“It’s a trinity ring. Pink for love, yellow for fidelity and white for friendship. I liked the symbolism of three—you, me and baby-to-be.” I blink back tears, and Will lifts my chin with a finger, bringing my gaze to his. “What’s wrong? Don’t you like it?”
I run a finger over the bright white stones, sparkling against red leather. The truth is, Will couldn’t have chosen a better piece. The ring is simple, sophisticated, stunning. Exactly what I would pick out for myself, if we had all the money in the world to spend, which we don’t.
And yet I want this ring so much more than I should—not because it’s beautiful or expensive, but because Will put so much thought into picking it out for me.
“I love it, but...” I shake my head. “It’s too much. We can’t afford it.”
“It’s not too much. Not for the mother of my future baby.” He tugs the ring from the box, slides it up my finger. It’s cool and heavy and fits perfectly, hugging the skin below my knuckle like it was made for my hand. “Give me a little girl who looks just like you.”
My gaze roams over the planes and angles of my husband’s face, picking out all my favorite parts. The thin scar that slashes through his left eyebrow. That bump at the bridge of his nose. His broad, square jaw and thick, kissable lips. His eyes are sleepy and his hair is mussed and his chin is scratchy with stubble. Of all his habits and moods, of all the sides of him I’ve come to know, I love him most when he’s like he is now: sweet, softhearted, rumpled.
I smile at him through my tears. “What if it’s a boy?”
“Then we’ll keep going until I get my girl.” He follows this up with a kiss, a long, lingering press of his lips to mine. “Do you like the ring?”
“I love it.” I wind my arm up and around his neck, the diamonds winking above his shoulder. “It’s perfect, and so are you.”
He grins. “Maybe we should get in one more practice run before I go, just in case.”
“Your flight leaves in three hours.”
But his lips are already kissing a trail down my neck, his hand already sliding lower and lower still. “So?”
“So it’s raining. Traffic’s going to be a bitch.”
He rolls me onto my back, pinning my body to the bed with his. “Then we better hurry.”
2
Tuition at Lake Forrest Academy, the exclusive K–12 in a leafy suburb of Atlanta where I work as school counselor, is a whopping $24,435 per year. Assuming for a five percent inflation, thirteen years in these hallowed halls will cost you more than four hundred grand per child, and that’s before they step even one foot on a college campus. Our students are the sons and daughters of surgeons and CEOs, of bankers and entrepreneurs, of syndicated news anchors and professional athletes. They are a privileged and elite tribe, and the most fucked-up group of kids you could ever imagine.
I push through the double doors at a little past ten—a good two hours late, thanks to Will’s not-so-quickie and a nail in my tire on the way—and head down the carpeted hallway. The building is quiet, the kind of quiet it can be only when the students are in class huddled behind their brand-new MacBooks. I’ve arrived in the middle of third period, so no need to rush.
When I come around the corner, I’m not all that surprised to find a couple of juniors gathered in the hallway outside my office door, their heads bent over their electronics. The students know I have an open-door policy, and they use it often.
And then more come out of the classroom across the hall, their voices rising in excitement, and the alarm I hear in them sticks my soles to the carpet. “What’s going on? Why aren’t you guys in class?”
Ben Wheeler looks up from his iPhone. “A plane just crashed. They’re saying it took off from Hartsfield.”
Terror clutches my chest, and my heart stops. I steady myself on a locker. “What plane? Where?”
He lifts a scrawny shoulder. “Details are sketchy.”
I shove through the cluster of students and leap behind my desk, reaching with shaking hands for my mouse. “Come on, come on,” I whisper, jiggling my computer out of its deep-sleep hibernation. My mind spins with what I can remember of Will’s flight details. He’s been in the air for over thirty minutes by now, likely roaring somewhere near the Florida border. Surely—surely—the crashed plane can’t be the one with him on it. I mean, what are the odds? Thousands of planes take off from the Atlanta airport every day, and they don’t just fall from the sky. Surely everybody got off safely.
“Mrs. Griffith, are you okay?” Ava, a wispy sophomore, says from my doorway, and her words barely cleave through the roaring in my ears.
After an eternity, my internet browser loads, and I type the address for CNN with stiff and clumsy fingers. And then I pray. Please, God, please, don’t let it be Will’s.
The images that fill my screen a few seconds later are horrifying. Jagged chunks of a plane ripped apart by explosion, a charred field dotted with smoking debris. The worst kind of crash, the kind where no one survives.
“Those poor people,” Ava whispers from right above my head.
Nausea rises, burning the back of my throat, and I scroll down until I see the flight details. Liberty Airlines Flight 23. Air bursts out of me in a loud whoosh, and relief turns my bones to slush.
Ava drapes a tentative hand across my shoulder blades. “Mrs. Griffith, what’s wrong? What can I do?”
“I’m fine.” The words come out half formed and breathless, like my lungs still haven’t gotten the memo. I know I should feel sick for Flight 23’s passengers and their families, for those poor people blown to bits above a Missouri cornfield, for their families and friends who are finding out like I did, on social media and these awful pictures on their screens, but instead I feel only relief. Relief rushes through me like a Valium, strong and swift and sublime. “It wasn’t Will’s plane.”
“Who’s Will?”
I brush both hands over my cheeks and try to breathe away the panic, but it fights to stay close. “My husband.” My fingers are still shaking, my heart still racing, no matter how many times I tell myself it wasn’t Will’s plane. “He’s on his way to Orlando.”
Her eyes go wide. “You thought your husband was on that plane? Jeez, no wonder you just melted down.”
“I didn’t melt down, I just...” I press a palm to my chest, haul a deep, cleansing breath. “For the record, my reaction was not out of proportion to the situation. Tremendous fear like the kind I experienced produces a sharp spike in adrenaline, and the body responds. But I’m fine now. I’ll be fine.”
Talking about it out loud, putting my physiological response into scientific terms, loosens something in my chest, and the throbbing in my head slows to an occasional thud. Thank God, it wasn’t Will’s plane.