”

“Thank you.”

Her gaze moved to Evelyn's receipt.

“Mrs. Shaw, I have arranged baggage assistance. Please stay here until they arrive.”

Evelyn raised one eyebrow.

“I thought that was impossible.”

Nina colored.

“It shouldn't have been presented that way.”

She did not mention Celia. She did not ask either passenger to stop being upset. She left the water beside Jonah and returned to her station.

Evelyn watched her go.

“One person can make a place less foolish,” she said.

“For a minute.”

“Minutes count.”

Jonah opened his case documents again. The equipment serial number matched. The booking reference matched. The name matched the identity in his wallet.

Across the hall, a supervisor in a dark waistcoat approached Counter Nine. Celia spoke before he reached the desk. He glanced at Jonah, then at the screen.

For the first time that evening, someone stayed long enough to read.