Landline

“Omaha.”

“Last name?”

Georgie spelled out McCool, and the woman started clacking at her console. She frowned. “Do you have your reservation number with you?”

“I don’t have one,” Georgie said. “I need one. That’s why I’m here.”

The ticket agent looked up at Georgie. She was a black woman in her late fifties, early sixties. Her hair was pulled up into a bun, and she was eyeing Georgie over a pair of gold-framed reading glasses. “You don’t have a ticket?”

“Not yet,” Georgie said. She’d walked up to the first counter she came to. She didn’t know if this airline even flew to Omaha. “Can I get one here?”

“Yes . . . You want to fly out today?”

“As soon as possible.”

“It’s Christmas Eve,” the woman said.

“I know.” Georgie nodded.

The woman—her nametag said ESTELLE—raised her eyebrows, then looked back down at her console, clacking away again.

“You want to get to Omaha,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Tonight.”

“Yes.”

She clacked some more. Every once in a while, she’d make a discontented hmmm-ing noise.

Georgie shifted on her feet and rattled her keys against her leg. She’d already forgotten where she’d parked.

The ticket agent—Estelle—walked away and picked up a phone that was attached to the wall. It seemed like a special phone. There was an orange light built into the wall above it. Now, that’s what a magic phone should look like, Georgie thought.

Then Estelle came back to her clackity-clack console. “All right,” she sighed, after a minute.

Georgie licked her lips. They were chapped, but she didn’t have any lip balm.

“I can get you to Denver tonight on United. From there, you’re just going to have to cross your fingers. We’ve got delays across the system.”

“I’ll take it,” Georgie said. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” Estelle told her. “I’m the lady who’s about to get you stranded in the Denver airport on Christmas Eve. ID?”

Georgie handed over her driver’s license and credit card.

The ticket was exorbitantly expensive, but Georgie didn’t blink.

“You could fly to Singapore for this much,” Estelle said. “Nonstop . . . Do you have anything to check?”

“No,” Georgie said.

Estelle held her hand over a printer, waiting for the tickets. “What’s in Omaha anyway? Besides two feet of snow.”

“My kids,” Georgie said, then felt her heart squeeze. “My husband.”

The other woman’s face softened for the first time since Georgie had stepped up to the counter. She handed Georgie her boarding passes. “Well, I hope you get there sooner than later. Hurry up. You’ve got twenty minutes to get to your gate.”

For the next twenty minutes, Georgie felt like the heroine of a romantic comedy.

She even decided what song would be playing on her soundtrack—Kenny Loggins doing a big, triumphant, live version of “Celebrate Me Home.” (Slow and gentle at the beginning, building up to an irresistible crescendo. Excessive amounts of blue-eyed soul.)

She ran through the airport. No luggage to drag, no kids to hang on to.

She ran by other people’s families. By loving elderly couples. By volunteer carolers wearing red and green sweaters.

With every step, Georgie felt more sure of herself.

This was what she should have done ten minutes after Neal left last week. Flying across the country to reunite with your true love was always the right move. (Always.) (In every case.)

Everything would be all right if Georgie could just get to Neal. If she could hear his voice. If she could feel his arms around her.

Just like everything had been all right when he’d showed up on her doorstep fifteen years ago. (Tomorrow morning.) As soon as she’d seen his face that day, she’d forgiven him.

Her plane was already boarding when Georgie—flushed and breathless—arrived at the gate. A pretty blond flight attendant took her ticket and smiled. “Have a great flight—and Merry Christmas.”

CHAPTER 32

The plane didn’t take off.

Everyone got buckled up. They turned off their electronic devices. The pretty flight attendant told them which exit to head for in case of catastrophe or near-certain death. Then the plane taxied for a few minutes.

Then a few minutes more.

There was twenty minutes, probably, of taxiing.

Georgie was sitting between an extremely polished and sanded woman who tensed every time Georgie bumped her thigh and a boy about Alice’s age wearing a THIS SUUUUUUUCKS T-shirt. (He was way too young to watch Jeff’d Up, in Georgie’s opinion.)

“So, you like Trev?” she asked him.

“Who?”

“Your T-shirt.”

The kid shrugged and turned on his phone. A minute later, the flight attendant came by and asked him to turn it off.

After forty minutes of taxiing, Georgie realized the boy was the up-tight woman’s son. She kept leaning over Georgie to talk to him.

“Would you like to trade seats?” Georgie asked her.

“I always leave an empty seat between us,” the woman said. “Usually that means we end up with extra space because nobody wants to sit by themselves in the middle.”

“Did you want to sit together?” Georgie asked. “I don’t mind moving.”

“No,” the woman answered. “Better stay where we are. They use the seat assignments to identify bodies.”

The captain came on the intercom to apologize because he couldn’t turn the air-conditioning on—and to tell them to just “hang in there, we’re fifth in line to take off.”

Then he came back to say they weren’t in line anymore. They were waiting for news from Denver.

“What’s happening in Denver?” Georgie asked the flight attendant the next time she stopped to tell the boy to turn off his phone.

“Snowpocalypse,” the flight attendant said cheerfully.

“It’s snowing?” Georgie asked. “Doesn’t it always snow in Denver?”

“It’s a blizzard. From Denver to Indianapolis.”

“But we’re still leaving?”

“The storm is shifting,” the flight attendant said. “We’re just waiting for confirmation, then we’ll take off.”

“Oh,” Georgie said. “Thanks.”