“Come on, Mama,” West prodded her leg as Justine fiddled with the strap on her boots. Why had she decided to wear her heels on a day like this? It wasn’t as if she were trying to impress anybody back in Detroit.
Justine smiled apologetically at the elderly couple waiting to go through security behind her. She and West were holding up the line.
“Come on, Mama,” West repeated impatiently.
When Justine’s husband booked tickets for their flight, she’d been adamant she wanted to travel during the day. No red-eyes for her, thank you very much. Now, she wondered if she’d made the wrong call. Maybe if West was dead tired, he wouldn’t act up so much.
She squeezed her eyes shut as she finally managed to wedge her foot out of her tight shoe. Steve was supposed to be here with her. She needed his support. It wasn’t her fault that the partners thrust this case on her husband at the very last minute.
“Good thing we paid for travel insurance,” was all Steve said as he logged onto the website to cancel his ticket.
She couldn’t believe he’d abandoned her like this. And why had she let him, anyway? She didn’t owe her mom this visit. When Steve told her he couldn’t make it to Detroit, she wondered if this was God’s way of warning her to leave well enough alone.
She couldn’t understand why she let Steve talk her into flying without him. Didn’t he know how nervous she got on airplanes? No, she hadn’t ever specifically told him she was scared of flying, but he must know by now. Wasn’t that why he never suggested outlandish vacations in the Caribbean like so many of his colleagues at the firm took?
She should have put her foot down. Told her husband that there was no way on God’s green earth she was going to travel alone with their four-year-old son, especially not to Detroit. No way she was going to subject their child to the ravings of a madwoman. Not that West was going to come within a ten-mile radius of his grandmother, but still. Steve should have known how impossible it would be for Justine to make this trip without him. Not just emotionally but logistically as well. Did he have any idea how many daycare providers she had to screen in order to find someone to watch her son while Justine went out to talk to Alice? What if he hated it there? What if the daycare was dirty? What if there was lead in the water or something worse? The entire state of Michigan was falling apart. One of Steve’s associates had even been called to Detroit as an expert witness to discuss that school where they built a playground on toxic soil. That kind of thing was happening all over the state. And Steve thought it was a good idea for her and her son to spend four days there without him?
He was as insane as Alice.
She set her boots on the conveyer belt and waited her turn to step through the full-body scanner. West was young enough they let him go through the gate after a cursory once-over with the wand. In ten or fifteen years, on account of his skin tone alone, he’d be stopped, questioned, harassed when he wanted to travel. It was part of life he’d have to get used to soon. Her son didn’t realize how lucky he was to be so young.
For now, everything was new and exciting. He grinned widely at Justine as he waited for her on the other side of the full-sized scanner. She hated the machine, hated to think about whatever radiation might be coming out of it. She held her breath, reminded herself that there was nothing to fear, and stepped through the machine.
“Wasn’t that cool?” West jumped enthusiastically as Justine tried to put her tight boots back on without losing her balance.
“Yeah,” she mumbled. “Real cool.”
“Will we get to do it again before we get on the plane?”
She shook her head and answered mindlessly, “Not this time.”
Justine glanced at the TSA line, which had only grown longer in the half hour they’d been waiting. First hurdle past. A hundred more to endure before this ordeal was finally behind her.