Page 4 of Protecting the Flame

GRAVITY

Chapter 1

“But, Mah-awm.”The kid was gawky with a bob of cinnamon-brown hair and owlish specs. Clutching a book to her chest, she said, “I don’t have to.”

“Now, honey.” The mom’s belly was so bloated, give her a little white chef’s cap and she could be the Pillsbury Doughboy’s stunt double. “The plane’s small, and we’ll be in the air for quite a while. Let’s try, okay?”

The kid sighed with the beleaguered air of a teacher trying very hard to help a slow student through a thorny math problem. “Mom, first off, I’m twelve, not two. I think I know when I need to go. Second, are you sure you’re not projecting? You need to go every ten minutes these days.”

Impressive, Young Skywalker. Emma bet when this girl was two, she already ran circles around the adults. She was what Emma always imagined Meg Wallace to be in A Wrinkle in Time (the book, not the movie; she couldn’t get past Oprah’s glittery eyebrows): a little disheveled, all elbows and knees. Even the braces fit. Then, too, Emma glimpsed a shadow of herself in this girl, one who was probably smart, a loner, a misfit. A girl everyone tolerated but no one truly liked because she knew the answers or how to find them if she didn’t. (Goldsmith got that totally right, too. Kids were completely Lord of the Flies when it came to a whiff of difference.) Fiddling with the small charm dangling from a thin gold chain around her neck, Emma squinted to make out the title of the kid’s book. In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality.

Okay, most impressive.

“Jesus.” A pasty-faced guy who was all twitches and tics, stood a few steps ahead of the mom and the kid. His restless fingers drummed his thighs. “You gonna make that kid mind, Rachel, or you need me to do it?”

Interesting. The guy’s anxiety almost had an odor to it, something she associated with new sweat and old cigarettes. Emma had a pretty good idea what this guy was about. Minot was, after all, a big booming oil town with all its big booming, largely imported vices. Snow wasn’t the only white substance in abundance.

The girl favored the guy with a cool look. “Thank you, but no one asked your opinion. Besides, you’re not my father. You’re just the drug-addicted partner in rehab who married my mom because he had nowhere else to go.”

“Say what?” the guy snapped.

Kim’s voice seeped through an earbud. “Emma, are you there?”

“I’m here,” she said, not taking her eyes from this little drama.

“What’s going on?” asked Kim.

“Masterpiece Theater,” she said.

“What?”

“You think you don’t have to listen?” The guy looked as if backhanding the kid wasn’t something he’d have to think about really hard or feel the least bit sorry for later. “I don’t see you not eating. I don’t see you not wearing the clothes I buy with the money I earn…”

“Scott, please,” the mom said, putting a hand on the guy’s chest and darting an embarrassed look around. Her dark eyes touched on Emma for a moment before jumping away. “Both of you,” she said, lowering her voice. “Stop. Scott, back off, all right?”

Scott flared. “Oh, so it’s my fault now?”

“Well, given the fact we have to move because she’s pregnant and you can’t stay clean,” the girl said, “yeah.”

“Stop,” Rachel begged the girl. “Please.”

Kim’s voice came through her earpiece. “Is there a problem?”

“I’m not sure.” If the kid weren’t a kid, Emma could almost see her way to liking her, perish the thought. The only thing she knew for sure about kids was she wanted nothing to do with them. Until recently, this had seemed a really good strategy. Man, maybe it was time to see a shrink. She could do it on the down-low, pay out of pocket so there wouldn’t be a paper trail, figure out her next moves. What she really didn’t need was for anyone to find out she was getting her head examined. That happened, they’d slap her on a ward again, maybe at Andrews, maybe Lackland—see, see, she’s crazy, says so right here—and then it was a toss-up whether they put her someplace quiet or medically boarded her ass out. (She was actually surprised they hadn’t done that already; it wasn’t as if the past eighteen months were a dream. But, then again, everyone thought her little month-long mental health vacation was understandable. People were willing to cut her some slack because, you know, it wasn’t every day a woman’s husband blew his brains out all over the bathroom with his own service weapon.)

Her going after Ben’s CO three months ago, shouting murder and cover-up? Supremely stupid.

Scott, it appeared, was not as impressed with the kid as Emma was. Fists bunched, he took a step forward. “You little—”

Okay, in another second, this was going to be a real story. Darting a quick look over a shoulder, Emma saw no one who looked remotely like airport security. Hell.

“Hang on, Kim.” Whipping her phone around, Emma called, “Hey, Scott? You mind speaking up for the camera?”

Scott’s head jerked around and then his jaw went slack, his eyes buggy. The look was almost comical. “The fuck?”

“Hold it.” Emma’s touched off a burst; her camera went snickety-snick-snick. “So, what’s your last name, Scott?”

“What?”

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