“Why do we have to go back home?” West whined.
Justine had to practically drag her son as they made their way toward the airport escalators. “You don’t need to worry about that,” she answered. “All you need to know is we changed our plans. Sometimes that happens.” She was trying to decide whether to offer him more junk food or a trip to the video game store as a concession. Either one should be enough to settle him down and prevent a tantrum here in the airport.
At least she hoped so.
“I thought we were going to visit Grandma.” West pulled against her grip with all his strength.
“Alice is not your grandma,” Justine snapped, fully aware of the passengers staring at them both. She pulled West toward her and whispered in his ear, “Listen, I’ll explain more in the car, okay? But right now, I need you to be a big boy and do what I tell you.”
West didn’t budge. “I want to go see Grandma!” he screeched.
“Hello there, young man. Did you lose somebody?”
Justine blinked at the stranger, trying to remember why her face looked familiar.
The white-haired woman smiled at Justine. Great. The same little old lady her son had nearly plowed over in the terminal.
“Is everything all right?” the woman asked.
Justine let out her breath. No, everything was not all right, but that didn’t make it this stranger’s business.
Justine was about to pick up her son and carry him out of the airport kicking and screaming if necessary, but the old woman was rummaging through her ancient-looking purse.
“Does your son have any allergies?” she asked Justine. “I have some farm-fresh goat-milk chocolate here and would be happy to share if that’s all right with you.”
West’s eyes had already widened at the promise of candy. There was no way Justine could deny him now. “That’d be fine,” she replied with a resigned sigh.
She hoped the woman would catch from the tone of her voice that she didn’t feel like a long, drawn-out conversation.
“I’m Grandma Lucy.” The woman shook West’s hand then extended hers to Justine.
“Nice to meet you.” Justine made a show of glancing at the clock above them. “West, say thank you for the candy, and then we’ve got to go.”
“Where are you flying to today?” Grandma Lucy asked.
West stuck out his lower lip, and Justine knew he was preparing to give this stranger his best impression of a sob story. “We were gonna see my grandma,” he began, his voice trembling slightly, “but now my mama says we can’t.”
Grandma Lucy frowned. “How disappointing.” She turned to Justine. “Was your flight cancelled? That snow’s really coming down, isn’t it?”
So far, Justine hadn’t been able to come up with a compelling reason to give West why they were leaving the airport, but she figured the weather was a as good an excuse as any. “Yeah,” she responded quickly. “It’s really too bad.”
“Where does your grandma live?” the old woman asked, bending down to address West as if Justine weren’t even there.
“In Detroit,” he answered, and Grandma Lucy’s face lit up.
“Really? Well, that’s where I’m headed too. In fact, they’ve been calling standbys on my flight for the past half an hour. I bet we can get you on board if you really wanted to.”
West’s face brightened, and Justine was convinced he would have taken Grandma Lucy’s hand right there and gotten onto the plane whether his mother followed them or not. She really had to have more in-depth discussions with him on stranger danger.
“Come on, Mama.” He grabbed Justine’s sleeve. “Let’s go see if they have room for us.”
Justine didn’t move. She didn’t want to give in to her son, didn’t want to reward him for throwing a tantrum. She thought about how disappointed her husband would be if she took West home right now, then she looked at Grandma Lucy. There was something calming about her presence. The woman’s confidence and familiarity unnerved her, annoyed her to no end, and yet Justine felt somehow drawn toward her.
“Come on, Mama.” West wrapped his arms around Justine’s waist. “Let’s go to our airplane. Please?”
Justine let out her breath. There was something inexplicable about this stranger’s presence that felt both inviting and unwelcome. As her eyes moved from Grandma Lucy to West, Justine knew as certainly as she knew that it was snowing outside or that she loved her son more than anything else in this world that she was meant to get on that airplane. Call it destiny, call it whatever you want, but she knew in that instant as this little white-haired lady smiled at her warmly that she and West were supposed to fly to Detroit, and no amount of nerves or fear or protests could get her to change her mind.