Page 3 of Here One Moment

The lady is not strikingly beautiful or unfortunately ugly. She wears a pretty green-and-white-patterned collared blouse tucked in at the waistband of slim-fitting gray pants. Her shoes are flat and sensible. She is not unusually pierced or bejeweled or tattooed. She has small silver studs in her ears and a silver brooch pinned to the collar of her blouse, which she often touches, as if to check that it is still there.

Which is all to say, the lady who will later become known as “the Death Lady” on the delayed 3:20 p.m. flight from Hobart to Sydney is not worthy of a second glance, not by anyone, not a single crew member, not a single passenger, not until she does what she does.

Even then it takes longer than you might expect for the first person to shout, for someone to begin filming, for call buttons to start lighting up and dinging all over the cabin like a pinball machine.

Chapter 2

It’s been forty-five minutes since takeoff and the atmosphere on board is quiet, stoic, only a touch aggrieved. The delay, when time slowed and stretched and thinned so that every minute lasted its full quota of sixty seconds, is in the past. Time is once again ticking by at its usual brisk invisible pace.

A “light snack” of almonds, pretzels, crackers, and salsa has been served in the main cabin. The five business-class passengers have enjoyed a “light meal” (they all chose the chicken) and quite a lot of wine (they all chose the pinot).

In the main cabin, most of the garbage has been cleared and most tray tables are back up. The baby and the toddler are asleep. So is the bride, while the groom taps at his phone. The unaccompanied minor energetically plays a game on his device. The frail elderly couple bend their heads over separate crosswords. The crew chats in low voices about weekend plans and next week’s roster.

People make use of the lavatories. They put shoes back on. They eat breath mints. They apply lip balm. They see the next steps of their journeys rolling out ahead of them: collect bag from baggageclaim, line up for a taxi, order an Uber, text the person pickingthemup. They see themselves walking in the front door of their homes or hotels or Airbnbs, dropping bags with weary thuds. “What a nightmare,” they will say to their partners or pets or the walls, and then they will step right back into their lives.

—

The lady unbuckles her seat belt and stands.

She is a lady about to get something down from the overhead bin. Or a lady about to head to the toilet. She is of no consequence, no concern, no interest, no danger.

She bows her head and presses a fingertip to the tiny brooch pinned to her blouse.

She steps into the aisle and doesn’t move.

One person notices.

—

That person is a forty-two-year-old civil engineer with heartburn and a headache.

Leopold Vodnik, just Leo, never Leopold, to everyone except his maternal grandmother who is dead and an old university friend long gone from his life, is seated in 4C, directly across the aisle from the lady.

Theirs is the first row in the main cabin. They face a wall with a sign that declares Business Class Only past This Point. A curtain is discreetly drawn across the aisle to conceal the luxury lifestyle on offer just a short distance away.

Leo looks like he belongs in business class. He is an olive-skinned man of medium build, with a large, definite nose and a high forehead that ends abruptly in a shock of mad-professor gray-speckled dark curly hair. One of his sisters recently sent him an article about scientists discovering the gene for “uncombable hair syndrome.”

He wears a blue linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, gray chinos, and suede boots. His wife says he dresses better than her. (Not hard. Neve mostly dresses in the heedless, mismatched manner of someone who recently survived a natural disaster.)

Leo has spent the entire flight chewing antacids, massaging his forehead with his fingertips, and checking and rechecking the time.

It’s all over. He must face facts. His eleven-year-old daughter’s school musical is due to begin in five minutes. He will not be there because he is here: thirty-five thousand feet in the sky.

“Obviously I’ll be home in plenty of time for The Lion King,” he’d told his wife when he’d first raised the possibility of flying down to Hobart to take his mother to a specialist’s appointment.

“Unless your flight back is delayed,” Neve had said.

“It won’t be,” said Leo.

“Knock on wood,” said Neve, without knocking on wood.

It kind of feels like the delay is her fault. Why even mention the possibility? He is meant to be the pessimistic one in their relationship.

Who could have predicted a two-hour delay?

Neve, apparently.

Leo checks the time once more. Right now, he should be shivering in his daughter’s school hall, hissing at his teenage son to put away hisphone and support his sister, exchanging good-humored banter about the arctic air-conditioning with the other parents, whispering to his wife to please remind him of Samira’s dad’s name, telling Samira’s dad they must have that beer soon, which they both know will never happen because…life.

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